H.R.1, which contains voting protections and much else, just passed the house, 220 -210.
Late Night Open Thread – H.R. 1 Passes The HousePost + Comments (65)
Cheryl Rofer wrote at Balloon Juice from 2017-21.
Cheryl is a retired chemist who has has been particularly active with nuclear policy. Cheryl has her own blog, Nuclear Diner, and she also posts at Lawyers, Guns & Money.
Twitter: @CherylRofer
This post is in: Open Threads, Voting Rights
H.R.1, which contains voting protections and much else, just passed the house, 220 -210.
Late Night Open Thread – H.R. 1 Passes The HousePost + Comments (65)
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus
I had my second dose of the Moderna m-RNA vaccine yesterday. What comes next?
It takes three weeks to build immunity, and I don’t plan to change what I’ve been doing until then. I have been isolating rather thoroughly. I haven’t been inside a store since last October. I’m taking piano lessons via Zoom. I wear double masks held tight with a clip that pulls the ear loops to the back of my neck. I haven’t seen friends in person since sometime late last summer. My family is at distances that make a year’s separation not extraordinary.
The CDC has promised guidelines on what to do after you’ve had your vaccine, but they haven’t published them yet. Guidelines are difficult to develop because there are so many variables.
I look at it as a risk assessment problem. What risk are you willing to take? What risk do various situations present? Here’s my assessment for myself. Yours may differ.
The numbers change with new information. We’ve known this virus and its effects only a year now. So my risk assessment is qualitative rather than quantitative.
I see becoming ill with Covid-19 as an unacceptable risk. My age group is more likely than others to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19. Additionally, it can cause lasting effects as “Long Covid.” These risks are a lot more than for the flu. Unacceptable in my judgment.
My risk management strategy is aimed at never contracting the disease. The first Moderna shot is supposed to give 85% immunity, and the second, well over 95%. Nobody who has had the vaccinations has died from Covid and few have been hospitalized. Those are good numbers, but the second is three weeks away for me.
Besides what the vaccine does to protect me, I also consider the numbers of cases and whether they are increasing or decreasing. They have decreased rapidly for the past month or so, but they are now at the levels of last summer, which we thought then was pretty bad. The more cases around, the more likely I am to be exposed. Will a larger dose of virus still make me sick? We don’t know. Could I catch an asymptomatic case and spread virus? Possibly.
The first thing I will do in three weeks will be spend time with friends who have been vaccinated. We will probably stay outside, on my deck, with masks.
Sometime after that, if cases continue to decrease, I will start going to stores. I quit when cases were going up and people were not distancing properly. I’ll start with the Farmers’ Market, which is in a large building or outdoors. In three weeks, it should be at least partially outdoors. Then I’ll try Trader Joe’s, which was particularly crowded and people particularly rude, even during alleged senior hours. I do like their products, though. Costco was good before, and I’ll head back there.
I’m working down my stockpiles of cleaning products and frozen and nonperishable food that I acquired through spring and summer last year. That feels good.
Next week I have a dental hygiene appointment. My last one was in October. The dentist made their hallways one-way, added barriers, and increased ventilation. I felt pretty good about their safety then and better now.
After three weeks, I’ll contact my massage therapist to find out if she is working. She’s always been scrupulous about cleanliness, and I really really need a massage. That will be a great pleasure.
I’ve been cutting my own hair. It doesn’t look bad – curly hair is very forgiving. But I know there are things wrong with the haircut and am looking forward to having it corrected. I’ll let it grow out now so that my hair stylist has something to work with.
My piano teacher doesn’t have a date for her vaccination yet. I am looking forward to having in-person lessons but don’t know when that will be.
I will, of course, mask up when I go out in public. It looks like vaccination cuts down on virus transmission, but not entirely. Masks will be required at least through the summer. People in Santa Fe have been good about masking, although I saw one man yesterday with his nose sticking out. Since they didn’t tattoo my vaccination date on my forehead, nobody can tell that I’m vaccinated.
Restaurants? Movies? Not until at least 50% of the population is vaccinated and case numbers are well below last summer’s. That might come as soon as this summer.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Rofer on International Relations
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus
Nature magazine, one of the top two science journals in the world, did a survey of 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on the coronavirus, asking if they thought that the virus would become endemic in the human population. Ninety percent of them said they thought it would. From just the mathematics of it, and the fact that it’s everywhere in the world now, I agree with that. I don’t see how it can be otherwise.
But that doesn’t mean that our current situation continues. People will be vaccinated; some will acquire immunity by being infected (although current guidance is that they should be vaccinated anyway); and more will continue to die. As immunity spreads, we will be able to relax social precautions, probably this summer or later. We will, perhaps in a couple of years, be able to go back to something like normal.
We don’t know enough about immunity – how long it lasts and how robust it is to variant strains of the virus – to be sure about timing and exactly what “something like normal” will look like. It is likely to include vaccination against SARS-CoV-2, probably as one of the childhood vaccinations.
To understand why we’ve been hit so hard by this virus and why it’s possible to envision something like normal, think about what would happen if measles suddenly appeared out of nowhere, a new virus to which humans had no immunity.
Measles has an incubation period of 11 or 12 days and is transmitted through the air. Children under 5 and adults are more likely to have complications, which include bacterial ear infection, inflammation of the voice box (larynx) or inflammation of the inner walls that line the main air passageways of your lungs (bronchial tubes), pneumonia (particularly in people with compromised immune systems), encephalitis (which may occur right after measles or months later), and problems in pregnancy, including preterm labor, low birth weight and maternal death.
These complications have low occurrence rates, but if large numbers of people are infected, many will suffer complications.
So introduction of measles into a population that had never seen it would look a lot like the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. It would spread quickly, there would be arguments about needing masks and when to open schools and bars, and it would present varying symptoms of different degrees of severity in different people. Some would have long-lasting effects. Death rates are hard to pin down precisely for any disease, but it looks like measles is less deadly than SARS-CoV-2. Still, large numbers of deaths would occur.
But humans have lived with measles – it has been endemic – for hundreds of years. It probably came to us from cattle. Babies are born susceptible to it, which is why we vaccinate infants. Adults who have been infected or vaccinated are immune.
This is what will happen with SARS-CoV-2. Most of humanity will become immune. We don’t yet know how frequent immunizations will need to be. There will be occasional cases.
Smallpox has been eliminated in the wild. Like measles and polio, it has no animal reservoir. Polio has almost been eliminated, but the pandemic has interfered with progress. Vaccine deniers and other factors make it unlikely that measles can be eliminated any time soon.
SARS-CoV-2 has animal reservoirs. How plentiful they are will affect its control once it calms down to endemic status. We will not eliminate it for a very long time, if ever.
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Open Threads, Rofer on Nuclear Issues
The previous thread was getting long. I’m not sure how much more there is to go – I am not watching, just getting snips from Twitter as I get some other stuff done.
I found this interesting – the nuclear football that follows the Vice President around was also at risk. You can see the military aide carrying it at 0:13 in the video.
Stephen Schwartz follows the nuclear footballs and collects photos of them. I asked him to verify. Here’s his answer –
Sorry for the duplication. That seems to be the way this works.
Continuing Impeachment Trial Open ThreadPost + Comments (151)
This post is in: Impeachment Hearings, Open Threads
Here’s the live feed:
And here’s the video that the House Impeachment Managers showed. Damning.
Open thread
This post is in: Open Threads
If you’re not following Dan Froomkin at Press Watch, you should be.
We vent a lot about the evils of the press here at Balloon Juice. But there are critics out there who have been advocating practices that speak to our concerns.
Now that Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron has announced his retirement, Los Angeles Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine stepped down in December, and (we can hope) New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet is getting ready to leave, Froomkin offers, free of charge, the script of a talk to the newsroom from their replacements.
It’s chock full of goodies that most of us here can approve. Here’s a sampling:
Effective today, you are no longer political reporters (and editors); you are government reporters (and editors). That’s an important distinction, because it frees you to cover what is happening in Washington in the context of whether it is serving the people well, rather than which party is winning.
The most important lesson of the Bush/Cheney years is that we should never assume government officials are telling us the truth, especially when it comes to matters involving war and national security.
Here’s how we’re going to start: I want each of you to write a “beat note,” in which you describe at a high level what you see happening on your beat, what major questions you’re trying to answer, who the key players are, who seems to be operating in good faith and bad faith, what pressures they are under, and what you think the biggest challenges are ahead. Then we’ll publish them.
We too often think of whiteness as neutral. What we have all witnessed so vividly in the last four years is what nonwhite people have experienced for decades: that it is not. Whiteness can no longer be invisible in this newsroom. It must be acknowledged, studied and questioned. Non-white voices must be raised up and valued.
From now on, I’m the bad cop when it comes to dishy sources who want to talk to you anonymously. When you tell your sources “my boss won’t let me quote you unless you speak to me on the record,” that’s me.
And a lot more. As they say, read the whole thing.