Keep Feeling Vaccination

It's not the end, or even the beginning of the end, but more likely the end of the beginning.

Pfizer announced a new COVID-19 vaccine that has achieved 90 percent efficacy in clinical trials, far more than the minimum efficacy requirement for a vaccine in he U.S., which I believe is about 70 percent.  It could get federal approval within a month.  But that doesn't mean the pandemic will end in America any time soon.  It still needs to be manufactured in large enough quantities to vaccinate as many people as possible, and the incoming Biden administration has to convince as many people as possible to get it, which could take months - say, eight or nine months at best.  So we're going to have to spend a good deal of 2021 keeping our distance from each other and going into banks dressed like we're about to rob them.

And, there's the question of storage.  Pfizer says the vaccine has to be stored at -68° Celsius, or -90° Fahrenheit.  Although it could be ready by the beginning of summer, you can imagine that it would take a lot of storage space and energy to store at ninety below a vaccine for people to get when it's ninety above outside.

Still, this is a positive step and an encouraging sign.  And it should be noted that, with other drug companies working on COVID vaccines, there could be many more opportunities for inoculation to finish off this pandemic.  But thanks to Trump making a hash out of the U.S. response to COVID-19,  as many as 800,000 to maybe 1,000,000 Americans may be finished off before it's over.  COVID cases are coming it at record-breaking daily numbers as I type this, and deaths are likely to be on the rise.  The only good news is that the COVID mortality rate continues to decline among those who have the disease - 2.3 percent at last check, compared to 5.6 percent in April.

So staffers at the White House can rest easy. 😜 (The latest victims of Trump's moronism?  Ben Carson and Corey Lewandowski.)  My advice to President-elect Biden is to have the place deep-cleaned before he moves in.  In the meantime, Mr. Biden, there's always Blair House across the street. 

The Biden White House will certainly push vaccines, as more vaccines proven to work come on line.  I hope to get vaccinated as soon as possible.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, who according to polls, is the most trusted man in America right now - a position Walter Cronkite once occupied - said he plans to get the vaccine as soon as one is ready and available, and if he gets it, certainly most other people will.  (I'm sure Walter Cronkite would have gotten one, too.)   And, to respond to the inevitable assertion from anti-vaxxers - including my friend Margrit in upstate New York - that I shouldn't put so much chemical junk in my body . . . no worries, I'm used to that.  I eat Pop-Tarts, you know. 😛

And since Pop-Tarts, like revenge, are sweet and best served cold, I feel like having one to celebrate Biden avenging Barack Obama by taking out Trump.