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Kaleberg's avatar

Our county is one of the best in Washington State for vaccinations. We just got our jab yesterday, but the big problem is still lack of vaccine. One nearby clinic opened on a first come, first served basis and turned away about a thousand people waiting in line. Yes, the local tribes are involved. The Jamestown, the local machers, as we Jews call them, have been running their own clinic and have opened it to the local non-tribal population, but they were the ones who turned away that thousand. They can do the organizational stuff just fine, as can others, but supplies are the real problem. (There's a county clinic running even now. A friend of ours, a local veterinarian - the other kind of vet, is working there giving injections.)

We are hoping improved supplies make vaccination easier, but mRNA vaccines like the Pfizer and Moderna ones are a totally new technology. Stuff like the protein for encapsulating the RNA and convincing cells to absorb it and use it for making antibody targets were usually ordered by the milligram, but now the demand is for kilograms. I'm rather amazed that we are doing as well as we are. God bless the bioreactor engineers and may no one cheap out on UV lamps fo the emergency/overflow vents. The money that was spent responding to MERS and SARS and seemed to have been wasted when public health measures brought the diseases under control turns out to have been well spent.

Biden is doing what he can. As he himself noted, his original proposal for vaccination was jeered at for being to ambitious. Now it is being jeered at for being insufficient. Maybe with nation-wide coordination, the good guys can get on the case and deal with COVID-19 as it should have been dealt with.

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Antonia Malchik's avatar

My mother-in-law in England is in a rehabilitation place after surgery. She “got the jab” a few days ago with no effort on her part. I’m sure I’ve said this before on one of your pieces, but she also was born with a disability and has *never seen a medical bill.* The NHS is underfunded and has a lot of flaws but I’d take it and the higher taxes any day. Meanwhile, my parents (divorced) are navigating different systems with different requirements in two different Montana counties while I hear of friends who got it a bit earlier because someone had leftover doses from the 1a batch 🤦🏻‍♀️

Loved this analysis, so sharp as always! But I really liked the redpilling piece. I don’t know that it said anything new but it said it well (except that, as you probably remember, in the Matrix Reaves’s character didn’t get the name Neo after taking the red pill; it had been his hacker pseudonym). I’ve talked with a teen boy or two who don’t identify as liberal but scoff at the 8/4chan boards, so I wonder where that’s all going.

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