[conspire] (forw) Re: CA.US COVID-19 booster shots widely available for adults as of?2021-11-18

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> CDC and FDA refer strongly to the data presented to them.  Pfizer did
> tests showing efficacy of their vaccine.  Moderna and J&J did
> likewise.  For business reasons the companies didn't sponsor many
> trials with other vaccines, so therefore most of the science is for
> using the same medicine.   I had the biggest reaction to Pfizer #1.
[snip some details]

My own perspective doubtless owed significantly to growing up an airline
brat, who travelled abroad including to the tropics from age 5, and
lived in a sub-tropical place with endemic diseases (Hong Kong).

So, I got to know vaccines really well, and just took as given that
occasionally I might get knocked on my ass for a day or two.  You
think "Well, this sucks, but proves my immune system rode into the
valley of simulated death," you take an ibuprofen, and you settle in
with a good book.[1] 

And you think, "Better than typoid fever, better than measles, better
than tuberculosis."


[1] Recent reading: _The End of October_, by Lawrence Wright.  Wright
set out in 2017 to write a novel about a global novel-virus pandemic,
and had the weird luck to bring it to publication in March 2020.  The
research the author did was flawless, and there are many moments in it
with absolutely spooky resemblance to real events just after
publication.  I didn't consider it misery porn, but rather schadenfreude
porn, as the fictional "Kongoli" pathogen, from one of the influenza
families, has a fatality rate like that of the Black Death.  There's 
a nice twist at the end where its origin gets proven, and it's not what
you might have expected but makes good sense.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/06/850705321/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-pandemics-in-the-end-of-october
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lawrence-wright/the-end-of-october/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/books/review/lawrence-wright-end-of-october.html

Wright was as dumbfounded as the rest of us by how prescient many bits
of his novel were:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/books/review/lawrence-wright-end-of-october-pandemic-novel-essay.html

In late 2020, he turned around and wrote for _The New Yorker_ (where
he's a staff writer) an equally meticulous history of the current public
health crisis, entitled The Plague Year:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year ...and
then expanded that into a non-fiction book of the same name, released
this past June: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/books/review/lawrence-wright-the-plague-year.html

I read that book _first_, and was so impressed with it that I sought out 
_The End of October_, as a follow-on.

I recommend both.