The looming vaccine challenge

Now that vaccines for covid-19 are on the horizon, the next challenge will be to get enough people to take it. It seems that roughly 60% is the minimum number of people who should have immunity to the disease for herd immunity to take effect. Since the vaccines are about 90% effective, that means about 70% of the population needs to get it to achieve herd immunity. But getting to that number is not going to be easy. Surveys suggest that for various reasons, about 30% of Americans are what is called ‘vaccine hesitant’ and likely will not take it. That means that we will barely make the required threshold even if everyone who is not opposed to vaccines gets it. The 30% is greater than the hardcore anti-vaxxers who oppose giving vaccines to their children.
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Are we in danger of creating a loony singularity?

I read this report that the QAnon people and the antivaxxers are finding common cause, as a result of QAnon advocates targeting the anti-vaxxer social media pages to gain a wider audience.

QAnon rhetoric has been seeping into anti-vax pages all over social media in recent months. Devoted adherents of the conspiracy theory have weathered tech giants’ sweeping crackdowns by infiltrating other communities that exist on the platforms, then poisoning them with disinformation. This has transformed the large ecosystem of anti-vax communities online into radicalization pipelines for QAnon.

“The purpose of vaccination is to literally slaughter the population and dumb everyone down and render them helpless,” Larry Cook, the creator of “Stop Mandatory Vaccination,” warned in his final Facebook Live video. “It is a global plan to literally enslave every human on the planet.”

Over Cook’s right shoulder was an image of the American flag atop the QAnon slogan, #WWG1WGA. Over his left was the letter Q, decorated in stars and stripes. Comments poured in from viewers thanking him for “awakening” them to the “truth.”

So now we have two groups that are immune to science and reason seeming to come together. What happens if other groups that also have crackpot beliefs, such as those who think that it was massive fraud in the election that caused Trump’s loss, climate change deniers, and those who are awaiting the second coming of Jesus and hoping for a war in the Middle East to fulfill that prophecy, also join forces with them?

Will that result in some kind of critical loony mass that tears apart the fabric of reality and creates a loony singularity that sucks in everything and everyone?

The Swiss cheese metaphor for covid-19 precautions

Now that Trump is a lame duck, the. Centers for Disease Control seems to have become more activist and not looking over its shoulder to see if he approves of their recommendations. In the light of record hospitalizations, they have issued the four basic preventative measures that all of us can take, including for the first time asking people to wear masks at all times whenever they leave their homes, moving away from Trump’s ambivalent attitudes to mask-wearing and moving closer to Joe Biden’s stance on it.

* Wear a mask.
* Wash your hands.
* Avoid crowds.
* Stay 6 feet from people who don’t live with you.

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Wear the damn masks!

After a dip in the numbers for the Thanksgiving weekend (numbers tend to drop during holidays, possibly because people postpone going to see doctors and hospitals may delay reporting their data), the number of hospitalizations and deaths came roaring back.

Hospitalizations topped 100,000 for the first time and the daily number of deaths reached 2,733, just slightly below the peak of 2,769 reached back on May 7th. This rise is too soon after the holidays to have been caused by all the travel and getting together for the holiday. That grim reckoning is coming in a week or two.
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Protein folding problem solved?

The protein folding problem is a fascinating one. Protein are linear strings of amino acids. But they are not floppy strings. They take unique 3-D shapes and those shapes are critical for how they function. Clearly, there must be some rule or mechanism contained within the amino acid sequence that tells a protein how to bend but discovering those rules has not been easy. Now an AI algorithm, given a sequence oof amino acids, has been able to predict with considerable success the shape of that protein.
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What, you think your god will protect you from getting covid-19?

Reports have emerged of a wedding held in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community of New York City where thousands of people were crammed together indoors and tried to keep this violation of safety protocols secret from the authorities.

New York City officials on Monday announced that they would fine the organizers of a Hasidic Jewish wedding that was attended by thousands of people earlier this month, calling it reckless and accusing organizers of concealing it from authorities.

The New York Times reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said that those who planned the wedding took active steps to ensure that the thousands of participants would not reveal news of the wedding to city authorities.
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Are vaccination certificates in our future?

Australia’s national airline Qantas has announced that once the covid-19 vaccines become readily available they will require proof of vaccination to fly on international flights. It is expected that other airlines will follow suit.

The airline’s CEO Alan Joyce said in an interview with CNN affiliate Nine News on Monday that the move would be a “necessity” when coronavirus vaccines are readily available.

Joyce said the airline was looking at changing its terms and conditions to “ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft.”
…

Whether a vaccine requirement for travel becomes the international standard is at this stage far from certain. There are also questions about whether governments would mandate such a move — and the legalities of doing so — before allowing international travelers into their countries.
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Thanksgiving

Today is the American holiday known as Thanksgiving. It is a nice holiday when family and friends get together that is devoid of the crass commercialization that accompanies some other holidays like Christmas.

It is the occasion for some to reflect on the things that they are thankful for. There are many things in my life that I am very thankful for but the one that is uppermost in my mind at this moment is that Donald Trump lost the election and that there will be a new president who at least takes seriously the most dangerous crisis that we face, and that is climate change. Four more years of neglect on this critical issue, and even deliberately taking steps to make it worse as Trump was doing, would have caused serious damage.

The more immediate crisis to be dealt with is of course the covid-19 pandemic and here too it is a relief that the new president takes science seriously. My one hope is that people who are celebrating this holiday and Christmas really take steps to avoid the risk of spreading the virus. We will only know how well this turned out in late January, about the time that Trump walks or is dragged dejectedly out of the White House for the last time.

This is so cool

Some fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey are clearly having some fun.

The monolith was found in Utah where Mormons settled. The Mormon cosmology also involves worlds other than the Earth that are inhabited. Could this monolith be a sign to Earthlings that Mormonism is the one true religion?

In the second video you can see that this monolith, unlike the rectangular slab in the film, has a triangular cross-section that points to a crack in the cliff face. Maybe, like the signal in the film that told us where to go in the universe to make contact, this is telling us that the secret is embedded in that crack in the cliff face.

We need to send a mission into that gap.

These people think they’re hilarious

At a time when the pandemic is surging across the world including the US, and we know that it is mainly transmitted by airborne droplets, what does one make of people who think that it is funny to deliberately breathe into the faces of other people who are taking the appropriate precautions?

A Trump supporter outside Trump’s golf club who was not wearing a mask deliberately breathed on people who had asked him to keep away. He has now been arrested and charged with assault.
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