THE END OF A BLOG

This is a note to all who read or just idly look at this weblog. I will be taking this blog down in the Spring of 2024. I have a website at https://rogerfloyd.com/, and almost everything that I ever posted on this blog has been moved over to that website. The website even contains some new material which you may find interesting. I plan to begin posting on the blog portion of the website (even though I haven’t posted in quite a while), and share my comments, opinions, and observations on writing, science, and perhaps a little on the environment. Take a trip over to the website and see how you like it. I have a trilogy of science fiction novels that will be self-published soon, and there’s a short note about each, so you have something to look forward to. The website also has lots of colorful pictures.
My thanks to all who visited this blog over the years (I set it up in 2010). You may like the website just as much as the blog.

Roger Floyd

How We Were Ready

After almost two years of putting up with COVID-19 and all the attendant social distancing requirements and protocols, we have come to a point of almost (I repeat, almost) reducing the virus to an endemic situation where we will have to get a COVID booster shot every year, probably for a long time. COVID-19 was defeated, though not without considerable loss of life, even here in the United States, and it left many people who survived with residual health problems. We probably got a late start on attacking SARS CoV 2, the virus that causes the disease, especially here in the US, but in many respects we were ready for it. We had all the epidemiological and public health factors already in place when the virus first made its appearance in China in 2019, and we attacked it with all the expertise of a military operation. Multiple countries went to war against the virus, and though the virus won many battles against us, we eventually brought it under control. Here is what we did.

I don’t know how the virus first got going in humans, whether it came from animals or was leaked from a lab in China, but once it was identified as a unique disease, we had all the appropriate protocols and procedures in place to enable us to begin to attack it. First on the list was the ability to isolate the virus in culture. The ability to grow viruses in culture has been around for so long I can’t even remember when the first culture was made. Growing the virus in culture allows us to get a lot of the virus in a short period of time so we can study it. It also gets the virus in pure form, uncontaminated by other viruses. This is essential in beginning the manufacture of vaccines, and in deducing the sequence of the virus’s nucleic acid. (Coronaviruses have RNA as their nucleic acid.) That was the first step.

A lot of this was done in China in the beginning of the outbreak, and the information was made available to everyone else around the world in short order. Much of the work in getting the nucleic acid sequence of the virus required a procedure known as polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. But we didn’t have to all of a sudden develop PCR just to sequence COVID-19, PCR had been developed in the late 1980’s, and has proven to be such a powerful tool in molecular research, not just in virology, that the inventor was given a Nobel Prize for his invention.

Another very important development in the production of a COVID-19 vaccine was the utilization of messenger RNA (mRNA) as a vaccine product. COVID-19 is the first time mRNA vaccines have been used on a wide scale in immunizing people in such a large outbreak. But like PCR, we didn’t have to develop mRNA vaccines from the ground up just for COVID-19, the technology to make such a vaccine has been around since at least the late 1980’s, and all we had to do was adapt it for COVID-19. This is why the vaccines came along so quickly. Well, relatively quickly. It still took several months to ramp up production on the vaccine in order to make millions of doses, and to test it in volunteers through a double-blind trial so we knew that it was safe and efficacious. (No sense making a vaccine if it won’t work.)

Once we got people vaccinated, we began to get it into people’s arms. You may have heard of the term “herd immunity” used by some of the experts in public health. This isn’t a new term. It was developed many years ago by epidemiologists to refer to the percentage of people who have to be resistant to a disease, either because they were immunized or rendered immune by having the disease, to stop the spread of a disease organism, such as COVID-19. Again, we knew what to do. We didn’t develop all these things just because a new disease came along, we were ready. And we put our knowledge to work. And it worked.

In short, COVID-19 challenged us to rise to the occasion and defeat this monstrous disease. We reacted swiftly, as swiftly as possible, and struck back with vaccines that did all they were expected to do.

After The Pandemic

As I type this, the delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus is cutting its way through the population of unvaccinated people in the US like the proverbial bull in a China shop, and maybe it’s a little too early to start thinking about how we are going to live after the pandemic is over. I think not, though. The pandemic has forced most of us to take a second glance at our human-to-human interactions, and I present below a list of several things I have thought quite a bit about over the past few months, and about how they can be used to our benefit. Humans are by nature a gregarious bunch, and we enjoy our camaraderie with fellow human beings. But getting too close to one another sets up such an easy way for the virus to spread that we have been forced to step back from ourselves whenever we converse, and make our person-to-person contacts from a distance. Either literally, or through electronic means.

But the coronavirus is only a model for the alteration of human behavior. Coronavirus is not the only virus, or, in reality the only infectious agent that can be spread from human to human through close personal contact. Other viruses and some bacteria, most especially influenza virus, but also the common cold virus, measles virus, mumps virus, respiratory syncytial virus, the bacteria of diphtheria, meningitis, pneumonia, and strep throat, as well as others which I won’t list here, are spread through the same mechanisms. We have to watch ourselves, and limit personal contact as much as possible. That will only help in the long run, though some of what I suggest below may be difficult to implement on a long-term basis. So I present, then, a few things we can do–and I present these for use on a permanent basis–to limit the spread of infectious diseases.

1. No more shaking hands. Fist bumps are acceptable, though elbow bumps are even better. The chances of spreading an infectious agent through your elbows is ridiculously small.
2. Always push the button on the pole at an intersection when you want to cross the street with your elbow, or at least with a gloved hand.
3. Always take your own disinfectant wipes to the store, and wipe down the handle of the cart thoroughly before using. In my experience, the wipes the grocery stores provide are way less than satisfactory.
4. Always keep your face mask in the car, or keep it with you when you go out if you don’t drive. You may not need it at home, but at a large indoor gathering, it can be important.
5. Always keep gloves (such as latex or nitrile) in the car to use when pumping gas. I strongly recommend against pumping gas barehanded. You don’t know who handled that pump before you. And take the gloves off before you get back in the car.
6. Always wash your hands when returning from a store.
7. When over at someone else’s house, let the host use the TV remote. Depending on the situation, masks may not be required, but keep one handy just in case.
8. Stay six feet away from others during the influenza season. Keep in mind the similarity between coronavirus and influenza virus. They’re spread the same way, and actions we take to limit one work for the other.
9. Use the knuckle of your hand, or the back of your hand when pushing the button on an elevator. Never use the front of your finger. God only knows what’s on that button.
10. Get a flu shot every year. And a coronavirus shot. And all your other immunizations.
11. Disinfect any computer keyboard you come across. Especially in a library. Use your own disinfectant wipe.
12. Don’t use any other cell phone unless you wipe it down with a disinfectant wipe. [Note: disinfectant wipes leave an object wet. Drying it with a clean, dry cloth is okay. as long as it’s your cloth.]
13. It should be obvious by now that you will have to keep disinfectant wipes close at hand all the time. I don’t recommend keeping them in the car during the summer because I don’t know what the heat in a closed car will do the the disinfectant, especially day-after-day during a long summer. [Note: I kept a can of wipes in the car this summer, and the top popped open one day, and by the time I needed to use them a few days later, the wipes had dried out.]
14. One of the dirtiest things in our society is money. Especially paper money. Paper money changes hands so often in its lifetime (which may be years) that it could be infected with almost anything, including chemicals and drugs such as CBD and/or fentanyl. I doubt that it will be possible to disinfect paper money because I’m not sure what repeated wiping with the disinfectant will do to the inks on the paper. The best thing you can do after handling paper money is to wash your hands or use a disinfectant wipe. Never put paper money close to your face.
15. I doubt that it will be necessary to wear a mask in public on any sort of regular basis except during the flu season. So get a flu shot. [Granted, the flu vaccine is not always very effective, but if you get a shot every year, immunity can build up.] Never leave yourself to the mercy of others. Never assume others will get a shot, so you don’t need to. That only invites disaster.

Okay, these may not be the only things we need to do to keep ourselves safe from infectious agents, but if you use your own judgement and a little common sense we can keep infectious agents from becoming a serious menace to society. If you want to buy an old ICBM silo on the plains of North Dakota, and convert it into a home and live there totally away from society and have everything you need to live delivered, then go ahead. The rest of us will follow the above and other suggestions and live reasonably normal lives. As normal as we can, given that things have changed. Seriously.

Where Did SARS-CoV-2 Come From?

In the ongoing pandemic caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, better known as COVID-19, the one most significant question about the virus and the pandemic itself is, where did the virus originate? Most people point to China, and that’s where the World Health Organization is looking. The WHO has visited China, particularly Wuhan, and more specifically, the Huanan market in Wuhan, where they believe the virus got out and into the general population. The market sells many different animals (animals we might call “exotic” because we don’t consume them much here in the US), and many of those animals come from other live animal markets and animal farms across China. But did the virus simply jump from one of those animals to humans? Or was the virus isolated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out, either accidently or purposely? We can’t be sure; the WHO studies were incomplete because the Chinese government has prevented them from getting all the answers they were seeking.

So, where did the virus come from? The intransigence of the Chinese government is very concerning. Does the government have something to hide? Are they sitting on potentially explosive information? The very fact that the city of Wuhan has both large animal markets and an Institute of Virology is intriguing, and potentially suggestive. Did the virus come from somewhere else in China and was it transported, either as an isolate or as an infected animal, to the Institute? And did it subsequently get out into the general population? At least three other provinces in China have farms and markets which sell pangolins and bats and other animals sold in the Huanan market. (As an aside, I understand that coronaviruses have been isolated from both animal species, but are too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to have been its predecessor.) Or did the virus originate in the Huanan market? Perhaps only the Chinese know.

The refusal of the Chinese government to allow the WHO team to investigate fully every place they want to go is the most disconcerting thing about this investigation. To paraphrase Shakespeare, I think they are protesting too much. If they have nothing to hide, why limit the WHO investigation? I find myself wondering if the virus actually got out of the Wuhan Lab. But how? Purposely? Who would want to deliberately release the virus? Accidently? That makes somewhat more sense. I can conceive that someone got infected in the lab and went home with it unwittingly. I have worked in labs where we did research with highly infectious viruses, and the possibility of lab infection, while practically zero if everyone follows all the rules concerning handling of the viruses, is not absolutely zero. Especially if someone wants to release it. Presumably the Wuhan Institute has similar rules. But if the virus got out, whether accidentally or purposefully, it would be the most heinous, monstrous, outrageous release of a virus–or any infectious agent–in modern history. The death toll from SARS-CoV-2 has been in the millions worldwide (and over half a million in the US alone). If it happened that way, it’s no wonder the Chinese government is restricting access to the members of the WHO investigative team.

Immunize The Teachers

Much has been made these past few months about re-opening schools now that the coronavirus vaccines are available and the spread of the virus seems to be waning, even though teachers and students are not in the highest brackets for immunization. The argument has been put forth that schools can be re-opened because children tend to not transmit the virus as readily as adults, and thus sending kids and teachers back to school–albeit with the usual social distancing procedures still in effect–will not result in a significant number of cases of coronavirus disease. I substantially disagree.

While it is true that children, taken in an overall setting, may not transmit the virus as readily as adults (perhaps because of residual immunity from infections with some of the other coronaviruses that have been around for God-knows-how-long, and which may provide some protection) it is also true that children CAN be infected with COVID-19, and can transmit it. They can also get very severe disease with COVID-19, and can have very serious and long-lasting sequelae. Even die from the disease. Children are NOT immune to COVID-19, and we should not assume that because they may not transmit it as well as adults that their transmission is nil. It isn’t. All it takes is one child with COVID-19 in the class for the other children to get infected, as well as the teacher, who can bring the virus home and begin a process of transmitting it to others, inside and outside of their home. Children are in school for up to six or seven hours a day. School is not merely a short exposure to other people outside the home like a trip to the supermarket. While social distancing protocols are important, they should be limited to short person-to-person interactions and can do only so much. Transmission by children may be reduced, but it is NOT zero.

I have believed ever since the vaccines against COVID-19 came out that children and teachers should have been put in the highest level group along with health care workers and emergency responders. Even above the elderly (except those in nursing homes). Immunize the children first to help cut off the spread of the virus in what is the largest and most regular meeting places in the country–schools. Then go on to the rest of the population. We adults do better at following the social distancing protocols than children. Does anyone believe that kids, especially elementary school kids, will wear a mask six or seven hours a day? Even I don’t like that.

Immunize children and teachers FIRST.

A Few Thoughts For Late December

I don’t usually blog about politics, but when it intersects with science and scientific matters, I may decide to make a few comments. Like today. First, a little about masks.

Masks are a key component in our ongoing battle against being infected with coronavirus (and influenza, since the flu season is upon us), but the masks we have been given aren’t the most effective to do the job. I wear a mask every time I go out, and I’m always concerned about the poor design of the mask I have to wear, and the masks I see others wearing. A mask should do two things: one, prevent the wearer from breathing in the tiny particles from others that may contain the virus, and, two, prevent particles from one’s own breathing from getting to others. But I’ve never found a mask that did that effectively. All masks I’ve tried fogged my glasses badly, which means some of my exhaled breath is going up past the top of the mask. That means, in turn, that exhaled air is getting out without being filtered through the matrix of the mask. I can only guess how much air that I breathe in is unfiltered. I can also feel some air going out around the edges of the mask, particularly around the bottom. And I have no idea how many others I encounter are having the same issues with their masks.

All of the air, in and out, should go through the matrix of the mask, not around the edges. Not doing so simply limits the effectiveness of the mask. So, what to do? First, let’s get rid of those ridiculous ear loops. A mask should be held tightly to the face by straps or elastic bands that go around the head, but those ear loops hold the mask in place only so far as they keep it from falling off. They don’t hold a mask tightly enough. Second, masks should have some sort of air damming material around the edges to confine air into the center where it will be forced out through the fabric. The masks I have simply lie on my face; there’s little air restriction, and I have a helluva time trying to keep the air from fogging my glasses. It’s enough to make me want to go back to contact lenses (though I don’t think I will.) We can have better masks. I suggest someone try.

Second, a little about doctoral degrees. Much has been made recently about Dr. Jill Biden’s use of the “Dr.” title in her name. As though it were an epithet. If it was conferred by a legitimate university, she has every right to use it. But it should be borne in mind that the term is designed to mean that a person has studied a certain subject in depth and detail, not merely that one has delivered a baby. The M.D. degree is given to graduates of medical school, which indicates that those medical students have studied medicine in quite a bit of detail. I got my PhD degree after studying viruses for six years in graduate school. Jill Biden got hers after studying the US educational system, in–I assume–some detail. So doctoral degrees are conferred early in a person’s career, not near the end. Getting an MD degree doesn’t necessarily mean a medical student has delivered a baby. If someone thinks that only a person who has delivered a baby is allowed to call him/herself “doctor,” that’s a very limited view of the practice of medicine.

COVID And The Economy

In an earlier post on this blog site I commented on COVID and herd immunity (scroll down to see it). What would happen, I asked, if we just let the pandemic of coronavirus play itself out naturally? Herd immunity would eventually take effect and the pandemic would die down. But many, many more people would certainly die compared to the way we are handling the disease now with all those masks, social distancing, handwashing, and so forth.

But some argue that by letting things play out naturally, the economy would be much stronger because stores would be open and commerce would proceed normally. People wouldn’t be out of out of work and they would be able to pay their bills and wouldn’t get evicted from their homes/apartments, and wouldn’t have to stand in line at the food bank. Normal economy.

I say, “No way.”

A normal economy with no restrictions on travel and congregating and shopping would probably damage the economy to a degree that would make the economic loss we are currently suffering look like a Sunday school picnic. With a totally open economy, many more people would get the disease and hospitals would not be nearing capacity as they are now, they would be flooded. ICU’s wouldn’t be able to handle the load. Not even close. People would be dying in the hallways because beds would not be available. Hospitals would have to ration care, that is, decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t. The death rate, instead of hovering around 1.5% as it is now, would increase to 2 or even 3% because there wouldn’t be enough ventilators to handle all who needed one. That’s right, the number of deaths would not only skyrocket, but the death rate would go up as well. All those people who went to the stores and restaurants and bars and political rallies–nope, they wouldn’t be there. Your favorite waiter at a restaurant might not be there. Your favorite barkeep could be gone. Her kids might not make it either. Schools might have to close, with not enough teachers available. Doctors, nurses, and so forth–do I need to go on? Superspreader events would be commonplace. I can even see mass graves because mortuaries wouldn’t be able to handle the load.

But in addition, those who survived the virus might be compromised to one degree or another. We are seeing serious consequences to COVID infection: people who recover the initial infection can have heart, lung, kidney, even brain problems afterward, and many of these might be unable to return to work. Your favorite barber might be alive, but can’t stand for more than a few minutes at a time with his damaged lungs. I can’t put numbers to all this, but the repercussions to the economy with so many out of work would no doubt be far more serious than the economic loss we are currently experiencing. Make no mistake about it, we are doing the right thing in handling this pandemic until the vaccines come along (not too long now, either).

After The Coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic continues: cases are increasing faster than medical facilities can accommodate them, lines for testing are miles long, deaths are mounting, and the virus has hit almost every country on the globe. We are deep in the second wave, and—at the time I’m writing this (11/15/2020)—it’s obvious the numbers will only increase, at least for the foreseeable future. The one bright spot is that vaccines are coming, possibly early next year, and it will be essential that as many people as possible take the vaccine. I’ve already stated my willingness to take a vaccine if one is available that has been shown to be safe and effective. It’s beginning to look as though vaccines will become available just about the time the second wave is beginning to taper off (assuming we continue to do all the social behaviors we’ve been doing for the last eight months or so [masks, social distancing, hand washing, etc.]). But, even if that’s true, it will still be necessary to take the vaccine because cases and deaths will still be high, and the best way to reduce those numbers will be to take a vaccine, rather than allow more people to become infected. We can approach herd immunity, and we can defeat the virus, but it will take a coordinated effort from all of us. The virus will probably become endemic in the population (see my previous blog posts), and everyone will almost certainly have to get a coronavirus vaccine every year, in the same way we get a flu vaccine every year. (Hopefully, the coronavirus won’t be as changeable as the flu virus). I even predict a combined flu/coronavirus vaccine eventually. No doubt it will be called “Flu/Cor.” One shot, and away you go. I suspect having taken the coronavirus vaccine will eventually become a requirement for all school children.

What about re-opening the economy? Will we be able to get back to going out without having to worry about contagion? I suspect we will. (I’m looking forward to that myself.) Children will be able to go back to school, meetings will be held, groups will accumulate, concerts will take place, churches and other houses of worship will re-open, and the world will seem normal again. Masks will drop and families will get together. That, at least, is possible. Cases of coronavirus will still occur, especially in the autumn when the weather turns cooler and we congregate inside more often, and children go back to school. Since the virus is transmitted through the respiratory system, I expect it to act more like influenza in the long run.

The one major change I hope will remain in effect permanently is the elimination of handshaking. That—in my opinion—is a disgusting habit that should have gone the way of the Dodo bird a long time ago. It is probably one of the most common ways of transmitting germs of all sorts. (I’m not sure if any studies have been done on how well handshaking passes viruses or bacteria, but eliminating it can only be good.)

I lack the economic and political expertise to estimate how things will change in those social realms, though I suspect they will be robust, but I can foresee the end of the pandemic at a cost of an increase in cases in the fall. Get your vaccine.

COVID And Herd Immunity

There’s been some talk lately of saying to heck with the idea of developing a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that is currently causing the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, and simply allowing the virus to spread freely among the population, infecting each one who comes in contact with another infected person. This would certainly infect a much larger number of people than are currently infected, and in a much shorter amount of time. It would also bring the epidemic in the US to a halt much sooner, too. Throw away the masks, they say. Get close to one another. Go out to eat. Get in large gatherings. Go to football games. Quit washing your hands. This type of activity would eventually produce what is called “herd immunity” in the population. That refers to the fact that a very large percentage of the population would (hopefully) become immune, and the virus would not be able to infect enough people to maintain its spread, and would die out. (Or more likely, die down. See my previous post.) In other words, the “herd” becomes immune. Achieving full herd immunity is good, and that is what we’re trying to do with a vaccine, even though a vaccine takes much longer to achieve the same level of immunity. (If we ever get there in the first place.)

But there are several drawbacks to that method of handling the pandemic in the US. First, we don’t know much about the immunity that COVID-19 gives to a person when they recover. They may be immune for a short time, maybe several months, maybe a year, but there’s no guarantee that a population will be immune for long enough to allow a “herd immunity” to develop. By the time the later people are infected, the earlier ones may have lost immunity. I have heard reports of one or two people being re-infected. Not good.

Second, infection with SARS-CoV-2 isn’t a simple infection, like a cold, where you just get over it, and then you have some immunity. There can be serious long-term consequences following the infection, consequences I would never want to inflict on another person. Just because someone leaves the intensive care unit (the ICU) and goes home, doesn’t mean he/she is back to normal.

Third, it’s just plain cruel. Let people get infected and die? Just so the rest can go about their daily business and not have to put up with the restrictions? I don’t think so.

But fourth, and most personal to me, is that I am in one of the highest risk groups for COVID-19, and I have done everything I know, short of getting a vaccine (which isn’t an option right now anyway) to avoid getting infected. For example, I’m type A blood, and apparently us type A’s are more susceptible to infection, and to a more serious infection. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to be a guinea pig for a method of handling the pandemic that simply throws up its hands and says, “We give up. Just let the damn virus spread. Who cares?”

I care.

COVID-19 In The Long Term

Up to now, I haven’t blogged or commented on the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, largely because anything I had to say would be to simply repeat the already well-known, tried-and-true rules that everyone is familiar with: wear a mask, stay at least six feet apart (nine or ten would be even better), wash your hands, don’t touch your face, avoid large gatherings, etc., etc., etc. Those are the active things that everyone can do to minimize spread of the virus in the absence of a good vaccine or a good, solid herd immunity in the population.

As the pandemic continues, vaccine testing and production has begun and we should know in a few months whether any of the various candidate vaccines are safe and effective. A vaccine is the only thing that will eventually get us away from the tiresome rules of social distancing that we’ve had to use for the past nine months or so. Like most of us, I’m ready to get back to seeing my friends face-to-face, not just on a computer screen. I belong to several organizations and I would like to be able to participate fully in the goings-on of those organizations. I’m sure you do too.

The only thing that will ever get us back to near-normal is a vaccine. But what about the future of the disease? What will happen to COVID-19? Will it ever go away? Will we be rid of it? President Trump says after the election no one will mention it again. Horse manure. Dr. Fauci thinks it may eventually go away. I say that’s not likely either.

A good vaccine (or several vaccines) will help control the spread of the virus, like any vaccine should. We still have several diseases, influenza and measles, specifically, that are still around in spite of vaccines that can control the spread of the viruses that cause them. But two factors have helped allow those two viruses to continue to spread in the population. One, in the case of influenza, is that the vaccines are not very effective. Flu vaccine effectiveness has been as low as 20%, though in most cases it is better than that. (That’s due largely to the tendency of the virus to change from year to year, confounding the drug companies that have to decide what viruses to put in the vaccine well in advance of the next wave of disease.) We could control flu better with a highly effective vaccine, sure.

Second, there is a substantial resistance to immunization in this country, and this is the major factor allowing measles to spread. In contrast to flu, measles vaccine is very effective. The only way to control a virus disease is to vaccinate a large portion of the population, and that’s not going to happen in the anti-vax climate of the US. I personally will take a COVID-19 vaccine if it is shown to be effective.

But what about longer-term? Will we ever be able to eradicate COVID-19 in the US like we did smallpox and polio? The two factors I mentioned above will have to be present, but there is a third factor. Both smallpox and polio are diseases strictly of humans. They do not occur in animals. There is no animal reservoir, so vaccinating humans stops the transmission because the virus has no place to go. Influenza and probably COVID-19 both originated in animals, and that may make it difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. In my humble opinion, COVID-19 will probably settle down to the status of an endemic disease more like measles. Measles could be eradicated if vaccination rates were high enough, but politically, well, you know . . .

I think we’re going to have to put up with COVID-19 for a while. For many years, in fact. We may see annual waves of infection like flu, and children will have to have a COVID vaccination before school every year. But it’s not likely to go away any time soon.