People in
the US started getting vaccinated against Covid-19 today. Elena was concerned
that she was not going to get vaccinated fast enough. I pointed out to her that
the Moderna vaccine is going to be approved in the next few days. This will
mean that a lot more vaccines will be coming.
What is concerning to many is the rapid
rollout of these vaccines. One would normally see several years of careful
testing to make sure about side effects. This was not done here. One thoughtful
reader made a reference to the Thalidomide disaster of 1962. Pregnant mothers
were given a new drug. Later babies were born without arms.
Pharmaceutical companies are not my
favorite people. To make a long story short, they rob the public with high
prices, etc. On the other hand, with their massive revenues, they are able to
fund huge research budgets. I feel confident that some fast and rigorous
testing was done. I would not be surprised to hear that supercomputers were
involved to do all sorts of rapid simulations. Some side effects will show up.
The vaccines will have to be "fine tuned."
I am always talking about the Spanish Flu
epidemic of 1918-1919. No vaccine was ever developed. 675,000 people died in
the US. At that time, the US had a population of 103,200,000 people. Today we
have a population of 332,000,000. In rough calculations, one could multiply
675,000 times three. We come up with a potential of over 2 million deaths from
coronavirus in the US.
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