Doses in the US

It's time for the OCD crowd to start doing the vaccine dose math ;-)

Pfizer (approved and underway) -- we're getting 100 million doses to cover 50 million people, although US gov't is currently negotiating for more.

Moderna (likely to be approved on Friday) -- we're getting 200 million doses to cover 100 million people.

Johnson & Johnson (no data yet) -- unclear what their safety and efficacy is, we'll learn more next month, but if approved we're getting 100 million doses to cover 100 million people (it's a single-dose vaccine).

With only Pfizer and Moderna, we won't have enough doses to meet demand.  The tipping point vaccine will be J&J next month, if that one is approved we'll have 250 million people covered by the end of summer, which is probably more than enough given the level of vaccine "hesitation" in the US.

The US pre-funded six different vaccine candidates via Operation Warp Speed.  These three are the most promising to date.  Two have already flunked out for 2021 and have to redo their trials, could be ready for 2022 instead.  I'm not sure yet about the 4th remaining candidate.

So my fingers are crossed for J&J's data next month, they'll make the difference between not enough and enough doses in the US.

family chat blowup

Our mostly daily attempts at cheering up my sick brother via the family group chat went off the rails today.  I started it by sending a picture of the snow outside, my sister followed up with a picture of the rain -- she's on the other side of the rain/snow line.  Innocuous enough.  But then my sick brother (J) talked about how he's starting to feel better, the fever finally broke, after several of the most sick days of his life, "Honestly didn't know how I was going to make it."

Then J blamed President Trump.

My other brother (N), who is a Trump supporter, made fun of this, and then said how can you blame one person for a disease?  "I don't care who you try to blame.  It's ridiculous.  Not logical.  Not reasonable."

J tried to pull back from the political drift, saying he didn't want to talk about it now, that he was too pissed off.  But N wouldn't stop.  He continued on a group chat soliloquy for about 20 minutes, even as J apologized, N kept on complaining about how everybody wants to blame blame blame, all the negativity, etc.

Obviously N was taking personally this criticism of his President, because he just wouldn't shut up about it.

N questioned the value of masks, saying people get sick even if they're wearing masks, so don't blame people for not wearing masks.

Although I'd supported J at first in agreeing that Trump's leadership was incompetent, I had to force myself to stop responding to N after one contrary text.  Stayed quiet, as N kept sending over a dozen texts in a row to a silent family chat room that includes five siblings and two in-laws.

At first I told T about this group chat as it unfolded, but then T got mad at N for being an idiot, so I stopped telling T about the crap N was spewing.

I think it was one of those instances where somebody gets upset because deep inside they're worried they're wrong.  N had to proclaim that "blame and negativity" are the bad guys, because otherwise he'd have to blame his President.  So, no blame.  Blame is bad.  Just be positive, everybody!

We can't argue the facts anymore in the US.  It's "how dare you blame anybody, it's nobody's fault, stop being so negative".  That we in the US have the highest death toll of any nation must be a coincidence.  It has nothing to do with anything.