It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel undecided

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Spotted on St. Charles in New Orleans.  This animal may be enrolled in the pre-human stage of the Covid-19 Challenge Vaccine Study.  Thank you for masking. 
I was out bike riding in New Orleans yesterday evening, crossing the French Quarter, the Central Business District, and the Lower Garden District on my way deeper Uptown.  Traffic is down considerably.  Everything feels and looks different and yet it’s exactly the same.  It is very, very weird.  All this and no one here to enjoy it, with PERFECT weather.  I just had to keep riding upriver, taking it all in. Where are y’all!?  Just before turning around to head back downriver to the restaurant (Seed) where we ordered takeout food and the brewery (Courtyard) where our 3 crowlers were waiting for us to pick up, I spotted the creature in the picture.  Ha! 


When we “start opening back up”, we are all going to have to decide what our risk will be.  It’s going to be really hard.  I mean, to transition from trying to have close to zero risk (stay home!) to “tolerable risk”…what’s tolerable?  Zero is so easy.  Perceived risk, actual risk, percentage risk, risk modifiers (testing, antibody levels, history of illness)…WTF.  I’m afraid that many will just go with magical thinking, since that’s what we do anyway (“of course I walk home alone at night, I’ll be FINE!; of course I eat questionable leftovers, I’ll be FINE!; of course I drink too much and drive, I’ll be FINE!”).  Because that’s probably what “they” want us to switch to since all this has been about flattening the curve, not squashing the curve.  So, they will say, get out there and get sick now (not too many sick at a time, please) since you won’t overwhelm the health care system.  Those of us who choose to continue sheltering and who would just love it if y’all wore your fucking masks (they are for other people’s protection, not yours), will just not be part of the party (the restaurant date, the concert, the haircut, the church service, the book club).  

I am not sure what I will do.  I’m thinking about waiting for the “first wave” of returnees.  See what happens, while we all keep waiting for that vaccine. The vaccine inventers will be doing those “challenge tests” for Covid-19 disease.  You know what challenge tests are, right?  Here’s what: a candidate vaccine is developed. Normally as part of the trial phase, it’s administered to a group of several hundreds or thousands of human volunteers who then go about their business, and you see how many of them get sick vs. the control group of a similar number who didn’t get the vaccine.  In a Challenge test, you vaccinate the group and then DELIBERATELY try to make them sick with the disease, by exposing them.  Higher risk to the study subjects (presumably, they will be paid well), but much faster way to find out if the vaccine works. So that’s one reason to expect maybe a shorter development time compared to other vaccines, some taking 4 years or longer to be ready for use.  But then, there’s the troublesome fact that virtually all human adults alive on planet earth will want to get the vaccine...

OK, that’s my blog post for now.  Felt like something needs to be here. If you listen to podcasts, I recommend Sam Harris's blog called Making Sense, where some of these dilemmas are dissected. The creature in the picture  I am calling the Challenge Bear.  Could be a dog, though.

Comments

  1. Jim KuzavaApril 25, 2020 at 7:38 PM

    Shout out to Sam. He has done a good job with his guests during this turbulent time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RobApril 25, 2020 at 11:39 PM

    Thanks for noting that, Jim. Paul Bloom and Caitlin Flanagan worth listening to. We have a lot of work to do. Lot's of wonderful, smart people here in this North American sector; what's up for planet earth? All we can do it our best, and as always, now is the time.

    ReplyDelete

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