[conspire] (forw) The fastest vaccine development ever

[paulz at ieee.org]

 Apparently I spent too much of my adult life working at companies staffed by responsible clear-thinking people who were good at developing a product and shipping it.  Now my daily contacts are not limited to people who were screened by HR and a hiring manager, I am having more and more encounters with folks who seem to live in a different universe.  To my thinking, their world is so bizarre I sometimes think I am living in some sci-fi dystopia.  Obviously people who have enough mental power to set up websites and want to talk about Linux can not be lacking in IQ.   
Apparently I have been too long in a bubble surrounded mostly by people who do critical thinking all the time. Can someone try to explain to me where these other tribes come from?
No need to try to explain politicians.  Unless demonstrated otherwise, it is probably that whatever they say is based on political expediency of the moment.
BTW, the link at the bottom of the original email is no longer valid.

    On Sunday, September 20, 2020, 12:59:34 AM PDT, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:  
 
 Explanation of this:  After getting a telephone call from Ruben where he
darkly muttered about an Antifa Soros Commie Bengazi conspiracy among
Big Pharma firms to prevent quick development of a COVID-19 vaccine, _and_
skim-reading the 'docs' pipermail archive and seeing tons more of that
same sludge, I thought, OK, what's considered fast vaccine development?

Answer was that ten years is a pretty good clip, _but_ I also found that
the tearing-fast absolute world record is _four_ years.

Ruben and his bunch of delusional wack jobs are charging conspiracy
because it hasn't happened in eight months and because Anthony Fauci at
his most sunnily optimistic is saying that most people will be in the
best case unable to receive a vaccine dose until some around 3rd or 4th
quarter 2021, i.e., Dr. Fauci is hoping for approximately a bit shy
of _two-year_ rollout.

So, I just sent the below-quoted reality check to Ruben, talking about
Dr. Maurice Hllerman and his Merck team's record-setting _four-year_ 
project to develop a vaccine for the mumps virus.

Predictably, Ruben made no reply at all:  It doesn't fit his
bullshit-driven narrative.

Anyway, angling back to Linux and LUGs:  Basically, this is why I'm
saying LUGs need to get serious about moving to videoconferencing:  
Because sitting around waiting to be able to resume in-person meetings
is not realistic.  We-all need to snap out of our stupor, and adapt to a
changed world.


Oh, and hey:  Shana tovah u'metuka.  May the new year not suck, despite
being off to a terrible start:  Baruch dayan ha-emet.  (Blessed is the
judge of truth.)  Farewell to one of the great American jurists, who was
a shining example during a dark time.



----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 14:42:22 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Ruben Safir <mrbrklyn at panix.com>
Subject: The fastest vaccine development ever
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

The mumps virus was isolated in 1945, and was being grown in labs in
1948.  That permitted development (that same year) of a killed-virus
vaccine, the problem with which was that it conferred only short-term
immunity.

This situation persisted until one of the greatest virologists who's
ever lived, Maurice Hillerman, obsessed on the problem starting in 1963,
when he cultured the vaccine from his mumps-ill daughter, Jeryl Lynn
Hillerman.  The elder Hillerman worked for Merck, and was determined to
create a live-virus vaccine.  

At that time, mumps was, although almost never fatal, a frequent illness
of young people in America and around the world, making victims
miserable (and needing extreme isolation) for a week to ten days.  To
grow up in the Fifties was to just count on being sick with mumps at
some point.  Hillerman figured he could hasten his development time by
using new lab methods for growing weakened forms of a live virus in
chicken embryos (such as was used for the measles vaccine) -- and did
so.

Through obsessive work, Hillerman and his team managed the feat faster
than any other vaccine has ever been developed:  He submitted it (named
Mumpsvax) for approval in 1967, and regulators approved it the same
year.

The strain of attenuated virus used in Mumpsvax is still referred to as
the Jeryl Lynn strain, after Hillerman's daughter.  It's to this day
given as a combined dose with other vaccines as the MMR vaccination.

Four years to development of a vaccine -- a world record never matched
in 53 years.  These days, technology is of course much better, but no
virologist has yet managed a faster development cycle, not anywhere in
the world, irrespective of pharma company or regulator.

I devoutly hope the miraculous occurs, and someone's able to work twice
as fast as Hillerman did, producing a vaccine in the summer of 2022.


Oh, hey, here's a new, interesting tidbit:  Mike Pence's advisor for
homeland security and counterterrorism, after being also assigned to be
his lead staffer on the COVID-19 Task Force (Olivia Troye) put her heart
& soul into that task, but found over time that she could no longer look
herself in the mirror because the Administration simply doesn't care
about saving Americans from sickness and death, and has just now quit in
disgust.  Troye's statement is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0j6adNroo4



----- End forwarded message -----

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