Again with preliminary reports and all the caveats, but we have here a variant with more extensive changes to the spike protein than the UK variant has , and uncertainty as to whether the vaccine will be effective against it. Can we adapt faster than it can?
ETA: They are evaluating it, at least, but the rapidity of the response causes me concern
All infected people are ticking time bombs. The chances of any one person popping a new variant strain are … microscopic … but we’re running millions and millions of parallel science experiments right now.
eta: Aaaand now I see the post just above. Fuck.
Way worse than that. Every damn time the virus replicates it runs a chance of mutating. In any infected individual that occurs a number of times that can only be expressed in exponents and orders of magnitude. Why it is so important to get ahead of these outbreaks and contain them, so we limit the number of these dice rolls. But that ship sailed a long time ago, so here we are… fuck… 
Monday, January 04, 2021
An Immune Elite
Whether this will matter a little bit or a lot is open to debate/remains to be seen, but that society’s elite (certainly government and of course some others) are being vaccinated first is going to remove a sense of urgency.
A bit like how they stop caring about “the economy” when the stock market goes up.
And before you requote the above, remember that only appearances and talking points matter. Everything else can be fixed by expensive lawyers.
tl;dr Higher antibody titers are associated with lower risk of infection. (Not exactly surprising, but there is evidence.) Causes me concern over this idea of half-dosing and other alterations in dosing. This was not what was looked at in the study, so not directly applicable, but the implications are not terribly reassuring.
Idiot math.
Two people vaccinated to 80% is better than one person to 95%. Except that it’s untested at the lower dosage/single shot, so it’s complete hand-waving-out-their-ass on the effectiveness/longevity of these off-label uses.
As I understand, vaccinated people who get COVID tend to have milder symptoms, good, but that increases the chance of asymptomatic or “it’s just a cold” cases. So it blows swiss cheese holes in herd immunity protection, and any immunity barrier around people who can’t be vaccinated.
And then there’s the statistical tracking nightmare, the best weapon against epidemics since John Snow’s time. When they’re jamming stuff in people’s arms willy-nilly, are they carefully recording it?
If they have time to think of these half-vaxx schemes, they have time to work on the real distribution and tracking problems.
Countdown until we start seeing stories of people insisting on maskless grocery shopping because “I’ve been vaccinated!” And it won’t be long after that we’ll see reports of counterfeit vaccination cards.
The vaccine will cut your chances of getting a bad case of covid, and sure, go ahead and mingle with other vaccinated persons, but that’s it! It’s not a magic shield!
No, no mistake. They purpose.
I will take this silver bullet. Wake me up when it’s over.
I mean of it changed all conspiracy talk coming out their gob into metal guitar…
the problem is they haven’t done any planning. just like they squandered the few months we had before covid got a foothold here, they squandered the last few months of planning the roll out. they literally have just dumped it on the states, and washed their hands of it.
Sixteen more days before a decent plan is put into action, then we can add this cluster to the list of 45’s many f-ups… 
Evidence supporting these suggested tweaks in the vaccine rollout are shaky at best. But some experts argue that the dire state of the pandemic warrants a new, perhaps riskier approach.
What’s the definition of “panicking” again?
It didn’t have to be like this. It doesn’t have to be the way they want it to be.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/dismally-slow-vaccine-distribution-sets-up-a-long-2021
Nutbag sh####ck. To prison forever, no one is safe with a creature like that loose.
“The American public can be reassured — I don’t see how we can work details more than we have been to address all of those different contingencies based on vaccine,” the official added.
I wonder what is like to be this slimy. Lucrative, I suppose.
Also Los Angeles
And he lost his license, his job and his school revoked his diploma? Before going to prison, of course.
