Showing posts with label COVID-19 vaccine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COVID-19 vaccine. Show all posts

Friday, March 26, 2021

The National Guard vs The Plague

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.

Please Note: If ya click on an Amazon ad, thus opening a portal to Amazon, and buy anything, Lord Jeffrey will toss a few pence in my direction and you won't have to feel guilty about enjoying my work  well, hopefully  for free. Win/Win.  

About 


Glossary 


Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"I’ll get vaccinated when politicians make it easier to get an appointment than front row Springsteen tickets." -Peter Van Buren


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I've been wondering why the National Guard presence isn't so ubiquitous in every state of the union that posted conspiracy theories have bogged down the internet. 

[Why would you expect...]

Vaccinations, Dana, Covid vaccinations. I'm not talking about troops behind barbed wire-topped fencing like the ones still in Washington. The last of those battle-scarred troops will hopefully be going home by the end of May as promised. 

[Battle-scarred? Are you making fun of said soldiers?]

Oh hell no. I thank God for the fact there are about 2.2 million active and reserve volunteers serving their country.

If you count armed paramilitary forces Emperor Xi has a million more minions serving in his military than we do, as does the Pooteen, voluntarily or otherwise. North Korea's Dear Leader has 7,769,000 hungry minions at his disposal according to Wikipedia.

I'm making fun of the fact that 26,000 troops were deployed to protect the center of the Swamp in January as compared to virtually none to protect the country from mostly peaceful protestors last summer.

[Which has exactly what to do with Covid vaccinations? ] 

I'm glad you asked.


I've been trying to get vaccinated for awhile now. I recently scored an appointment for my first jab on April the eighth. My home state, Ohio, has been threatening to open Regional Mass Vaccination Clinics for several weeks but the last time I checked only two were open. 

In the meantime, getting vaccinated is a catch as catch can game. One clicks around hoping to snag an appointment at one of the many authorized sites but the vaccines are being doled out in dribs and drabs. 

I get it. The stuff can only be manufactured and distributed so fast. But why didn't The Fedr'l Gummit's highly successful Operation Warp Speed, which produced vaccines in record time, include a distribution plan given how long they had to put one together?


[So why do you think the National Guard should be the master jabbers?]

The Interstate Highway System and the military's logistical expertise. 

[Well, that explains that then.]

Quick point, I think the shots should be administered by local, qualified volunteers under the supervision of a Doc or three in light of some... interesting experiences I've had at a local outlet of a national drugstore chain where I no longer get my prescriptions filled. 

[Whatever, but...]

The building of the Interstate Highway System that we take for granted was begun in 1956, three years after I was born and three years after Eisenhower began his first term. 

(Note to my younger readers: America used to be able to get all sorts of amazing things done but around the time we landed men persons on the moon things started going south.)   

In fact, its full name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. 

Note the word defense

The Interstate Highway System includes the STRAHNET, the Strategic Highway Network, which according to Wikipedia is: The entire network of highways which are important to the United States’ strategic defense policy and which provide defense access, continuity, and emergency capabilities for defense purposes.

Note the phrase emergency capabilities.   

Emergency capabilities... Like a pandemic, for instance?


As to logistics expertise, despite its flaws (which stem primarily from the officers at the very top of the food chain, but that's another column), the military of the United States knows how to get stuff from point A to point B. 

So why wasn't Brigadier General Amos T. Halftrack tasked with securing the cooperation of large, more unused than used facilities— from small concert halls to ginormous, domed stadiums that are in every state of the union — to serve as distribution centers/mass vaccination sites?

The Guard could also have been tasked with building pop-up sites wherever needed, or commandeering the secret FEMA concentration camps... 

[Why haven't you been canceled yet? And hasn't the Guard been involved...]

In a limited way, yes, but America could've made some much-needed positive history. The country, if only briefly, could've experienced the buzz that comes from everybody — well, most bodies — being on the same team and working towards the same goal.

The country that put persons on the moon should be making the rest of the world look bad.  


On a related note...
According to NPR.org, in the US (in which roughly 15% of us have been fully vaccinated) "...the White House announced it is working through the technicalities to loan 2.5 million doses to Mexico and 1.5 million doses to Canada from its stockpile of 7 million doses."

[Like, seriously dude?]

Keep in mind that the Fedr'l Gummit funded the development of the vaccines and guaranteed they will buy the vaccines developed by Big Pharma to get vaccines ASAP — fortunately for us. 

This means that the Feds can, by law, since there's taxpayer money involved, force the drug companies to hand over the technology to manufacturers in poor countries, which is how you end a global pandemic before ever new versions of the bug come looking for fresh meat.

The Donald and Uncle Joe apparently didn't/don't think this is necessary. 



Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


Share this column, give me a thumb (up or in my eye), or make rude comments below. If my work pleases you you can buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.    

Feel free to comment below, or, comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on my Facebook page.

Cranky don't tweet.








    

     




 

 


Friday, January 22, 2021

Challenge Trials

Challenge trials?

                                      Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids and my great-grandkids — the Stickies — to advise them and haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — A Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. Viewing with a tablet or a monitor is highly recommended for maximum enjoyment.

Please Note: If ya click on an Amazon ad, thus opening a portal to Amazon, and buy anything, Lord Jeffrey will toss a few pence in my direction and you won't have to feel guilty about enjoying my work  well, hopefully  for free. Win/Win.  

About 


Glossary 


Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"You learn something new every day if you pay attention." -Ray LeBlond


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

[Challenge trials?]

Exactly, Dana. What are challenge trials? 

My first thought was that challenge trials might be the name for a new revenue stream developed by America's beloved and revered ambulance-chasing litigators. Lawsuits filed over the resulting damage — physical, mental, and property — from zany Zoomers carrying out "challenges" posted by other zany Zommers on TikTok.   

TikTok, if you're unaware, is a social media platform imported from the same country that exports fentanyl precursor chemicals and popular consumer goods manufactured by slaves and distributed by some of America's largest corporations. 

Hint: The Wuhan Flu is probably their most well-known export and they're currently imprisoning citizens of Hong Kong for perpetrating democracy. But I digress.  

[It's what you do. What's a Zoomer?]

Generation Z, H. sapiens born after about 1995 or so. Anyways... As oft happens, with depressing regularity in fact, I was wrong.

[Oft?]      


However, I recently stumbled on this article on the FEE (Foundation for Economic Education) website.

[You're a wild man.]

There was a time... The title of the article is We Had the Vaccine From the Start — You Just Weren't Allowed to Take It. Intrigued, I read the article and I now know what challenge trials are although I, a current events junkie, am loath to admit I didn't know. 

[Loath?]

"Human challenge trials deliberately expose participants to infection, in order to study diseases and test vaccines or treatments."

This is a quote from the website of 1Day Sooner.

We Advocate on Behalf of Covid-19 Challenge Trial Volunteers

More about them anon. First, I'd like to discuss the FEE article.


From the article: "The vaccine, a triumph of medical science known as mRNA-1273, was designed in a single weekend, just two days after Chinese researchers published the virus's genetic code on January 11, 2020" (my emphasises).

[Emphasises?]

The term challenge trials simply refers to a process wherein a handful of volunteers is given a bug and a vaccine and if they don't get sick from the bug, the vaccine's side effects, or become the catalyst of a zombie apocalypse, the process is repeated with ever larger groups of volunteers until (and if) we have a winner. 

[Isn't that the same thing as the clinical trials that were done?]  

Sorta/kinda.


Normally, getting a vaccine, or any new drug approved by the FDA, takes many years and billions of bucks.  

[Big Pharma is evil!]

Big Pharma, the relevant regulators of The Fedrl Gummit, and our Parliament of Whores constitute a codependent cabal that cranks out cutting edge but wildly overpriced medications and medical devices of all sorts. But that would require a book, and someone smarter and more energetic than I, to explore properly.

Suffice it to say that in the case of the vaccines that have been developed for combatting the Wuhan Flu, thanks to a soon to be former president who, unfortunately, then lost his freakin' mind! money, resources, and personnel flowed freely, and clinical trials were radically truncated.

However, a Challenge trial, as the article in FEE points out, is when a group volunteers to be guinea pigs as soon as a drug is available, truncating the process even further, a methodology rarely used, but not unheard of.

Philip Steele's article in FEE estimates that we could've had a vaccine ready to roll by March or April of last year and saved many thousands of lives.

[Who would be crazy enough to volunteer to...]

This brings us back to 1Day Sooner.


1Day Sooner (a vaccine available one day sooner would save _______ lives) is a non-profit that has signed up nearly 40,000 volunteers ready to participate in Challenge Trials to speed up the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

[Um... Don't we now have a vaccine?]

Yup, but one can still donate to "...help cover the salary of 1Day Sooner's five full-time employees...along with several part-time contractors...".

And, they'd "like to hire someone to work on pandemic preparedness advocacy to promote the use of human challenge trials for future pandemics, as well as a Director of Research Participant Representation, who can work to build volunteer interest and capacity to get engaged with other studies would be useful for the longer-term goals of our organization."

[I dunno, man. This sounds like...]

Yes, it does. However, they're incorporated in Delaware as a non-profit and as far as I can tell are a perfectly legal operation. As to how effective they actually are... Well, I don't have the resources to find out, I had to lay off my private detective.

Regardless, there have been news stories, so I'm hoping there actually are better than 38,000 volunteers who've signed up to serve their fellow H. sapiens.

[Did...]

No, I didn't.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

P.S. Update from a newer FEE article: “The FDA needs to stop playing games and authorize the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It’s safe, cheap ($2-$3 a dose), and is the easiest vaccine to distribute,” says Dr. Marty Makary, a professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “It does not require freezing and is already approved and being administered in the United Kingdom.”

Your humble correspondent has verified that the United Kingdom is not experiencing a zombie apocalypse and that the volunteers of 1Day Sooner are still available. 

[Has anybody told Uncle Joe?]


Share this column, give me a thumb (up or in my eye), and/or access older columns below. If my work pleases you you can buy me some cheap coffee with PayPal or plastic.

If you do your Amazon shopping by using one of my Amazon ads as a portal to access Amazon, Lord Jeffrey will toss me a few pence if you buy anything.    

Feel free to comment/like/follow/cancel/troll me on Cranky's Facebook page.