Day 637, part 2 – Immunity

That didn’t last long, did it?

Ugh. I’m not having a good day.

Many reasons for it, but the shifting sands of Covid policies, together with the shifting plans of the next couple of weeks, a touch of added crappy service from the local Amazon wannabe, and just a soupçon of just sheer meh as a garnish.

I turned to the internet for amusement and escape.

Mostly, that was a very bad idea, but there was this from xkcd, which is so simple and so perfect:

Comic

In related, better news, it looks like I might be able to go heterologous with my booster vaccine. Which is great, but does bring up the awkward question of why we have to wait until after the period of maximum benefit to actually get it again.

Day 632 – This is cheery

Spoiler: It’s not cheery at all. But it is quite good.

Some wonderful editing of live singers into the background theme.

There are some really positive moments in this video, and you should try to hang onto those, because overall, it’s a reminder that – like 2020 before it – 2021 was actually a bit of a shitshow, full of conquest, war, famine and death.

And I think we all know what comes next.

We leave as we began, with Covid still running riot and talk of lockdowns all over the place. Anti-vax idiots still peddling their misinformation and the ANC still “running the country” (into the ground).

Chaos abounds.

At least the summer weather is pretty good in Cape Town today*.

I thought that next year would definitely be better (after all, the bar has been set really rather low), but then I realised that it’s pronounced “2020 too”, and suddenly, I don’t feel quite so hopeful.

* hold onto the the positives, remember?

Day 630 – Fighting misinformation

Sigh.

2 years into this nonsense and over a year after we started vaccinating people, and we’re still seeing this sort of thing:

Maybe this person just doesn’t understand, or maybe they just don’t want to understand. Either way, while sharing this, it’s important to note that “the vaxes and boosters” don’t put any spike proteins into our bodies. Nor do they cause our bodies to make any full spike proteins. The small protein fragments made by our cells in response to the mRNA vaccines are enough for the immune system to work its magic and produce antibodies which can target the real thing, should it become necessary.

So, the spike proteins that “the vaxes and boosters are putting into our bodies” don’t get “expelled after a period of time” (and thanks for clarifying what a period of time might mean, though), nor do they collect anywhere, simply because they never existed.

Just imagine if they did, though. What would happen if we keep adding more? Well, proteins are very, very, small, so this would take a while, but I would imagine that we would likely all become just one giant spike protein (but with legs, obviously.) It would be much easier to see who had been vaccinated and who hadn’t – none of this QR code or “passport” silliness – only people who looked like giant spike proteins would be allowed into bars, cinemas and shops.

We’d have to avoid the rain, of course. Important solubility consideration. Safety first.

But maybe the scientific community shot itself in the collective foot with how we went about naming the spike protein, anyway. After all, “spike” sounds so aggressive, nasty and dangerous. If we’d thought about it beforehand (and that would include allowing for this sort of social media lunacy) then surely the “cuddle protein” or the “fluffy protein” would have been a better, more socially acceptable term. It’s very had to imagine anyone being even vaguely concerned with a build-up of cuddles in their ovaries.

Or wherever.

But more seriously, the fact remains that there will always be people out there who can’t understand, can’t accept, or simply won’t believe what we tell them, no matter how simply we put it. I can’t imagine living my life that way – distrusting every single thing that anyone says. But then I can imagine giant spike protein people going to the pub, so maybe the joke’s on me.

There are important concerns and questions for the future of science, of scientific communication and of trust and credibility in our experts here. I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any answers right now.

Day 629, part 2 – Red list lifted

I’m still mildly bemused by the exceptionalism shown to the UK regarding the recent travel red list. (I mean, I’m not really, we know that everyone loves to hate the Brits, but still…)

Sure, you can say that it was unscientific, unjustified or whatever (as if those are the only arguments that count here), but no-one seems to be chastising Chile or Italy or Oman or Singapore or the UAE or Panama or Uzbekistan or Canada or (weirdly) Rwanda (I know, right?) for stopping incoming Saffas and visitors to SA from… well… coming in.

And now that the UK (at the time of writing) has opened up again, while many of the the other countries (and there are almost 70 of them!) are still banning travel from SA, there still seems to be this latent whining at the UK, rather than any outrage at or pressure on other countries to follow their lead.

Odd.

We now know a lot more about Omicron – and while the news (tentatively) seems to be pretty good – when the UK and everyone else added SA to their red list, no-one had any idea how nasty or otherwise it might be (it didn’t even have a name back then!), and the UK had detected no cases there. What I wrote a couple of weeks ago still stands:

That “more information” did become available, and the UK has acted timeously on it. Of course I’m sorry that SA lost out on tourism business for three weeks. I know it’s crap. The last 2 years have been crap for all of us. Omicron was out of anyone’s control (and it’s still wildly out of everyone’s control!), and there will be other variants in the future which will probably result in new restrictions and limiting travel. It’s not anyone’s fault.

I know how much the tourist industry needs a good season right now, but as far as I’m aware, the UK (or anywhere else for that matter) has no obligation to send a quota number of tourists here each year. And I’m not a business person, but to me, seemingly relying on a single nation to prop up your tourist industry seems like a worryingly risky approach.

If this was really just about the tourist thing and the stigma of being on a red list, then it does seem as if local social media and news sites should move on now from their… er… “unjustified, unscientific and irrational” stance, and start pressurising the likes of Aruba, Gabon and Kuwait (oh, and “Germany, the US, France and the Netherlands”, obviously) to allow travellers from SA back into their countries rather than pointlessly continuing to chastise the UK.

Really weird that that’s not happening.

Day 628 – Beagle emergency

But first of all, hello and welcome to any new readers that might have given a member of my family a D-dimer result recently.
Thanks for that. Ultrasound was clear (for that, at least), prognosis is all good. Happy days.

And talking of medical things, we had a minor beagle-related emergency at the cottage today. After the rain – yes, in December: I am also aghast – we had planned to take the beagle to the beach for a quick snorf and walk. We had got no further than the car park when she grabbed a small piece of sardine from the floor, yelped and indicated that she had got a fishing hook in her lip, by proudly displaying the fishing hook protruding through her lip.

Clearly just discarded by a fisherman. If only there had been a bin nearby for your waste. Oh wait, there was. You were just too lazy to use it.
Great. Thanks, wanker fishermen.

It very quickly became very evident that we weren’t going to be able to remove the hook ourselves. They are made to stay in lips, be they piscine or canine. And that meant a trip to the vet, 43km up the road.

Halfway there, we realised the we had no money and not enough diesel to get us there and back. Cue Samsung Pay on the boy’s cellphone (gotta love technology) and a quick R100 splash and dash at the Struisbaai Caltex.

The vet was friendly, helpful, Afrikaans and very efficient. A quick shot of sedative, a quicker shot of local anaesthetic, some MASSIVE wire choppers and a quick snip later, we brought an exceedingly drunk beagle back home. I’m happy to say that a couple of hours later, the beagle has wobbled around the room once and then struggled back to the beanbag and fallen asleep again.

Which sounds like a wonderful idea to me.