But what most of you probably don't realize is the astronomical effort and time it took to get everyone to get these varied vaccines. There were two vaccines for Polio, one oral and one given as a shot. A lot of people in my age group that I know got the shot, usually in the first grade at school. That shot was developed in 1951, and it left a distinctive scar.
I don't have that scar. I got the oral version of the vaccine, developed in 1961. I was born in 1964. I got the vaccine in 1972. I was in the third grade. It simply took that long to get distributed to the rural areas, where I lived in those days.
The measles vaccine was first developed in 1963, and improved in 1968. The mumps vaccine was developed in 1971. I got the measles vaccine in 1976. I got the Mumps (MMR) vaccine in 1978. I had to get them from my doctor, as they way I was forced to get them is that they were requirements for me to enter Middle School and High School respectively.
I've never had the Chicken Pox vaccine. I had Chicken Pox instead. So yeah, I stand a 30% chance of getting shingles. I was 31 years of age when the Chicken Pox vaccine was distributed, 23 years after I had already had the disease.
The point I'm getting to is that in each of these cases it took years to fully roll out the vaccine, and they were eventually easy to make and get. The vaccine that has been developed to deal with COVID-19 has some pretty horrific side effects, requires two shots, and must be refrigerated; none of the other vaccines I've mentioned need any of that. Not only do we need a solid distribution system, but we need a brand new infrastructure to cope with the distribution, storage, and eventual treatment of people who get the shots.
And by the way, you need to get both shots, and each shot has side effects so powerful that experts say that you will need a day to recover. From each shot.
This is going to be a very difficult road. It needs to be paved and maintained, planned out, and a staff of thousands just to handle the logistics. Don't look for that to start until Biden takes the reigns of government, and I expect the road to be on fire. I expect Loser's followers to keep setting fires, because he's asking - ordering them to.
And then there are the anti-vaxers as well. We live at present in a country full of people who think that those shots and treatments that wiped out disease in this country will kill their children or give them autism (it won't), and even many who think as they wheeze their last breath that COVID19 doesn't even exist.
There are millions of us who want the country to burn, simply because they didn't get their way. Because they don't want to be told what to do, even if it will save their life. You know, MORONS.
Incapable of learning a truth staring them right in the face.
So you need to understand that simply having a vaccine isn't going to save us. We have to want to be saved. We have to spend a bloody fortune to build the infrastructure quickly, we need to make it available FREE to everyone, so that many more people actually get it. We have to CONTINUE wearing masks AND social distancing AND washing our hands AND avoiding crowds AND working from home if possible for MONTHS AND MONTHS after we get our shots.
But there is one more thing we don't know, and it could be a game changer. All of the other vaccines we all (mostly) get have a permanent effect. We maintain the anti-bodies, which is why we don't get these diseases as adults. Thing is, it hasn't yet been proven how long anti-bodies are maintained for COVID-19. The best known cases are a few months. 5 to 8 months.
So this vaccine isn't like the others I've discussed. It's more like a flu shot. The flu shot is also a vaccine, but it wears off. That's why you get one once a year - which gives you a vaccination for the various types of flu that are anticipated for the upcoming year. It could very well be that the COVID-19 vaccine will be like this. We simply don't know. Herd immunity only works if the antibodies are Permanent. It's why there is no such thing as herd immunity for the flu.
There is a reason that it takes years to develop these things. It's not just about the efficacy of the medication, although that is paramount. It is about how long it lasts, and there simply hasn't been enough time or study for it to be possible to know where we stand with this disease. There hasn't been enough time to explore other avenues. The measles vaccine was improved upon after five years, and I got that vaccination another 8 years later.
Believe it or not, we've been going through the COVID-19 nightmare for less than 1 year. I myself went into quarantine on March 12th and I locked down before almost everyone I know. It's been a nightmare of a year, crawling along one dead body at a time, but still it hasn't been a full year yet.
Remember when Kobe Bryant and his daughter were killed all those ages ago? That was THIS YEAR,
It feels like an eon has passed but that's only because we're Americans. as diseases like this go, it hasn't been all that long. Even if everything goes perfectly and I honestly hope it does, it's going to be another year minimum before we start to feel anything that resembles a recovery. And remember the place that we used to use to manufacture these things in bulk?
That was Puerto Rico. We abandoned Puerto Rico.
I want to be optimistic. I do. I've lost a friend to this fucking disease. But I have yet to see reason to be.
The craziest part of all of this is that it didn't have to be this way. The government had all of the tools necessary to create the infrastructure that we need to get everything done. It could have been planned for, executed long before we had a treatment of any kind, so that all we had to do to implement everything is just say yes. All of the puzzle piece could have already been in place. The plan existed.
But it was the Obama administration that came up with it, and because the man who lost the election in 2020 couldn't stomach keeping anything the black kid did he threw it all out. Because the country elected a racist motherfucker in 2016 we doomed ourselves to be where we are now, even though a number of the people who did the grunt work of coming up with the plan are still in government. Like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
America is the worst advanced nation on Earth to live in, and that's who we are as this rolls out. This will take a while.
UPDATE (December 7, 2020): The New York Times is now reporting that Pfizer offered more vaccines than the outgoing administration wanted to buy. As a result, they didn't buy enough and Pfizer, being a business in a firmly autocratic capitalistic country made commitments to sell vaccines to other countries instead. So now if we need more, and we do, we have to wait until June 2021.
In other words, the outgoing administration has created a shortage that will occur once Biden comes into office.
These motherfuckers.
Update (December 11, 2020): Turns out that the Pfizer vaccine can cause an anaphylactic reaction, so people who have had issues with that in the past shouldn't take it. That subset of humanity would include ME.
Also, Australia has abandoned their version of the same vaccine after people who had taken it started reporting false positives for HIV.
And there were some votes against approving the vaccine in the US, because the test group didn't include enough minors and the FDA wants to approve it for people over 16 instead of 18. Of the 22 votes on the advisory board it was 17 yes, 4 no, 1 abstain.
We have a long way to go.
Cheap shots (Wednesday is Rum Day!):
I think not, but Bill Barr joins the resistance?
This is why you don't leave your trash in the desert. A thread.
Major Biden breaks his silence.
Signorile's Law. You have google, look it up.
The Oscars disagree.
I cracked the code. Mnuchin is a cunt.
There are 35 states with populations smaller than the gap by which President-Elect Biden won.
#Loser will defund the US Military if twitter doesn't stop being mean to him. He said so on twitter.
Elliot. He/Him.
Brian Williams for the win.
By the same token, I sometimes think that most TV reporters do what they do because they're not good enough to be in print. Face it, a great deal of them are terrible at this.
And because I love you, the lovely Chuck Mangione piano ballad you didn't know you you needed in your life:
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