Tag: vaccine

I don’t know what to say

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I said a lot of things here, but sometimes even I run out of words when I read something like this.

The story:

“He just learned how to ride, he got the hang of it right away,” Ethan’s dad, Luis, said proudly. “He wanted to go outside because he wanted to jump on his bike…it was an amazing thing for him.”

Instead, since late January, the schoolboy has been confined to a hospital bed with measles encephalitis, a complication that causes swelling and inflammation in the brain. “He’s pretty much as if he was paralysed,” his devastated father, 41, told The Independent in a phone interview from his son’s hospital bedside.

Sadly, it’s not like anything could have stopped him from being affected in this way.

Well, apart from the measles vaccine, of course. That would have prevented all of this.

But:

Ethan’s parents decided not to immunise him against measles as they did with his three brothers. Three out of four of them contracted measles. Still, despite Ethan’s ordeal, his mom stands by their decision. “We’re not blaming God for this,” said 35-year-old Kristina. “Yes, it hurts, of course, it hurts. But God has chosen Ethan for a reason. God is doing something, and we’re gonna glorify his name regardless.”

“And we wouldn’t change it any other way,” the mom continued. “If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”

Honestly, read that last line again and then read what happened in the hospital (after they opted to take him HOME(!) for 48 hours while his condition deteriorated further):

“They immediately started giving him fluids, taking blood again, doing all the tests again,” Kristina said, panicking as she watched her son being hooked up to machines.

Then Ethan’s heart rate started dropping.

“The machine started beeping,” she recalled. “And we were really concerned … doctors kept coming in and so then we asked, ‘What number do we need to be concerned?’ And [the doctor] said, ‘Anything that goes under 50.’

“And all of a sudden, his heart rate went under 50,” Kristina said.

The mom recalled that a nurse then shouted, “Ethan, you gotta wake up, you gotta wake up,” and started “pounding” on her son’s chest, before calling for more medics to help.

“It was just one of those moments you just think…no, no,” the mom said, through tears. “This can’t be.”

And then let me share her words one more time:

“And we wouldn’t change it any other way. If I knew this could be the outcome, I still wouldn’t have given my son the vaccine.”

And there it is. If you ever needed any evidence that some people shouldn’t be allowed to become parents. Literally, those last lines are basically an admission of wilful child endangerment.

But these people have become emboldened by what they read on Facebook and by what their pseudoscientific, conspiracy theorist, absolute knob of a Secretary of Health is saying and doing.

“Why do we need to add so much to our children’s bodies?” Kristina asks.

Erm… because it would have prevented your 7-year-old son from having to be fed by a tube (ironically added to his body), from possibly not being able to walk again, and having brain damage for the rest of his life.

To the parents’ relief, doctors were able to stabilise Ethan’s heart rate and he was admitted to the intensive care unit, where his mom and dad sat by his bedside all night anxiously watching the heart rate monitor. The next morning, Ethan underwent another MRI and second spinal tap.

Weird how you suddenly start relying on modern medical science to save your kid’s life once your shitty decisions nearly ended it, hey?

What a horrible, stupid woman.
Good luck to Ethan. And good luck to the rest of her kids.

They’re going to need it.

Day 313, part 2 – Vaccine delivery

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The first vaccines for The Virus arrived in South Africa yesterday, and wow, was the pomp and ceremony was dragged out onto the cold, wet apron at the airport in Johannesbeagle?

(Yes. Yes, it was.)

Dignitaries, politicians, umbrella holders and a really sycophantic media were all present to witness a whole 1 million doses of Covishield™ arriving on an Emirates 777.

That’s just enough to fully vaccinate 0.8% of the population, by my rudimentary calculations.

And yet:

I don’t watch news programmes specifically for this reason. But last night, I flicked on eNCA because I wanted felt I had to watch Ramaphosa’s address on reducing the lockdown. This was long, long, overdue, but clearly held back so that he could wave his little “we’ve got some vaccine” flag.

And wow. The blatant fawning during the pisspoor pre-speech small talk was absolutely sickening.

I looked up several times from the ironing (it’s all about the glamour here, ok?) and was eventually told off by Mrs 6000 for using the phrase

What the actual fuck?

four times – ever more incredulously – in about a 90 second period.

I’m well aware that the art of politics is all about spin, but this was so robustly applied that we were all almost flung outwards at mass times angular velocity squared times radius*.

They’re clearly not even bothering to hide it anymore. Gone are the clever intricacies of subliminal messaging. This was in your face GovernmentLove©. I’m not one for hyperbole, but I was actually quite shocked. I would not have been surprised if they’d cut across the studio to some sort of shrine to the ANC**.
It was actually like I was watching a party political broadcast***.

Stay away from news channels, guys. Or at least watch them with the knowledge that they’re all pushing some sort of agenda. This one wasn’t pretty. But at least it was pretty obvious.

Right. While I’m sounding like some sort of Trump fan with a Masters in Media Conspiracy from the Dunning-Kruger Online College, might I just ask why we’re bothering with this whole injection thing anyway?

It’s a tiresome, clumsy, process and people can avoid getting the jab if they so choose.

Ugh. No. That’s not what our reptilian overlords want.

Why not just use chemtrails?

After all, Darth Putin has got one of his planes in Cape Town right now, ready to go:

The Russian-built, Russian-registered, catchily named Illyushin II-76 TD-90VD arrived last night from the so-called Novolazarevskaya Airbase (which also sounds Russian), and features a huge cargo hold, capable of being adapted to hold fluids to bomb fires (definitely) or spread weather-modification and mind-altering chemtrails (possibly).
Surely it shouldn’t be such a big thing to fill it with vaccine and get us all done in one go?

I mean, that’s almost certainly why it’s here, right?

Right.

I’m glad you are all in the know as well.

 

Stay safe.

 

 

* engineers and physicists will know
** ok, that was a bit of hyperbole
*** back to no hyperbole

Day 229 – Not done yet

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Great news on the vaccine for the virus:

…but we’re not done yet, even though a lot of people have been treating things as if we have been done for quite a while now.

Not done yet because:

a) Nelson Mandela Bay metro has run out of Intensive Care beds as the number of infections there continues to rise:

b) And yes, while the situation in the Eastern Cape is clearly a bit out of control, there are worrying little upturns in the Western Cape and KZN graphs as well:

We need to keep an eye on this – things should be dropping consistently at the moment.

c) We’re still learning about the effects of the virus on humans:

This figure is more than double than you would expect to see with influenza infections.

d) There’s “talk” of a return to Level 2 lockdown:

I say “talk”, because that’s from Business Insider and we all know what they’re like and even they state:

Now government officials have confirmed – anonymously – to Bloomberg that tougher restrictions are on the cards again in discussions this week.

Ah. The anonymous source. That old chestnut.

We believe you.

e) This has nothing to do with Covid, but I got bitten on the chin by a stray dog today, while lying in a pool of its urine underneath a Toyota double cab with its engine running in the middle of a fairly busy road in Upper Kenilworth.

I wouldn’t advise any of it.

Tetanus shot and broad spectrum antibiotics. No stitches required – puncture wound only.

Right. Must go and howl at the moon. See you tomorrow.

Day 136 – Long read takeaway

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This is a long read about America.

 

 

I’m not really into long reads or America, but I actually found it rather interesting.
A combination of anthropology (obviously), epidemiology, sociology, history and politics, with some really interesting facts thrown in here and there. I learned stuff.

Since it’s Sunday – the day of rest – you probably have the time (although perhaps not the inclination) to give it a go. Yes, I was being sarcastic about the time thing.

This was one of the paragraphs from early on in the article, highlighting just what we’re up against in getting a vaccine developed and giving us any chance of getting back to a “normal” life.

And that before we’ve even thought about production, rollout and uptake.

Sobering.

Day 106 – No definite answer

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It’s cold, grey and wet. We’re sheltering behind closed curtains and in front of a fire, either working on spreadsheets, working on school stuff or reading sobering, cautionary correspondence about how we, as the human race, are going to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The widespread opinion has been that we’re in this sticky situation until we can get a vaccine sorted, rolled out and administered to as many people as possible. And that’s the goal.

But there are signs that it’s not going to be quite as simple as Design Vaccine, Mass Produce Vaccine, Immunise World Population. Never mind the clear difficulties inherent in steps 2 and 3: number 1 seems to be proving more problematic than we had hoped.

This BMJ editorial from various UK academics spells out (some of?) the potential problems with any vaccine (and other immunological therapies) for Covid-19

Worldwide, many covid-19 vaccines are at various phases of development…
Understandably, there is great public expectation that these efforts will be successful, but caution is necessary with respect to both vaccines and passive immunity.

Vaccine being poking you with stuff that will make your body produce antibodies against Covid-19, and passive immunity being short-term protection by poking you with ready-made antibodies taken from someone who has had Covid-19.

Both are good ways to prevent people getting any given disease, but there are no guarantees that either of them will be successful against Covid-19.

There are many reasons why they might not work, or why they might not work as well as we would like or need them to:
Vaccines don’t work as well in older people: Covid-19 disproportionately affects older people. So can we make it work in the people that need it most?
The bit of the virus that we are hoping to target with the vaccine might mutate – meaning that even if we make a working vaccine, it might not work for very long.
We’ve never managed to make a vaccine against SARS or MERS – both very similar viruses to this nasty bugger – despite years of trying.

And – it’s complicated – but giving antibodies to patients might not be the best plan either. It’s worked well before with other diseases (even Ebola!), but this isn’t other diseases. In fact, there’s even the risk that – because of the way some cases of Covid-19 progress – giving convalescent serum (the antibodies) to a patient might even make them sicker.

Finding the solutions to these problems isn’t something that you or I can influence, but I just felt that it was worth putting it out there that you should probably abandon those foregone conclusions that science will have this all sorted out by Christmas (or whenever).

Sorry about that.