Jennifer alerted me to this article last night when we were talking. Oddly it wasn’t in the regular news feeds I follow but the Austin American-Statesman is about a C+ on the reliability scale in my experience. The local excuse for information and news coverage is only accurate when it comes to spewing opinions favoring over development turn transform my adopted home into Houston II or New Dallas.
I remain skeptical. Our horrible excuse for leadership would sacrifice millions of Texans at the altar of Kapitalism to reopen the economy. Plus vaccines take a long time so I fear the Big Pharma corporations will be shielded from any liabilities despite their knowledge of probable side effects; paralysis a common one I’m reading/hearing about. Given the number of doses, healthcare workers are going to be the first recipients. With Jennifer being a nurse, I think I’ll get a idea on how effective it will be.
Despite being an obvious critic of the status quo which has fumbled the CV-19 crisis at every turn, I do hope the two (and soon to be more) vaccines do work. Too many have died (over 270,000 by the this post) needlessly, millions are unemployed while both parties stick their collective thumbs up their asses and millions of students are getting screwed on their educations, something they may never recover. Nevermind my stir crazy mood. Those previous three factors are more important. Whoops, I’ve forgotten a fourth since I’m caught up in my First World Problems; the Developing World has taken this on the chin. Even when these vaccines are approved and start getting deployed, those countries are going to be the last in queue to receive anything. All the more reason why the US and other Western nations need to regain the ability to manufacture flu shots, etc.
On the “vaccines take a long time” front, I’ve been reading a handful of epidemiologists and apparently this is a bit of a canard. The main reason that vaccines and other medications “take a long time” has very little to do with the science and everything to do with the funding process. There’s a lot of “hurry up and wait,” while funding requests are written, reviewed, approved and so on. They don’t really take a long time, as people sometimes think, to review long term effects.