outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Last, multiple types of testing indicated that the man has never been infected with SARS-CoV-2. But the researchers were cautious to note that this may be due to other precautions the man took beyond getting 217 vaccines.

Lmao

just recovered from a truly brutal few days after the PCV20 pneumonia vaccine (which most people don't need, but I needed for reasons), thinking about side effects.

if you struggled with Pfizer or Moderna side effects (or if you have any kind of autoimmune thing, or you have relatives who believe MRNA vaccines put super soldiers from the IRS in your veins), consider the novavax shot. CVS won't take reservations for it, but it is carried at all their locations and they take walk ins. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-novavax-latecomer-covid-vaccine-worth.html, https://www.science.org/content/article/should-you-pick-novavax-s-covid-19-shot-over-mrna-options.

My most recent shot was the Novavax, and the process you describe was pretty accurate: make an appointment, then when you get to CVS specify you want the Novamax. But the experience is not universal. Some months back when my mom went to get her latest shot she looked online and saw that CVS had the Novavax, but when she got there they said they didn't, supposedly because demand was so and/or their allotted doses had expired. So I guess caveat emptor/call first.

The current situation is they don't let you pick Novavax when making an appointment, and I don't think they actually want you to make a Pfizer/Moderna placeholder appointment. There is a big banner that says

"Trying to schedule a Novavax vaccine?
Novavax vaccine is carried at all locations.
Appointments are not required. Visit the location of your choice and talk with the Pharmacist in person.
Continue scheduling your appointment online for a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine."

"carried" sounds a bit aspirational, but I think the idea is "walk in and there's a decent chance we'll have it".

I'm trying to remember from when I made my own appointment, but I'm pretty sure they make you pick a vaccine type when you are making a vaccine appointment online. I ended up calling them afterwards and asking, and the guy at the pharmacy told me just to put down one of the other vaccines but to tell them when I checked in that I wanted the novavax. Maybe they have changed procedure? Anyway, just relating my mom's experience, since apparently just because CVS claims to carry the vaccine isn't a guarantee that they actually have it, and to call first.

Good to know. I'm getting a jab this week, probably Novavax, maybe Tanqueray.

You do have to choose a vaccine to make an appointment with cvs. You can’t choose novavax at the time you make the appointment though. They want you to just call in.

Reading this Medium blog about the Foo Fighters' early '00s advocacy for a group that denied the link between HIV and AIDS. Somehow I have never heard about this?

https://medium.com/the-monthly/the-foo-fighters-aids-denialism-should-be-on-the-record-6e33666fdc3c

Alive and Well was not your usual celebrity charity then, but it was nonetheless amplified by one of the biggest bands in the world. In early 2000, President Clinton’s director of AIDS policy admonished them: “For the Foo Fighters to be promoting this is extraordinarily irresponsible behaviour. There is no doubt about the link between HIV and AIDS in the respected scientific community and it’s quite unfortunate that a band reads one book and then adopts this theory. To say [that HIV does not cause AIDS] is akin to saying the world is flat.”

That “one book” was What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? — self-published pseudo-science written by Alive and Well’s founder, Christine Maggiore, a woman diagnosed with HIV in the early ’90s — and it fell into the idle hands of the Foo Fighters’ bassist, Nate Mendel. After devouring it, Mendel conscripted his bandmates in his advocacy for Maggiore’s group.

too much time on the bus

I remember there was a writer for SPIN magazine in the early 90s, Celia Farber, who penned many articles questioning the HIV-AIDS link. Always thought it was a weird thing to read in a music mag.

Celia Farber is more awful than you think (a galaxy brain thirty years ago can only get exponentially worse)

https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/a-family-that-lost-their-daughter

and on and on

She was Bob Jr’s girlfriend when I was interning at Spin.

fuck

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/01/first-human-avian-flu-case-texas-00149949

Good news:

1/n update on Covid in U.S. first some good news, latest from CDC shows we’re now at about our lowest levels of new COVID hospitalizations since the beginning of the pandemic… pic.twitter.com/yhTVKi0EN3

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) April 26, 2024

Looks like the spectacularly well-named FLiRT variants are the next ones for which we'll need a fall booster.

Roffle. But yeah, things are definitely calmer. My hospital has been in low single digits for a while. Thankfully masking is still required in the main building; I work at an outlier with a window I prop open right behind me so in combination with relatively lower usage levels compared to pre-pandemic that enables me to split things nicely, since I only use the main building to grab lunch most days.

Pfizer’s own large clinical trial of paxlovid, the first since the vaccines and omicron just came a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/paxlovid-covid-treatment-most-beneficial-for-unvaccinated-people-with-risk/

They found no evidence it has any effect on their subjects, which were vaccinated people with risk factors, and vaccinated and unvaccinated people without risk factors.

Basically seems like the only people who should bother taking it are unvaccinated people with risk factors (age, immunosuppresive drugs, etc.)

But if you’re immunocompromised there’s a new prophylactic in town that replaces Evushield https://www.statnews.com/2024/03/22/covid-immunocompromised-antibody-protection-invivyd/

New bird flu vector just dropped

"Since March 25, when the bird flu virus was confirmed in U.S. cattle for the first time, weekly sales of raw cow’s milk have ticked up 21% to as much as 65% compared with the same periods a year ago."

This is why we can't have nice things. pic.twitter.com/04ajQJXs7m

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) May 14, 2024

well anecdotally I'd say Paxlovid had a huge effect on me. Maybe placebo effect. Who cares. Both times COVID symptoms disappeared almost immediately after starting it.

same as dan.

my symptoms went away immediately and my path to a negative test was halved in time.

^ hard statistics, hard science

I'd like to think that raw milk uptick is anti-vaxxers trying to own the libs.