So I Was Looking Up A Certain Kind Of Cellular Automata On Wikipedia Out Of Curiosity, And Then I Ended

We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time

The silver bullet we’ve been waiting for took all of one weekend to design.

None of the scientists I spoke to for this story were at all surprised by either outcome — all said they expected the vaccines were safe and effective all along. Which has made a number of them wonder whether, in the future, at least, we might find a way to do things differently — without even thinking in terms of trade-offs. Rethinking our approach to vaccine development, they told me, could mean moving faster without moving any more recklessly. A layperson might look at the 2020 timelines and question whether, in the case of an onrushing pandemic, a lengthy Phase III trial — which tests for efficacy — is necessary. But the scientists I spoke to about the way this pandemic may reshape future vaccine development were more focused on how to accelerate or skip Phase I, which tests for safety. More precisely, they thought it would be possible to do all the research, development, preclinical testing, and Phase I trials for new viral pandemics before those new viruses had even emerged — to have those vaccines sitting on the shelf and ready to go when they did. They also thought it was possible to do this for nearly the entire universe of potential future viral pandemics — at least 90 percent of them, one of them told me, and likely more.

As Hotez explained to me, the major reason this vaccine timeline has shrunk is that much of the research and preclinical animal testing was done in the aftermath of the 2003 SARS pandemic (that is, for instance, how we knew to target the spike protein). This would be the model. Scientists have a very clear sense of which virus families have pandemic potential, and given the resemblance of those viruses, can develop not only vaccines for all of them but also ones that could easily be tweaked to respond to new variants within those families.

[…]

According to Florian Krammer, a vaccine scientist at Mount Sinai, you could do all of this at a cost of about $20 million to $30 million per vaccine and, ideally, would do so for between 50 and 100 different viruses — enough, he says, to functionally cover all the phylogenies that could give rise to pandemic strains in the future. (“It’s extremely unlikely that there is something out there that doesn’t belong to one of the known families, that would have been flying under the radar,” he says. “I wouldn’t be worried about that.”) In total, he estimates, the research and clinical trials necessary to do this would cost between $1 billion and $3 billion. So far this year, the U.S. government has spent more than $4 trillion on pandemic relief. Functionally, it’s a drop in the bucket, though Krammer predicts our attention, and the funding, will move on once this pandemic is behind us, leaving us no more prepared for the next one. When he compares the cost of such a project to the Pentagon’s F-35 — you could build vaccines for five potential pandemics for the cost of a single plane, and vaccines for all of them for roughly the cost of that fighter-jet program as a whole — he isn’t signaling confidence it will happen, but the opposite.

[…]

If we do all that, he says, the entire timeline could be compressed to as few as three months. The production and distribution of a vaccine adds considerable cost, bureaucracy, and even some chaos, as we’re likely about to see. But three months from the design of the Moderna vaccine was April 13. The second and third surges, the return to school and the long-dreaded fall, 225,000 more deaths and 50 million more infections — all of that still lay ahead. Shave another month off somehow and you’re at March 13, the day the very first person in New York City died.

The “Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot“ authorized $1.8 billion over seven years for cancer research in 2016, don’t know what he’s planning on doing as president but this would be an excellent use of research money,  Wouldn’t say no to both though.

No you’re thinking of San Antonio. Sanrio is an Afro-Cuban religion

sanrio? you mean the guy with the coat and mittens?

For his death. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it was an OD. (please no one take this out of context, I’m not conceding the point) Cops see a LOT of people on every kind of drug. From putting people in jail overnight for public intoxication to people on PCP trying to fly off buildings. Dealing with this is part of their job, just as much as dealing with criminals is. I’m not saying they have to be able to recognise every single drug reaction, but it IS part of what they routinely deal with. And being on drugs does not carry the death penalty in the US of A. So if someone’s actively dying of an overdose, (or an epileptic seizure, or a heart attack), you do not continue to kneel on that person, you stabilise them and call the paramedics. Again, because being high does not mean that you forfeit your right to life. Sure, if, hypothetically, he did OD it would have been a complicating factor. They may have been confused to some extent. But this isn’t an out-of-left-field occurrence they couldn’t possibly have been aware of. It’s a large part of their job. It wouldn’t absolve them.

for what?

A surprising amount of my knowledge of philosophy is not derived from textbooks or even research papers, but from people explaining how other people are bad at philosophy to me

“why aren’t u talking abt this one Problematic thing involving that actor/show u like??”

listen. i am tired. im putting down my pitchfork. i’ll acknowledge that thing was bad if it was but im tired of vilifying ppl for their mistakes just bc they’re famous. i want to enjoy things. i want Peace

Hmm, I rather think that the central question - whether there's a moral difference between action and inaction - is in fact very relevant, certainly in my life and probably in a lot of people’s. Like, I'm really great at negative morality, avoiding doing bad things by simply not doing anything. Which would correspond to someone who feels that they can avoid any involvement or blame by never moving the lever. But intellectually I don’t actually endorse that: I believe that inaction is a type of action, which implies that I should be more active in life despite the risk of inadvertently hurting someone and getting cancelled. Writing this rather than using my tumblr exclusively to reblog others’ posts isn’t much, but it’s a start.

my issue with the trolley problem is, and still will be, for the vast majority of people on the planet, the trolley problem is not, like, relevant

not in the sense that “OH YOU’LL NEVER BE IN THE SITUATION WHERE YOU HAVE TO PULL A LEVER TO STOP A TROLLEY FROM HITTING FOUR PEOPLE THAT A MANIAC HAS TIED TO RAILROAD TRACKS”, but in the sense that when you’re in scary and dangerous situations, you are not as in control of yourself as you think you are.

in a situation like the trolley problem, outside of like… first responders, soldiers, maybe ER nurses? … I doubt most people would be able to react to a situation like that in anything approaching the way that they would game it out from ethical principles. you’d fight, flee, or freeze, and it’d have less to do with “what you strongly believe in as a person” and more to do with “what your hindbrain has learnt is effective to get you to survive emergencies in the past”. 

i think that’s what a lot of discussion about “maybe the person to blame is the one tying people to the train tracks?” is trying and failing to get at.

🎥 The Film Crew by Aimee La Joie

Fifty-nine seconds of bliss!

nearly my entire dash is people who were once into a fandom I was once into

(all different ones)

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe