None Of The Scientists I Spoke To For This Story Were At All Surprised By Either Outcome — All Said

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.

This is just to say

I have eaten

the spiders that were in my cave

and which you were probably counting for statistical purposes

Forgive me I am an outlier adn should not have been counted

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psyxe

8 years ago

also I noticed a lot of people (i.e. liberals) framing the discussion around love and violence as if fighting oppression or oppressors (including in immediate self-defense) was somehow antithetical to being a loving person, or to being committed to loving ourselves and other people in our communities, or to recognising love as a revitalising and necessary force in activism and in life in general, such that we need to utterly shun violence as something that’s always morally reprehensible (and thus, to shun people who commit violence in self-defense as morally reprehensible) in order to be capable of love

and I started thinking about how a lot of edgy radicals & leftists essentially agree with this but in the opposite direction–as if we need to utterly shun love as a necessary & revitalising force in order to be capable of revolutionary action or self-defense

in the same way that liberals will say “we must love and see the humanity in our oppressors, so that we cannot use violence against them even if we are ourselves the targets of violence” (or–more likely, since these kinds of people aren’t likely to be people who have ever been seriously targeted by violence–”more immediately & materially marginalised people shouldn’t use violence even if they are themselves the targets of violence”), edgy radicals will say “we must be prepared to use violence against our oppressors, and therefore we must hate and demonise them, as if they are somehow essentially, ontologically evil by virtue of their identities.” & I think that both of these approaches are fundamentally misguided

of course we must be prepared to use violence in self-defense against institutions that commit violence against us–but ultimately, the basis of revolution or whatever cannot be hatred and it cannot be the romanticisation of violence for the sake of violence (and again, a lot of these edgelord-y people have probably never been seriously targeted by violence, don’t have bodies that are marked out for violence–they just like the thrill of it all). it has to be love–love for ourselves & each other & for the future that we have to believe is possible–& that will include love for the people who used to be our oppressors. because otherwise what is the point?

to me “love your oppressor” doesn’t mean that you can’t fight back against violence and it doesn’t mean that you can’t hate the people who hate you or else you’re just as bad as they are and it doesn’t mean that you can’t be angry… what it does mean is that you have to have some kind of fundamental respect & empathy for people’s humanity

it means that, rather than just assuming that all white people are evil by some kind of mystical biological necessity and thus The Revolution requires killing them all or something (I’ve seen this suggested, which is… terrifying), you’ve got to try to understand the material and psychological factors that play into white people behaving in the way that they do (such as, applying class analysis to the racism of poor whites–see, the psychological wage of whiteness, etc.). that attempt at understanding is what I mean by “empathy”

and of course this has a necessary practical function in addition to a theoretical and psychological one–because how can you hope to fight a system that works to fragment and divide the people whom it oppresses without understanding & fighting against the reasons for that fragmentation?

so in all of these ways I see the willingness to empathise & love and the willingness to fight against oppression, not as antithetical, but absolutely necessary to, each other.

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psyxe

4 years ago

Linkin Park & Friends Celebrate Life In Honor Of Chester Bennington

Linkin Park & Friends Celebrate Life in Honor of Chester Bennington

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psyxe

4 years ago

"Francis" makes me think you might be a Catholic — a Franciscan monk, to be exact. Is this true, or are you just a big fan of Sir Francis Drake?

I might be a Catholic, but I don’t actually go to friars — the closest I’ve ever been to being a monk was an 18-hour lay nun called Rose. (I’m way into fantasy novels, so that’s probably a common background.)

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psyxe

4 years ago

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

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psyxe

9 years ago

now this sandstorm is rly a party

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psyxe

4 years ago

Instead of the “anti-racist” hamster wheel, how about this?

From Campaign Zero.

Angry? Support state and local legislation, like a bill in New York to repeal a law that hides police misconduct records from the public. Or vote for politicians who appoint appellate judges who have reasonable interpretations of qualified immunity. Or rigorous police training that lasts more than a few short months.

But that’s booooooooring and requires compromise and working with people who disagree with you on some issues but not others, and, let’s face it, wheels-of-governance aesthetics < protest aesthetics.

But by all means “Say her name” until you’re blue in the face. Venmo your favorite grifter. Then go amplify some more voices to your friends, who are amplifying the same voices right back at you. Rinse and repeat.

It’s not about you. It’s not about madly scrubbing your horrible permanent stain on center stage like Lady Macbeth. Your “Work” means nothing.

Unless you’re a cop, judge, juror, or politician, your precious feelings and internalized whatevers are a distraction, not the source of the problem. The number of unarmed black men killed by people (police or civilian) who wouldn’t have done so had radical-pose “amplification” reached them is zero.

You. Are. Playing. A. Game. With. Your. Friends. Nothing more.

Anyone who says otherwise likely either has something to sell you or is under the influence of someone who does.

So take that guilt money and send it to the most boring swing-district state legislature candidate you can find who will sign on to reform legislation with a chance of passing in your state. Also, if you go on and on about how you are racist and will never be un-racist and vow to never get off the hamster wheel of shame but you don’t know who is running for judge where you live, fuck you and the liberal arts degree you rode in on.

Save lives, not your soul.

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psyxe

4 years ago