In the Gilded Age of the late 19th century in the US, the über-wealthy had a tendency to corner markets in commodities, to extract higher prices for themselves. Surely we’re not doing that any more are we? … Surely?

Of course our timeline is cruel and stupid. Of this, there can be no disagreement among reasonable persons. But… it is, very occasionally, if you look closely enough, also absurd in interesting ways. Let’s look at one serious example and a couple silly ones.

… leaf?

The GPU chipmakers, data center operators, and AI companies are apparently involved in an immense series of what look like kickbacks to each other, masquerading as economic activity.

Sometimes the AI LLMs show off their expertise in spectacular fashion.

Just in case your hands are zip-tied for some reason… probably don’t wear loafers.

Cory Doctorow has a few (unfortunately) wise bits of advice on the nearing LLM AI bubble collapse.

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the day on which Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov decided not to end the world. Not ending the world is an example worthy of imitation, even by our degenerate politicians. As well as by each of us.

So, Trump and Kennedy announce ex cathedra that acetaminophen during pregnancy causes autism. Is this stupid or not?

Russian dead in Ukraine: now more than 1,100,000.

Is more political violence in the US perpetrated by the left or the right?

Today I got the fall 2025-2026 COVID-19 booster. Why so early?

Somebody asked me about safety data for this fall’s COVID-19 booster vaccinations. Again.

It appears some of our large, powerful institutions are taking a ‘See No Evil’ approach to morality: if nobody can see the bad thing, then that’s just as good as not doing the bad thing, right?

Usually headlines are just annoying, but once in a great while they’re perfect.

Prime factoring is one of the key algorithms to modern encryption security. Does it help if you use a dog?

The Bad Doggies are at it again, exfiltrating the Social Security data of about 450 million Americans, living and dead. Great times for identity thieves. Not so great for everybody else.

The Republicans seem to be at war with… weather forecasting?!

We all know AI Large Language Models (LLMs) are a bad idea, right? How about if it actually made you crazy, as well? (Content Warning: Mild profanity. The world “bullsh*t” is used frequently, though as a quantified statistical characteristic of text. The needs of the times are what they are.)

We haven’t been to Tanglewood in… approximately forever? Ok, not for at least a decade. Last weekend, some friends helped us remedy that whole situation.

Somebody asked me about a t-shirt they saw. Now, why would anybody do that?

[Mild Content Warning: this is a long, dark, angry post. But it’s grounded in the unfortunate facts of a dark, angry time. “Long” is just my own fault.] Periodically, somebody asks me about current news in vaccines. I find it really hard now to write about that subject, for reasons that should be obvious. Perhaps this post is less analysis, and more catharsis?

There was once – and still is – a first-person shooter game called DOOM. Now it runs on… the most absurd platforms possible.

(US-centric post.) We’ve finally gotten Social Security beneifts turned on and straightened out. Also, Medicare. It was not easy!

Russian dead in Ukraine: 1,000,000. I hardly know what to say.

As the US government continues to burn under Republican’s deranged arson, we’ve made the Weekend Retirement Portfolio a tad more defensive.

I was going add to the previous LLM sewage rant, but… it’s just too much!

It’s Memorial Day in the US again. This happens every year, but lately it seems we are absolutely determined to learn nothing from it.

Remember how we’ve been saying that current Large Language Model (LLM) AI’s are about as useful as buckets of warm sewage & broken glass? Yeah, about that…

Paul Krugman asks: Is this the year we doom civilization? Because it’s come to that.

So there’s this “Feedle” thing: a search engine of RSS feeds.

It appears some DOGE boys have been Very Bad Little Doggies, over at the National Labor Relations Board.

Today the Russian deaths in Ukraine ticked over another milestone on their way to a million, passing 900,000 dead.

MIT is famous for having… unusual works of art on its campus. They’ve recently managed to surprise even jaded old me.

Today I got a COVID-19 vaccine booster, because that’s recommended twice yearly for seniors. I also got an MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) booster because… knuckleheads.

So… it’s Pi Day again. Didn’t we do this last year?

Are the federal government firings by Trump/Musk/DOGE random, or in large departments, or politically targeted regardless of merit? It turns out there’s evidence to decide this objectively.

So… Valentine’s Day, eh?

A couple recent news reports said the Tesla Cybertruck caught fire and killed people more often than the infamous Ford Pinto of the 1970s. Let’s look statistically at the data and see if this is believable. Surely we’ve learned from past experiences with corporate misfeasance, not to mention fire safety?

In the wake of a revenant Trump and the resulting generally deranged policies, we’ve decided to alter our retirement investments.

Apparently, by longstanding lore and custom, today is Superb Owl Sunday. How, exactly, should one celebrate this?

While the US Republicans were busy excreting a fascist into power, we had a trip to Japan to visit family. I took too many pictures, mostly of grocery stores and food.

So, I briefly left the country, and y’all put in a new President. How’s that working out after 1 week?

So… Trump Sentencing Day, eh?

Today the Russian deaths in Ukraine passed another milestone: 800,000 dead.

A few years ago, someone formally queried the government of Wales about alleged UFO sightings around Cardiff Airport. Apparently, this struck a nerve.

It appears a Polish city has a particularly clever way of sensing pollution in their water supply and closing valves. With bivalves.

Adam Ragusea’s cooking channel on YouTube has a post on uranium glass. And how to build a cloud chamber in your kitchen.

Does it mean anything when the stock market goes up several days in a row? Or down?

Today, in news of the police of Finland…

Years ago, somebody asked me (an office mate, actually) about lottery tickets when the return was positive. Generally, lottery tickets are meant to lose money for you on average. So speaking only of money, you shouldn’t buy them. But once in a long while, they have a positive expected return. Should you buy one of those? Still no.

Somebody asked me – ok, really I saw it on Mastodon, but close enough – about gender bias in the tech layoff cycle of 2022. Is it really true that women were targeted?

It’s that special time of year again… Krampusnacht!

Previously, we looked at the party control of the 3 US government branches and their effect on the economy. We unaccountably left out the budget deficit, so let’s have a look at that: Republicans are commonly thought to be good for the budget, but are they really?

Over dinner a few days ago, we were talking about about whether the Wyoming Rule would fix some of the bias in the Electoral College. The ‘Wyoming Rule’ is a proposal to make the US House of Representatives more representative of people, not territory. How might the arithmetic work out for which party gets more seats?

No Twitter. No more.

People who are absolutely certain about something kind of scare me.

So… Trump again. Honestly, I don’t know how we survive this. Survive as a planetary civilization, survive as democracies, or even how I survive personally. I just don’t know how to gather the energy to live through this.

So… election night it is, then?

The Russian dedication to killing their own military has staggered past another milestone: 700,000 Russian dead.

Google has done a very silly thing: feed them some information, and they’ll make a podcast with 2 AI hosts ‘discussing’ it. We fed them this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR). The results are… amusing?

Does it matter, economically speaking, which US party holds the Presidency, Senate, and House? Maybe not the way you think! The last 50 years of evidence implies Republicans are associated with worse inflation and unemployment. It is false that Republicans are better on the economy. That myth needs to die.

Today I got shot… i.e., vaccinated against COVID-19… again.

So… if you’re a US voter, are you undecided about the election?!

This week I voted in the 2024 election.

A couple days ago, I saw something weird in Harvard Square. Nothing weird about that, right?

I just saw The Best Political Ad Ever. Most of them are terrible, but this one is warm, artful, and competent.

Somebody asked me what I thought would happen at the debate tonight. Not gonna watch it.

The US is undemocratic in a variety of ways, favoring older voters and very old politicians among them. That might be about to change.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine passed another milestone: 600,000 Russian dead (and counting).

A couple years having passed since the last cell transplant, our lawnmower is once again in need of battery surgery.

Remember the Weekend Hydrangea Team? Let’s check in on them, and see how they’re doing.

Republicans are planning now to refuse certification of the 2024 election results.

So, Harris at the convention… I wonder how that’s going?

Does more education help in prying people loose from antisemitism? Frustratingly, “it depends.”

Republican voter suppression and other electoral mischief is already starting. It’s time now to check your registration, and keep checking it until November.

Have you ever wondered just how mathematically illiterate our rulers really are? Buckle up, Buttercup: it’s worse than you think.

The cameras, facial recognition, and snoopy cops without warrants haven’t gone away. Need new clothes for some reason?

Good news on preliminary Phase 3 readout of lenacapavir: 100% efficacy in preventing infection!

In Japan, you can buy almost anything from a vending machine. Recently, here in the US, we’ve made horrible progress on that front.

So… the 4th of July, here in the US?

So, Biden/Trump debate, eh?

Somebody asked me, in the course of a family video call, what I thought about the latest AI Large Language Models (LLMs) and how they’re being used for everything. Have they improved from their previous BS conditions? Ahem. Uh… no.

There’s an addendum to the post FDA VRBPAC: COVID-19 Vaccine Composition for Fall 2024, about the FDA’s override of the VRBPAC to specify the KP.2 strain for this fall’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Today the US FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met to discuss the composition of COVID-19 booster vaccines for fall 2024. Let’s check out the science content.

A post-Memorial Day thought: Russian casualties in Ukraine are now more than half a million dead.

Conviction Day: a jury in New York City found former President Trump guilty of on all 34 felony counts.

Apparently, it’s Memorial Day in the US. Again. Seems like this happens every year, or something. Here at Château Weekend, we still have ambivalent feelings about it (as is the custom of our tribe).

Saturday, we went to a concert by the Spectrum Singers in Cambridge, at the historic First Church Congregational. I was a little apprehensive about Schoenberg and Ives, but looked forward to the Vaughan Williams.

Remember how much US Republicans during the pandemic thought wearing masks was a horror beyond imagination? They’ve gone beyond that, now.

Sometimes, the “right to repair” can be taken to levels best described as pure madness.

A major solar coronal mass ejection has resulted in generational-sized geomagnetic storms on Earth. Also, glow-thingies in the sky.

It’s easy for the rich to avoid taxation in the US – it appears that the 400 richest Americans now have an effective tax rate below that of the bottom half of income earners. How unusual is this?

We members of the Nerd Tribe like our little jokes. The more obscure, requiring loads of intellectual context, the better. The DNS system is taking this one step further.

Does the party in power in the US White House affect violent death rates? Apparently so!

Usually, academic book reviews are a genteel and polite affair, at worst damning with faint praise. Usually… but not always!

The Russian invasion of Ukraine just keeps getting worse. Predictably.

So, did I hear there was an eclipse today?

Somebody asked me about Sabine Hossenfelder’s recently published thoughts on the difficulties of academic physics as a career. Yup, she’s right on point!

Today I experienced a sacred moment. Do you want to know more (homage à John Varley’s “Press Enter”)?

A little Bayesian coda on confidence limits for the probability of a government shutdown, given a Republican house.

Can we afford to live in a world with billionaires? It seems not!

AI-written content is beginning to pollute everything, now including the academic literature. Can it be detected? For now, yes; long term, probably not.

It’s springtime! That means Republicans in the US want to shut down the federal government. Or does it? Let’s look at some data, and find out.

Yesterday I had some surgery. Today, after (mostly) processing the drugs, it’s time to take stock of the experience.

So… it’s Pi Day. Again. Didn’t we do this last year?

Yesterday I got my 8th COVID-19 booster. It was ok!

Yesterday came news of the unfortunate death of a driver in a Tesla which backed into a pond, whereupon the power cut making the doors unable to open and the windows essentially unbreakable. How many things went wrong here, and who could have foreseen this?

Sometimes you think the fascists, confederates, and Republicans just can’t get any worse, or any more clueless. Then you wake up.

So… Super Tuesday, is it?

So, it’s Leap Year Day. Is the Gregorian calendar we use in any sense optimal?

Today the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met, to decide recommendations on COVID-19 vaccines for 2024. Let’s go see what went down.

Trump is facing a gag order in his NY trial, on the basis that he has previously threatened judges, clerks, attorneys, witnesses and jurors – including death threats. While this is obviously true, do we have objective evidence that this is the case? Why, yes: yes, we do.

Somebody asked me if I’m dead, given the lack of posts here for 4 months. It’s not prima facie an unreasonable question.

Tired of all the mass surveillance in our late capitalism culutre? Maybe it’s your fashion sense.

So… long time, no blog, eh?

Remember back when I started referring to Trump as a fascist? (Neither do I. It’s been way obvious for a way long while.) Well, now plenty of well-informed others are saying it too.

Sometimes the news is so inevitable and sad that all we can do is bear witness and mourn.

People in the US keep saying, over and over: “Republicans are good for the economy”. But what does the data say?

Last Saturday, 2022-Jun-22, two preprints from Korean physicists dropped on ar$\chi$iv. They claim room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductivity in a chemically relatively non-exotic material. Let’s see what they’ve got.

I am slowly learning never to ask how low Republicans can go in the US.

Some good news: Boston COVID-19 wastewater levels were at (and now slightly above) the 2-year low.

This Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR) now has official personal data collection and cookie policies. You only think you don’t care about that.

So, in the US today it’s Father’s Day.

Today is Bloomsday. Umm… what?

Somebody submitted a paper to a journal. The journal sent it out for peer review. A reviewer, skimping on their job, used ChatGPT to write the review. This went about as well as you probably think.

Today in the US, we again experimented with a new national commemorative holiday: Arraignment Day for Donald Trump.

Do Democratic or Republican presidencies in the US result in more executive branch criminal indictments per year in office? We all think we know, but let’s consult the data.

Two nights ago, I was at Symphony Hall in Boston waiting for the Boston Pops to perform, when I saw that Trump was indicted. Clearly a big subject to wait for the next day, hence yesterday’s blog post. With that good news out of the way, let’s talk about what it’s like to go back to the symphony after years at home.

Yesterday in the US, we experimented with a possible new national commemorative holiday: Indictment Day for Donald Trump.

Does anybody else wonder what’s going on in the heads of legislators who are “outlier” votes? Like, when a vote is 33-1, what’s that one guy thinking? Principled holdout, or just stubborn? (Or maybe not very bright?)

Apparently, here in the US it’s Memorial Day again. What should we think about that? Well… a lot!

One of the (few) advantages to having been steeped in old books during youth is you begin to realize how often we do the same dumb stuff, over and over, for centuries. This seems to be especially true in law, politics, economics, and war.

Today the world reached yet another grim milestone in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Somebody asked me whether all my whining about post-COVID-19 brain fog was real. Yes, it is.

You know how world political, business, and financial leaders fetishize suits for men? Physicists do not do that.

We’ve (again) updated our estimate of when Russian casualties will reach 200k, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s published data. This time with an improved (though not perfect) prediction method.

We’ve updated our estimate of when Russian casualties will reach 200k, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s published data.

Today I got my 6th COVID-19 vaccination. Here’s why, in case you’re interested.

Somebody asked me what to make of the Russian casualty statistics that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence posts on Twitter every day. Two tentative conclusions: the data look a bit odd in spots (perhaps an artifact of how they collect it), and the Russians are losing soldiers and tanks at a sustained, alarming rate.

Times are dark, but sometimes there are glimmers of progress.

Somebody asked me about the naming of ChatGPT. (Content warning: Remarkably stupid joke, totally skippable by Very Serious People.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger keeps making sense, even when nobody else does.

How has the US performed vis à vis COVID-19? Are we learning to do better?

Today is Pi Day (3/14) in 2023. Sort of.

As if the world weren’t bad enough, today there’s evidence that Russian casualties in Ukraine have topped 150,000 dead.

Somebody just summarized for me the exact nature of ChatGPT.

Will we ever not be trapped by the base rate fallacy?

Somebody asked me about Biden’s State of the Union address. *Sigh*…

Today I learned about the Tripitaka Koreana: likely the most successful large data transfer over time in human history.

The FDA VRBPAC (Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee) met this week to discuss the composition of vaccines going forward. In particular, should we consolidate on a series of bivalent shots instead of the current mixture of old and new?

Another calendar year down; also another annus horribilis. Let’s review what happened in this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR), and studiously avoid the more daunting task of reviewing 2022.

Today I found 2 interesting takes on the Trolley Problem.

Comments on this Crummy Little Blog That Nobody Reads (CLBTNR) are temporarily disabled, due to Heroku lossge.

Apparently there has been some unusual fan conduct at the World Cup?

Today the Weekend Editrix got her annual flu vax and COVID-19 bivalent booster. Let’s look at why that’s a good idea for all of us.

It seems Twitter is dying. Time to armor plate this blog so quote tweets survive.

We just may be turning the corner.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Svante Pääbo.

Today I got my 12th vaccination since 2020! Really.

So, are you wondering if it’s worthwhile to bestir yourself to vote?

Sometimes there’s nothing to do but confess one’s own ignorance.

So, today I voted.

What do we know about the people for whom paxlovid works really well?

Our newest COVID-19 antiviral medicines, molnupiravir and paxlovid, have been out for a while now. What’s the real-world experience on efficacy?

We finally got to return to Japan to visit the Weekend Editrix’s mother!

Today the world still did not end, for the 39th time in a row.

Tired of COVID-19? Me too. But… apparently the SARS-CoV2 virus is not yet tired of us!

Everybody knows Twitter polls are… questionable. But are they reproducible?

Today, September 19, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Somebody asked me when we’d be getting the new bivalent COVID-19 boosters. (Not if but when.) Since we’ve both recently had COVID-19, that requires a bit of a think.

Somebody asked me a couple months ago about the significance of high nucleocapsid antibodies in unvaccinated people compared to the vaccinated. Now there’s another paper exploring the meaning of N ab levels. Let’s see what it says!

This is an index to all the Weekend Reading blog posts about our experience of the two of us having COVID-19 here at Chez Weekend.

Today the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to both Pfizer and Moderna’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccines for classic and Omicron/BA.4/5 variants.

Cops in the US are a hot mess of authoritarianism, viewing themselves as an occupying army. They’re sufficiently out of hand that the “defund the police” movement is starting to look like the side with the cool-headed, sensible arguments.

It’s been a month since we were exposed to COVID-19 here at Château Weekend, testing positive 2 days later. Surely it must all be over, right? Right? Ahem.

So… 25 days into the COVID-19 journey. Is it over yet?

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

So… are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

So… 15 days into COVID-19.

People are always telling me to “think positive”. I hate it.

Let’s see how job losses and rebounds (not COVID-19 rebounds, this time) look for the pandemic, compared to previous episodes of economic unpleasantness.

Is “paxlovid rebound” because of paxlovid, or because there are just a lot of COVID-19 rebounds?

Today is day 8 of my COVID-19 + paxlovid personal experience, i.e., 3 days past the last dose. Time to check for rebound infection.

Today I took my last dose of paxlovid.

Closing in on the 5th day of COVID, i.e., 4th day of paxlovid treatment.

It’s now 2 days into my course of paxlovid for COVID-19.

It’s now 1 day into my course of paxlovid for COVID-19.

Today your humble Weekend Editor finally tested positive for COVID-19. Sigh.

Everybody (well, every non-Republican) in the US is mad at Democratic Senator Manchin for being the vote blocking any meaningful climate change legislation at all. Well… there are a few other things to be mad about, right?

Two parables struck my eye this week: GK Chesterton’s Fence, and Primo Levi’s Onion in the Varnish. Do they counsel actions that are opposite, or the same?

Somebody asked me about how seriously we should take the COVID-19 Omicron/BA.4-5 variants, given that so many people are “done with COVID” and refuse to mask. Response: basically, we should take it very seriously; people without masks are being very silly. Silly in a deadly fashion, irresponsible to the health of the rest of us. To answer the titular question: yes, unfortunately, it appears so.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has a 6-3 conservative majority. Have the cases and decisions become any different as a result?

It seems I’ve been retired for 2 years now. What can 2 years of perspective tell us?

Today the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met to consider whether to add Omicron-specific vaccines to the mix, and how that policy should be set. Wanna read along to see what they do?

My lawnmower needed a new battery, but they’re no longer made. So I made one of my own.

Some crazy people are suspicious that Long COVID-19 is not a real thing. So we’re gratified here at Chez Weekend to find papers documenting some biomarkers for it that look pretty good!

Ever wonder how the past really looked? Not the jerky, off-speed, black & white silent stuff, but as if you were really there? Some video restorers are trying to recreate those experiences.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been controversial: people continue to object loudly and strongly to things like masking, social distancing, and closures of schools and workplaces. We now have some retrospective data: how have each of those measures performed, in terms of live saved for the complaints they’ve caused?

So Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and Dr. Seuss walk into a bar.

How thorough are vaccination rates in the US? And how geographically inhomogeneous?

The world is full of conspiracy theories, more than I recall ever being the case in the past, before social media. How reasonable is it to expect that a conspiracy can (a) depend on secrecy, (b) involve a large number of people, and (c) survive for more than a couple years? Not very, according to a probabilistic model!

Today the Moderna trial of a bivalent classic/Omicron COVID-19 vaccine read out. Looks pretty good, so a regulatory filing with the FDA is pending.

Today the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met to advise the FDA on whether to approve Novavax’s more traditional protein (non-mRNA) vaccine against COVID-19. Want to know who said what?

Two questions: what do we know about disease-induced vs vaccine-induced immunity, and what is the actual prevalence of COVID-19 beyond “officially reported” cases? Now there’s some data to think about here, though we can’t completely answer those questions.

An Israeli group has studied the use of paxlovid to treat COVID in a large group of age-stratified patients vs the SARS-CoV2 Omicron variant. The results are interesting, and a bit different from what I’d expected.

Three meetings of the FDA’s VRBPAC advisors on vaccines are coming up this month.

So, here in the US it’s Memorial Day. Again.

Have you ever eaten a giraffe?

Japan has done a quantitatively great job protecting Japanese citizens from COVID-19. What can we learn from them (about this, and so many other things)?

Videos by “vlogbrothers” Hank & John Green on the despair of the times led me to a WH Auden poem and an essay by Stephen Jay Gould on the ease of destruction vs the triviality of destruction. Also, a quick stop to visit Virgil (not via Inferno). Few can build; anybody can burn.

Siderea at Sibylla Bostoniensis today published a useful guide to getting prescribed paxlovid in Massachusetts, should you have the misfortune to find yourself testing positive for COVID-19.

Right-wing strategy: when reality has a well-known liberal bias… you can use legal gag orders to force your delusions upon people.

I can’t say I entirely approve of this. But I do understand the desire to inconvenience the Russian government given the Ukraine invasion, and the humor involved in the chosen method.

[Tone warning: Angry post.] We reached yesterday a grim and disgraceful milestone in the US, having at least 1 million COVID-19 dead. And that’s just the official count.

A plaintive cry I hear with regrettable frequency from non-science/non-math types is that we are all heartless. “But what’s really in your heart?!” they whine. Today, I’ll show you.

Apparently Moderna just had an earnings call, and there was some talk of whether multivalent Omicron boosters could be available in time for fall/winter 2022/2023.

A burning question for everybody who’s gotten a booster, or wants one: the same arm, or the other arm?

I have a hard time controlling my anger at the unvaccinated, the spreaders of disinformation, and the superstitious for prolonging the pandemic and killing people world-wide. Others, who are likely better people than me, have managed to find another way.

Remember last year when we noted the highest-vaccination ethnic group in the US? They’re still winning, and it shows in the statistics.

What sort of progress is being made on pancoronavirus vaccines?

Evusheld is an antibody infusion which confers about 6 months of vaccine-like immunity to COVID-19. How can that possibly work, when antibodies last a few days to a few weeks?!

Somehow we’ve stumbled into striking down mask mandates. Who did that? AND is it ok, with the next wave situation of SARS-CoV2? Do you even have to guess?

COVID-19 has brought to light a lot of disparities in the US. Today’s scientific paper is about just how certainly we know the Trumpy parts of the country, especially the South, were COVID-19 disasters: hundreds of thousands of excess deaths due to mask defiance, vaccine refusal, and malign conservative disinformation.

Pfizer just read out a Phase 2/3 trial of paxlovid for preventing transmission of COVID-19 to other members of a household when one member is infected. Alas: nope.

Recently 2 Trump-appointed judges in the US have ruled that they can overturn Biden policies because there is simultaneously too much COVID-19 and too little COVID-19. They’re not even pretending to be rational any more.

Today the Weekend Editrix got shot for the 7th time in the trailing 12 months, having gotten her 2nd booster for COVID-19.

Some good news: there’s now another COVID-19 antiviral drug candidate that has the same target as paxlovid in late clinical trials.

Somebody asked me about the evidence associating putative ivermectin effects with worms, not COVID-19. Seems like it’s been finally published!

Today I found out that I missed out a bit by getting my PhD anywhere but Finland.

So, it’s Passover. What might late-stage capitalism have to say about that?

This week the FDA’S Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) met to consider future policy for vaccine boosters and variants for the future.

Today I got my 7th vaccination shot in the last 12 months. Happily.

A Republican US Senator says he would allow states to ban interracial marriage. What?!

Somebody asked me to put a headshot up on this crummy little blog that nobody reads (CLBTNR). No idea why, but…

I feel I’m walking a knife-edge between hope and despair. The news is not helping.

Today I came across an unexpected source of encouragement in the matter of Russia and Ukraine.

We would like to think we’ve learned a few things from our collective COVID-19 experience, but the evidence is somewhat equivocal. What we’ve definitely learned is that there will almost certainly be another booster.

Today is Pi Day (3/14), so we reflect upon π.

Yesterday we went to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the first time in, obviously, years.

XKCD qua XKCD is just XKCD. Latin does things to your mind.

People are clamoring for an end to “restrictions”, by which they mean masks and closures. And, of course, vaccination mandates. They’re eager to be done with COVID-19, whether COVID-19 is done with them or not. Does any of that make sense? Well… some of it… maybe.

Somebody asked about a recently published abstract comparing ivermectin vs remdesivir in treating COVID-19. (Sigh.)

Somebody asked me why we don’t have enough paxlovid or bebtelovimab to go around. After mumbling “something something supply chain”, they ask another question: why can’t we just make more, and faster? Far from being naïve, that’s a very good question.

Somebody asked me why I haven’t said anything about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Well…

Joss Fong at Vox just put together an explainer on political defiance of COVID-19 vaccines in the US. It’s one of the best pieces of data journalism lite (i.e., no equations) and graphic design for explanation that I’ve ever seen.

Somebody asked me why I’m always so dour. Well, times are hard: pandemic waves, disinformation & death, potential nuclear war over Ukraine, the rise of the fascist right, climate change not only unchecked but furiously denied, and so on. So let’s take some inventory of our problems… and maybe a few points that (may) cause hope for the future.

Yesterday came simultaneous bits of evidence in the US that (a) COVID-19 death rates for unvaccinated are unambiguously disastrous, and (b) Republicans attempted to defund any school that takes COVID-19 protections. This is ‘death cult’ levels of badness.

Times are difficult, here in the 3rd year of a global pandemic that drags on and on, because people just cannot grasp the importance of public health measures and vaccination. Anything that sustains our spirit and our belief in a good core of human nature is important. So why am I looking at dog statues on bridges in Prague?

The shameful behavior of the anti-vaxxers has reached intolerable levels. It’s been extremely bad for a while, but now they’re picking off prominent scientists and public intellectuals with death threats.

On Monday 2022-Feb-15 the FDA’s VRBPAC will meet to consider Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for ages 6mo - 2yr. It worked for 6mo - 2yr, but not for 2yr - 4yr. A 3rd dose is being tested for 2yr - 4yr, but the FDA invited this application so parents can get their kids started on the first 2 doses while waiting for data on the 3rd. Unusual? Very!

Somebody asked me about a report that Moderna’s monkey trial of an Omicron-specific booster wasn’t any better than the existing vaccine. What should we think about that?

It’s important that we keep nagging people to get vaccinated, at escalating levels of unpleasantness. Let me show you why.

As long as we’ve got our heads in the sewers, what else is happening with wastewater SARS-CoV2 analyses? It turns out, New York City rather alarmingly has some “cryptic sequences” not yet observed in humans. This is how the virus is scheming to throw another wave at us.

In 2020-November and 2021-May, we looked at the SARS-CoV2 mRNA in Boston wastewater. It’s relation to medical loads was erratic. How’s it look with another 9 months of data?

Good news: the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, aka ‘Spikevax’, is now fully FDA-approved!

Lots people say ‘I did my own research’ on subjects in which they are not sufficiently educated to evaluate data, let alone form an independent opinion reliably. Here’s what that sounds like to actual research scientists.

There have now been around 10 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses given. What should we make of that?

Last October, we noted that NIAID had granted $36 million for the development of a pan-coronavirus vaccine. Time for an report: how’s that working out?

Regrettably, it has come to light that my former industry has some bad actors who are funding the Republican politicians who attempted to overthrow the last election. Who are these funders of insurrectionists, and once we know their companies can we shame them into stopping?

Previously, we wrote about how hard it currently is to find paxlovid, given intense demand, supply chain frustrations, and the complex synthesis pathway. Today let’s have a look at how exactly one goes about discovering such a thing, with an improbable number of steps in its chemistry. (Hint: an awful lot of luck/serendipity was involved!)

How’s the US pandemic doing in comparison to other countries, particularly those that Republicans love to diss?

Today in the US is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when we honor the civil rights advocate who pushed for rights for racial minorities and the poor, for which he was assassinated. How best should that honor be expressed?

The Omicron wave is coming. Paxlovid is scarce. Which way will it go?

Paxlovid is a remarkable early therapeutic for people who’ve caught COVID-19. But… it’s very scarce for the next few months, ironically during the Omicron wave. Where can you score some paxlovid?!

It’s fashionable lately to be skeptical about technology. (Of everything, really.) Sometimes we don’t realize how deep are the roots of suspicion of innovation, and (usually) how wrong.

How long can COVID-19 go on? If you answered less than $O(10^4)$ years until everyone with susceptible genes is dead… well, think again.

Against best pandemic advice, First Night happened again in Boston. Wanna see a highlight?

A full calendar year of blogging has passed. So, thankfully, has the annus horribilis 2021CE. How did we come out? (The blog, that is. 2021 itself is still too traumatizing to discuss.)

Winter is just objectively the best time of year. Do not attempt to correct me on this matter.

Today the Webb Space Telescope launched successfully. Happy Christmas.

… aaaaand, today the suspense is over: the FDA has authorized paxlovid.

It’s that season again: the time of nerdly meditations on the analemma. The shortest day of the year, Dec 21, is yet to come. But for night owls, the day of earliest sunset (at the latitude of Château Weekend) was Dec 8th. How can that be? That’s the tale of the analemma!

Today Pfizer announced they’ve submitted the final data package to the FDA for their COVID-19 anti-viral oral therapy, paxlovid. Wanna take a look at the (scant) data we have so far, as a holiday gift of sorts to all of humanity?

Last weekend, the Weekend Editrix was exposed to a person who tested positive for COVID-19. The need for rapid testing suddenly became very real for us. While waiting for the test to work, we worked out the Bayesian stats for the test: a positive test means near-100% chance of COVID-19, while a negative test means 89.4% chance of no COVID-19.

Guess what? Yesterday, the FDA gave Emergency Use Authorization to another COVID-19 medication, Evusheld from AstraZeneca. Yeah… I didn’t know, either!

YLE has some important advice for all of us about surviving Omicron.

Will the Omicron variant outcompete Delta? Starting to look like it. Will that be a bad thing? Dunno, could go either way depending on reinfection rate and severity.

Remember last month, when we had the story about people in Greece bribing doctors for fake vaccines, and doctors taking the money but giving real vaccines? Even though that story has some believability challenges, it’s no longer the weirdest vaccine story I’ve heard. Move over, Greece: the Italians are on the job. (And where are the French surrealists, anyway?)

A couple days ago, commenting at TheZvi, I blithely averaged efficacies from the early and late cohorts of the molnupiravir trial. Fellow commenter Thomas pointed out that this is not correct! This post is a mea culpa and a lesson to myself on How to Do It Right.

Today the FDA’s Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee (AMDAC) meets to decide whether or not to recommend emergency use authorization (EUA) of Merck’s molnupiravir, and antiviral therapy for mild to moderate COVID-19 in adults. Wanna read along?

There’s a new SARS-CoV2 variant. How bad does it look? Nobody really knows, but it’s got the potential to be very, very bad.

With vaccination rates rising (albeit glacially slowly), and new therapeutics like molnupiravir and paxlovid about to be approved, people are asking: is it over? My take is: probably not.

The right-wing knuckleheadedness around ivermectin as a COVID-19 therapy continues to amaze me. This week I came across 2 ivermectin takedowns: a Malaysian clinical trial and Scott Alexander’s dissection of the ivmmeta.com metanalysis. Two thumbs down. Way down.

Charles Gaba has updated his county-level COVID-19 vax rates and death rates, versus percentage of Trump voters. It’s not pretty.

Vaccines are great, but now there are some exciting new treatments for COVID-19, in case you get a breakthrough infection (or made the wrong choice about accepting vaccination). Let’s look at how well they work, and what they might cost in comparison to other things.

If you think we can end the pandemic without vaccinating kids because they tend not to get so sick… think again. Try harder this time.

COVID-19 has taught us some lessons about (a) how mind-numbingly stupid and corrupt we can be, and (b) some forms of corruption that are so confusing that I can’t tell if they are the divine madness or instead just ϜΤΦ.

Last summer, we saw some evidence that COVID-19 vaccination conferred better immunity than ‘natural’ immunity from recovering from the disease. How has that held up in the face of new evidence?

Hey, let’s think about something that’s not COVID-19! Like, for example: when exactly did the Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland happen?

COVID-19 death rates in the US are nakedly partisan. So is mask resistance. So is delusional belief about nonsensical use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Care to draw a conclusion?

Today the Weekend Editrix got shot, also for the sixth time this year! It was pretty good.

Today the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meets to discuss an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty for children ages 5 – 11. Lots of parents have been awaiting this for the last year and a half, with varying degress of frayed nerves.

Well… are we?

What are the consequences of relying on ‘natural’ immunity after recovery from COVID-19? Pretty grim, as it turns out.

Two NYPD transit cops forcibly ejected a citizen from a Manhattan subway station. His crime? Pointing out that the cops were not wearing masks, in contravention of a statewide mask mandate, and, for that matter, simple common sense and courtesy.

This crummy little blog that nobody reads has been around for a little more than a year. It’s time to look at the numbers and see how we’ve been doing.

The history of why vaccine mandates are in fact constitutional in the United States has a long, somewhat twisted history. It’s also of local interest, here at Chez Weekend, as many of the important events transpired a short MBTA ride away.

Today the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets to review the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen application for 2nd dose boosters of their COVID-19 vaccine. They will also at least discuss the 3x3 mix-and-match booster study.

Today the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets to review the Moderna application for 3rd dose boosters of their COVID-19 vaccine, Spikevax. Wonderful name aside, there should be a good case to be made as well.

Today I learned of a hero, engaged in a Great Work that is clearly a service to all humanity. Oh, and there were donuts, too.

Do you want the good news first?

Today I got shot. Again. For the sixth time this year!

Today the world did not end. That’s 38 times in a row, now.

Yes, discontent with the corporate system and rule by managers is a thing. As are the associated nightmares, and the corresponding fantasies of justice.

Today I learned the commercial names of the COVID-19 vaccines. One of them is a real winner!

Today the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets to review the Pfizer/BioNTech application for 3rd dose boosters of their COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty. Opinion is divided, so there will be some arguing. I’m makin’ popcorn.

Problem-solving skills are important.

Today I got shot for the fifth time this year. Again, not guns and not COVID, execrable as they both are. Influenza vaccination this time.

[Warning: Post contains full frontal nerdity. Bug reports appreciated!] I finally got a copy of Pham-Gia’s paper on the distribution of the ratio of 2 independent Beta-distributed random variables. While I still have some childhood trauma around hypergeometric functions like ${}_{2}F_{1}()$ and its even scarier big brother ${}_{3}F_{2}()$… it’s time to face my fears.

Today marks 2 decades since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC, the Pentagon in DC, and a third target that was spared because airline passengers forced a crash in Shanksville, PA. It also marks, with the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, at least a winding down, though possibly not a complete ending, of 20 years of war. It’s time to think about war memorials… sort of.

Today Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and MIT’s Plasma Science Fusion Center (PSFC) announced they have successfully built high-$T_c$ REBCO magnet capable of 20T field strength. What should that mean to you?

Texas passed an abortion ban at 6 weeks, in defiance of Federal rulings that they cannot do this before fetal viability (about 25weeks). How did that happen?

Have a quarter of us gone mad? It would seem so…

Today is Labor Day in the US. It’s also Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. What can we make of that coincidence, even without being Jewish?

Today comes news that we’ve wasted about 15.1 million doses of COVID-19 doses here in the US. Is that a lot, or a little? How does it compare with history? Is the difference, if any, just random or is it real, i.e., statistically significant?

Today I got shot for the fourth time this year. No, not the COVID-19 booster (yet). The second dose of Shingrix, for shingles.

I’m a data-driven guy who detests persuasian by emotional anecdotes. But most people are, to my dismay, different in that regard. ZDoggMD does a good job today of persuading them.

Somebody asked me about why the vaccines are high efficacy with rare breakthrough infections, but we can see a high fraction of the hospitalized are vaccinated? Right, very puzzling. Then somebody else asked me what I thought of an article about Simpson’s paradox in the context of COVID. Ding, ding, ding, ding!

Good news: the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is now fully FDA-approved!

From time to time, we make predictions here. Two of them were: high probability of COVID-19 vaccine boosters by fall 2021, and mRNA vaccines will dramatically change the future of vaccines. Guess what happened this week?

Somebody asked me about whether the COVID-19 vaccines prevented Alzheimers. Wait, what?

Somebody asked me about whether the COVID-19 vaccine could cause infertility. Wait, what?

Last week several bombs were dropped: COVID vaccine efficacy with the Delta variant, breakthrough infections, asymptomatic carriers, and changes in CDC guidelines. Was the panicky media coverage at all useful?

Somebody asked me why vaccinated people in the US seemed to be always so angry at the unvaccinated. Hmpf.

Periodically I meet people who think “natural” immunity from having had COVID-19 is somehow better than being vaccinated. A new Israeli study plumbs the depths of just how wrong that is.

Somebody asked me a couple days ago why the Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines don’t have full FDA approval. Umm… hmm. Good question.

What ethnic group in the US do you think has the highest vaccination rate?

The variants are starting to pile up. Unless we vaccinate everybody faster, there are going to be variants which evade vaccines and then we start all over. How close are we to that?

[Warning: US-centric, lefty political rant. If you’re from outside the US and want to laugh at us… well, fair enough: we’ve earned it.] I mean… really, Republicans? Do you seriously want to put up with politicians like this? For what possible reason? Why would you even want to be in the same party as people like this?

Back in April, we did some statistical analysis showing Trumpy states tended to have dramatically lower vaccination rates. Is that still the case? Regrettably, yes: more than ever.

Somebody asked me what I thought of ZDogg’s explanation of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant. My first thought was “ZDogg who? Is that a rapper or something?” My final thought was that the guy’s eminently reasonable, eloquent, and kind.

Today I got shot a third time! No, not a COVID-19 booster (though that’s getting pretty interesting, but its time is not yet). Today I got the first of 2 doses of the formerly-scarce Shingrix vaccine against shingles.

After reading my rant on the superiority of Treasury bonds vs corporate bonds as a stock diversifier, of course somebody asked me what the retirement portfolio of the denizens of Chez Weekend looked like. Basically: index funds, heavily diversified across bond types, stock sizes, valuations, and nations.

As COVID-19 gradually comes under control in the US, we are becoming 2 countries: one that listends to science and medical advice, and another rather more backward. This leads to some startlingly disturbing contrasts in the news.

If you invest in US stocks, you certainly want to diversify with some bonds for risk control, availability of funds for rebalancing, and earning some income. Should you use Treasury bonds (which earn approximately nothing, but are safe) or corporate bonds (which earn something, but are riskier)?

Somebody asked me (back in 2012!) about the famous book, The Millionaire Next Door. It’s good as far as it goes; it just doesn’t go nearly as far as almost everybody thinks!

Last November, we looked at metagenomics of sewage SARS-CoV-2 RNA vs medical loads in Boston. The results then were inconclusive. There’s a lot more data now. Does the mRNA in sewage actually predict anything useful about COVID hospital admission, ICU admission, ventilator use, and death? Yes, it does.

Hank Green once again has one or two true and useful words to say to young people about COVID-19 vaccination.

Romania has one of the highest vaccine hesitancy rates in Europe, around 50%. They’re starting to get… creative.

Some good news, for once: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is now known to work quite well against the British & South African variants in the real world. Especially in preventing hospitalization and death.

As of today, the esteemed Weekend Editrix is 2 weeks past her 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and thus as fully immunized as it’s possible to be right now. At 3pm EDT, she is officially out of COVID jail! Well, more or less…

A few weeks ago, we hooked up Google Translate for this blog. It’s time to review how well it’s been working… or not.

In Latin, “corvus” means crow. So the adjectival form used in biology for birds-such-as-crows is “corvid”. Sometimes people get confused in interesting ways.

As of yesterday, we passed a remarkable milestone: the billionth COVID-19 vaccination dose has been administered.

Today the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) today recommended restoring use of the JnJ COVID-19 vaccine with warnings, and thrombosis treatment guidelines for clinicians. The CDC & FDA agreed, and lifted the restrictions. This seems to be very much the correct conclusion, albeit one arrived at far too slowly.

Today the Weekend Editrix got shot. Again. (The good way.)

Does political alignment in the US inform medically-relevant behaviors like mask use and vaccine uptake? Alas, yes: but not in a good way.

Another study has come out, comparing clotting risks of COVID-19 and various vaccines versus each other. What are the risks? And can we interpret the study the obvious way, or not?

Today the US regulatory agencies “paused” the use of the JnJ COVID-19 vaccine to investigate thromboses, similar to what’s been seen with the AZ/OX vaccine. How many, how bad, and what will a pause do?

Have you ever wondered if you could make sense of the RNA code in the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, if you could just read it? With some help, you can now do exactly that.

As of today, your humble Weekend Editor is 2 weeks past the 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine. At 5pm, I am officially out of COVID jail! Right? Not quite…

Interestingly, some Stanford scientists saved a few drops of the Moderna vaccine, apparently ran them through their sequencers, and posted the sequences on GitHub.

As we’ve seen before, the biggest group of American vaccine refuseniks are White Republicans (especially men). Guess who’s swooping in to take up their vaccine supply?

Today is April Fool’s Day. Attrapons le poisson d’avril!

Today the Weekend Editrix got shot. The good way: Pfizer/BioNTech PF-07302048/BNT162b2.

SARS-CoV-2 is mutating, in increasingly dangerous ways. Can we keep up with booster vaccines for the variants, or even eliminate it once and for all?

Sometimes politicians pursue policies so breathtakingly out of touch with reality, you just don’t know what to say. (Understandably, because “breathtaking”.)

Let’s think about something other than COVID. Not Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”, awesome as that is, but an actual free bird consorting with flying humans.

Today I got shot (again). In the good sense: the second dose of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Somebody asked me about the AstraZeneca press release on their new Phase 3 vaccine trial. AstraZeneca has done it again… just not in a good way.

Time for perspective: we’ve been stuck in a pandemic for a year now. What’s the best summary of your experience?

Somebody asked me whether worries the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and dangerous blood clotting seen in some patients were a real problem. You know what the anti-vaxxers are gonna say; what do the data say?

Sen McConnell claims the Democrats abuse the filibuster! (Because of course he does.) But what do the data say?

Today is Pi Day (3/14). You’re not still using decimal, are you?

If a large enough clade of US persons refuse COVID-19 vaccination, herd immunity may never be reached. Right now in the US, that clade seems to be White Republicans. (World-wide, it’s of course more complicated.)

There is an apparently famous American country music singer named Dolly Parton. I was never a fan because… country music, ugh! But it appears I need to be a fan of the woman herself, because of her philanthropy and her encouragment of vaccination. Hmm… I had no idea.

Today I got shot. No, not the bad way (though gun control is a legitimate issue in the US). I mean, with the first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Getting the appointment (and the 2nd dose) was Kafkaesque. The actual medical experience was pretty ok.

Today the J&J COVID-19 vaccine gets reviewed by VRBPAC (Vaccines & Related Biological Products Advisory Committee) at the FDA, for an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization). Let’s have a look through their submission documents!

It’s been a couple weeks, so we’ve all calmed down a little. But still… why did 43 Republican senators vote to block the obvious guilty verdict in Trump’s impeachment?

So. US politics: it seems The Creature is being impeached. Again. What can we do to make sure the impeachment makes a difference this time?

Vaccine rollouts worldwide, with very few exceptions, have been slow & bungled. But we face a cruel equation: delay = death. Why do we tolerate this?

Today Johnson & Johnson/Janssen announced the interim readout (not final numbers!) of their adenovirus-vector based COVID-19 vaccine: 72% efficacy in the US, down to 57% efficacy in South Africa. We previously described the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/Lonza vaccines as “beautiful”; this is “relatively pretty”. Pretty enough to do some good in the world, though.

Honestly, what sort of idiot tries to sell fake Viagra on an obscure, crummy little blog like this? And on an old post at that?! (Please don’t answer those rhetorical questions, especially if you actually know the answers.)

Today was a good day: with the inauguration (and the constitutional mandate behind it) at 12:01pm, Biden & Harris and a (barely) Democratic Congress are back in charge in the US.

Periodically, anti-vaxxers will say they prefer the ‘natural’ immunity acquired by recovering from a disease, because vaccines are ‘artificial’. Is that likely to be true for COVID-19? In a word: NO.

Suppose you had 2 groups of politicians, but one of them thought a pandemic was “fake news”, refused to wear masks, congregated indoors with no social distancing, blocked public health spending, mocked public health guidance, was proud of their ignorance, and were just in general jerks about the subject. Do you think they’d get infected with the disease more often than their opponents?

I was wondering what exactly it takes to commit ‘sedition’. Turns out, it’s kind of complicated. What with insurrection, threats to murder Representatives, Senators, and the Vice President last week, apparently everything is complicated.

Today was when the Electoral College was to have been certified in Congress, sealing the fate of the presidential election. It is also the day the Democrats attained a majority in the Senate. Alas, it is also the day Republicans incited insurrectionists and terrorists against the United States government.

On 2020-Dec-30, the formal scientific publication of the Moderna’s COVID-19 Phase 3 trail in the prestigious New Englad Journal of Medicine dropped into public view. It’s good.

Somebody asked me whether the COVID-19 vaccines currently being used would work vs the mutant form of SARS-CoV-2 now driving COVID-19 in the UK. Looks like it probably will, though nobody really knows. What will definitely work: masking, social distancing, working from home, no gatherings beyond a single household, having adequate food & medicine stored, getting a flu vaccination, and not being a super-spreader of misinformation.

Explaining to COVID vaccine clinical trial participants that the probability of a certain serious adverse event is 1/50,000 or less doesn’t work. Most people instantly stop listening at the slightest whiff of mathematics, including ordinary numbers. But if you compare it to being struck by lightning, that makes sense to most people. Can you guess what happened next?

Here at Chez Weekend, there’s a rumor circulating that on Christmas Eve, Santa got pulled over by the cops?!

You all are scaring me, with your science denying, mask refusing, socially close quarters, holiday travelling ways. C’mon: wear a mask, socially distance, avoid indoor gatherings, get a flu shot. At least pretend to try you want to live until the vaccine is available, ok? Then maybe you won’t randomly kill the rest of us, who do want to live.

Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is not, however, the day of earliest sunset (of interest to night owls). Nor is it the day of latest sunrise (of interest to morning… people). Therein lies the tale of the analemma, first told to me long ago by a marvelous former colleague, Doug Dodds.

Yesterday was also a good day: the FDA’s external advisory committee passed the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at 5:20pm EST on 2020-Dec-17. Late today, the FDA agreed and granted the Emergency Use Authorization.

Randall Munroe, the mad cartoonist behind XKCD, explains COVID-19 vaccine approvals. And channels Lord Rutherford. Simultaneously.

Somebody asked me about the contents of the Moderna EUA application for their COVID-19 vaccine. Summary: It is also quite beautiful.

Apparently the Weekend Publisher, occasionally also known as “my cat”, is the reincarnation of the spirit animal of a fin-de-siècle cabaret in Paris.

Somebody asked me about the confidence intervals Pfizer reported for vaccine efficacy in various age groups. Some of them are negative! Are they sensible?

Today is a good day: the FDA’s external advisory committee passed the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at 6:30pm EST.

Ok, nobody asked me this time, because for once I got out ahead of them. It seems Pfizer/BioNTech submitted an EUA (“emergency use authorization”) package to the FDA. What’s it look like?

The sad news about Arecibo brings up the topic of SETI. In better news, an amateur astronomer has proposed a particular star as the source of the famous “Wow!” event, using the Gaia Archive. Wait, what?

Alas, for the Arecibo Observatory/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center is no more.

So we just had an election. You may have heard there were some rather sharply drawn sides. How big were each of the factions?

Somebody asked me about the style of argument used when discussing the Talmud, a centuries-long rabbinical dialog on Jewish Law. The style involves not so much winning (though there is that), but mostly about understanding multiple points of view. Sound like something the world could use about now?

Somebody asked me about the early readout this week of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine Phase 3 trial. Initially they said 70% efficacy. It’s not a stunningly good 95% result like Pfizer or Moderna; still, it’s a good, craftsmanlike bit of work. But then… things got weird.

Hank Green (notable web producer, author, and master of miscellany) recorded his weekly vlog to his brother about whether he would take a COVID vaccine. Roughly: “oh hell yeah!” (though far more entertainingly).

Today the AP finally called Georgia for Biden, after the hand recount. But the Senate still hangs fire until the runoff in January. And apparently, 73 million Americans somehow voted for Trump?!

Everybody’s worried about how long the protection from a COVID vaccine will last, whether there can be reinfections, and so on. How much do we actually know about that as of now?

Today the Moderna/Lonza vaccine trial vaccine trial gave its first interim readout: 95% efficacy! Also, 100% prevention of severe cases of COVID-19. Like last week’s Pfizer/BioNTech interim readout, this is again unabashedly good news.

Today the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial gave its first interim readout: 90% efficacy. This is unabashedly good news.

Previously, we mentioned there were data showing the level of coronavirus RNA in metro Boston wastewater, and speculated that it might be predictive of medical loads like hospitalization and death rates. The truth turns out to be weirder than that (comme d’habitude).

The election is coming, with a possibility of right-wing violence and subversion. COVID-19 is forming up for another wave of infections. Winter is coming. It’s terrifying, but there are some things you can do.

At autumn in New England, thoughts turn to the extreme beauty of nature, the weather turning more comfortably cooler & drier, cinnamon and nutmeg smells everywhere, and… trebuchets, catapaults, air cannons, and other implements of imparting to pumpkins various levels of sub-orbital trajectories.

Somebody asked me (honest!) about a news item linking improved treatment outcomes for COVID-19 with patients using statin and ACE inhibitor drugs. Very preliminary stuff, and the effect size is not giant, but it is peer-reviewed and looks quite legit. Not gonna change the world, but even small bits of good news are welcome.

Today I voted. You should too, if you’re an eligible US voter.

As you may have heard, the US is about to face an election more contentious than any since the Civil War. With vote counting likely drawn out due to right-wing mischief at, for example, the Post Office, what are we to make of partial returns as far as predicting the outcome? And will there be zombies?

Today we commemorate 1983-Sep-26: the day Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov prevented the end the world. Go thou forth and do likewise: save as much of the world as you can.

Looking for a glimmer of hope amid the COVID clouds? Worried about whether a vaccine will be appropriately safe & effective? You’ve come to the right place.

Somebody asked me (different “somebody” this time, though the same subject) about the Moderna Q2 earnings call. Do I look like I know the answer to questions like that?! On close inspection, though, it looks like a python swallowing a pig: a smallish company tackling a big problem with COVID vaccines.

Somebody asked me, “What’s that stupid avatar on your blog?” It’s a reminder that even simple questions show infinite complexity if you look closely enough. And sometimes even if you don’t!

Somebody asked me (really it’s the same “somebody” behind all of these) about the Moderna COVID vaccine phase 3 start. Basically, it looks like the start of a reasonably designed Phase 3 trial: the beginning of a long slog to test safety & efficacy.

Just seeing if I can make the math typesetting work. Nothing to see here, kid… move along.

Qualitative knowledge is real, but… quantitative knowledge is almost always better.

Ok, so I finally tracked down the official Phase 1/2 readout of the Moderna/Lonza COVID vaccine (whose Phase 3 delay we commented on about 10 days ago). Here are some quick thoughts, but the top line seems to be very good.

Somebody asked me — same troublemakers, in case you’re curious — about whether the Moderna/Lonza Phase 1/2 vaccine trial looked reasonable and if the delay of Phase 3 start for a protocol amendment was reasonable. Sure seems so! No, it’s not an investment signal.

Somebody asked me what’s in the Phase 1/2 readout of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID vaccine. Of course they wanted to know about the trial results, but they also wanted to know if it is an investment signal. It is not.

Somebody asked me about this article in the Boston Globe by Vernal Coleman on the racial makeup of the Boston Police Department: does it resemble the community it polices?

Somebody asked me, “What’s your retirement plan?”

So… yet another blog? Really?!