[AKN #17] California is beautiful, outdoor dining shutdowns are not scientific, mRNA vaccines, and Opera singers dubbed with ship horns
another krappy newsletter #17
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Greetings from Los Angeles!
My girlfriend and I drove down here this weekend to do Thanksgiving by ourselves in LA instead of in our apartment in NorCal. We are following the mask and distancing guidelines every step of the way. Mitigating risk to ourselves and the communities we visit. So chill the fuck out in case you were about to rage send some insane “you should be ashamed of yourself for traveling” email.
The trip down was awesome. We made stops in Paso Robles, Solvang, Santa Barbara, and vista points along the way.
High level takeaway: California is beautiful.
It also offers novel experiences like the makeshift Danish town of Solvang.
We are now settling in at Marina Del Mar/Venice Beach in this absurd privilege penthouse that overlooks the marina which we snagged off of AirBNB.
California is such a great state…until any politician here opens their mouth.
And that, friends, is where we start this newsletter.
All science is trusted, but some science is trusted more than others
As we arrived in LA county, we were met with a reminder that LA’s leading export is the performing arts. You see, the mayor responded to an uptick in COVID cases with an asinine lockdown that most notably removed outdoor dining. At the risk of sounding like a cry baby who is upset at his inability to dine out, I want to point out the two ways in which this is fucking silly:
We do not believe in science. We believe in science that agrees with us.
There are safe ways to keep outdoor dining open. We were doing them. We do not have any super spreader events that were contact traced to outdoor dining. No study suggests that outdoor dining is unsafe. So if we believe science, why did we shut down an activity that is scientifically safe? Because it is not about science. It is about the “we are taking it seriously” narrative.
We live in a storyline driven culture. We co-opt science when it helps tell the story we want to tell and we abandon it when it tells a different story. The process looks like: start with a message, find the studies that agree with us, and present results with certainty. When a study exists that challenges the conclusion? Media blackout. No one cover it.
For example, did you know that the prevalence of asymptomatic transmission of COVID is actually debatable? Seriously. According to a new paper in Nature, asymptomatic transmission is rare. Here is an interpretation of that paper as well as the Nature paper itself. If this study is accurate, this would drastically change the way in which we approach reopening. So why don’t we discuss it? Because it tells a different story. This new study might be complete dog shit, but refusing to discuss it is not science. It is politics.
Karl Popper wrote that “scientific knowledge consists in the search for truth, but it is not the search for certainty." In science, it is OK to be wrong, the only sin is to stop searching for the truth because you prefer the blissful ignorance of certainty. If you want to use science then use science. Not this bastardized, polarized version of it we drag out to sway busy smart people to think a certain way.
California political officials have not followed the lockdown.
First there was Pelosi at the hair salon. Then there was Gavin at French Laundry. (I don’t mean to harp on this one, but you could not come up with a more embarrassing story given the background context of a pandemic and who attended this dinner.)
Errors like these by our politicians do two things:
Erode confidence in leadership. The inability to lead by example sends a subtle message to the population that “the elites” don’t take these orders seriously. There is a feeling of “hmm, I wonder what happens when the camera is not on them?” Their actions make it more likely for people to rebel against the protective orders of staying at home.
Amplify the differences between elites and the working class. There is a growing concern that the government is run by elites that are disconnected from the population they represent. The messaging already sounds very hollow to a large portion of the American population. For example, as Jeffery A. Tucker points out:
"Stay home and save lives" really means "I'm privileged so I can work from home and still make money. I hereby transfer the burden of herd immunity to the workers and peasants who deliver my food and keep society functioning while I luxuriate in my personal digital utopia."
The lockdown is asymmetric in distributing downside. It disproportionately rocks restaurants and blue collared workers while the white collared class continues unabated. Now add on top of that key figures who are not following the lockdown and you are left with a powder keg of civil unrest.
Putting it all together
In the novel Animal Farm, a band of farm animals form their own society, based on complete equality under the mantra “All animals are equal”. The pigs take over the task of organizing everything for the society. As the novel progresses, the pigs take advantage of the power and privileges that come with their role. They drink whisky that was previously outlawed and indulge in extra food. This tyranny is formalized when they change the mantra to “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
The parallels between this allegory and California are clear. We have a disconnected government elite class that sets rules that don’t have any downside for them. They selectively wield science to rationalize these rules whilst partaking in various “illegal” indulgences while no one is watching.
We are establishing an Orwellian dystopia to the working class under the slogan:
All science is trusted, but some science is trusted more than others.
We should do better. Cause God dammit I want to go eat out at restaurants.
mRNA vaccines
Like I promised last week, let’s deep dive into vaccines.
I am going to dumb this down to a level where I can understand it. All sources where I found this information are included at the end.
What is a virus?
A virus is a ball of DNA or RNA that is housed in a protein shell. Its sole goal in “life” is that it wants to replicate itself and “survive”. Like a horny teenager that listens to Fall Out Boy, a virus is not exactly alive, it just wants to replicate.
How does a virus replicate?
In order to replicate, a virus needs living cells. That is where we come in. We are a collection of tasty living cells. The virus finds its way into us (ie: you breathe in COVID) and it goes about taking over our cells.
That process looks like:
Step 1: The virus latches on to a cell.
Step 2: The virus injects its strand of DNA into the cell. Which sounds oddly sexual.
Step 3: That DNA strand hijacks the living cell’s machinery to replicate more virus inside the cell.
Step 4: The new viruses self-assemble within the now dead cell, burst out of it, and infect new ones.
Viruses are pretty metal. They are bringers of cell death.
But why care? What does this really mean to you and I?
Why do viruses make me sick?
“Being sick” is a combination of the virus killing our cells and our immune system working overtime. Specifically, when a virus makes you sick, two things are happening:
The virus is killing your cells. Most viruses target a specific organ or type of tissue, so that system has reduced function, and is poisoned by the byproducts of cell death. Like how COVID patients have a hard time breathing.
Your immune system is trying to kill the virus. Fevers speed up your white blood cells and production of antibodies, and can directly harm some pathogens. A stuffed up nose can contain infections to the mucous membranes of the sinuses and prevent them from spreading to the lungs. Runny nose and diarrhea can directly expel pathogens. Inflammation occurs when the body is forcing immune cells, along with some fluid, out of your veins and into tissue at the site of an infection, causing swelling.
The body is incredible and disgusting. But obviously, none of this is grand. We don’t want to be sick at all. This is where vaccines enter the picture.
The goal of a vaccine is to teach your body how to respond in case the virus finds its way inside of your body. We vaccinate when we consider infection to be inevitable and/or the downside risk of the virus running its course through your system to be too high.
How do normal vaccines work?
Regardless of the vaccine, the main idea is that once these are injected into you, your body is fooled into thinking that you are infected and your immune system attacks and destroys it. Your immune system now remembers how to fight it off and should you get infected with the real thing, your immune system is primed and ready to react much faster than before.
There are two main kinds of vaccines that are widely used now:
Protein subunit vaccines inject harmless pieces of the virus or bacteria into your system. Our immune system recognizes that the proteins don’t belong in the body and begins making T-lymphocytes and antibodies. If we are ever infected in the future, memory cells will recognize and fight the virus.
Vector vaccines contain a weakened version of a live virus or dead version of the virus that has genetic material from the virus inserted in it. Once inside our cells, the genetic material gives cells instructions to make a protein that is unique to the virus. Using these instructions, our cells make copies of the protein. This prompts our bodies to build T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight that virus if we are infected in the future.
But we have seen the most promise in a new form of vaccine called the mRNA vaccine. This is what Moderna and Pfizer created to help fight off this disease.
How are mRNA vaccines different than normal vaccines?
Again, the idea is the same. Train the immune system to be ready for the fight of its life. But the mechanism is different. Whereas other vaccines are focused on introducing harmless forms of virus or virus proteins directly into the system, mRNA vaccines deliver instructions to your cells on how to produce these same harmless virus proteins. The viruses that we use now are like delivering you take out whereas an mRNA vaccine is delivering you the recipe for how to make the food on your own.
mRNA vaccines are giving you the code (in the form of genetic material) to produce the proteins rather than giving you the proteins. Essentially, they are giving you the tools to be your own boss.
After our cells make copies of the protein, they destroy the genetic material from the vaccine. Our bodies recognize that the protein should not be there and build T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight the virus if we are infected in the future.
Should you be scared to take an mRNA vaccine?
No. There is currently no evidence to suggest that these are dangerous to humans. Not to mention that by the time this gets to most of us, we will have millions of data points to consult about the risk profile of taking the injection. So as time goes on, your anti-vax position will sound stupider and stupider.
However, I do think the following questions are super reasonable concerns:
Quality control: You are manufacturing billions of vaccines, what is the quality control plan? How are we ensuring that every vaccine produced is not contaminated?
This will require some strong manufacturing chops to handle. Pfizer is uniquely positioned to do this well as they are already a drug/vaccine producing powerhouse. They will already have all of the quality control mechanisms in place to make sure they are producing good product billions of times over. Moderna needs a partnership with a known vaccine manufacturer to pull this off.
Logistics: mRNA vaccines are inherently unstable and require special super cooling storage conditions to avoid breaking apart. These vaccines will require unprecedented freezer conditions for distribution and administration. What is the plan we have for delivering this vaccine from factory to end consumer?
Background on storage conditions required for both:
The Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine will need to be stored at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit and will degrade in around five days at normal refrigeration temperatures of slightly above freezing. Not surprisingly, Pfizer is also developing shipping containers using dry ice to address shipping constraints.
Moderna claims its vaccine can be maintained at most home or medical freezer temperatures for up to six months for shipping and longer-term storage. Moderna also claims its vaccine can remain stable at standard refrigerated conditions, of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, for up to 30 days after thawing, within the six-month shelf life.
I would love to see a comprehensive plan about how you can guarantee that the vaccines are reaching me under ideal conditions. Moderna seems to have the edge here over Pfizer as their vaccine would be more stable using existing freezer architecture.
Conclusion
Get vaccinated. But pay attention to the data as we have more and more people getting it.
Background research sources
Entry level reading on viruses and vaccines:
Additional reading on mRNA vaccines:
Male opera singers dubbed with ship’s horns
While we can get into some dense topics here, we always like to finish the newsletter with a subtle reminder that we like to have fun here. Enjoy the show.
Closing time
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