Finding the vaccine

Georgia pharmacists stepped up when it came to providing the Covid vaccine. So why is the state lagging with getting needles into arms? As Fox Atlanta explains, “With 1,575 GA vaccine providers signed up, finding vaccine is the hard part”.

There aren’t any reserves

So remember when it was big news that HHS was releasing its reserve of Covid-19 vaccines so more people could get it? Turns out there was no reserve. As the Washington Post reported, “The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.”

Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding access for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions.

Woodstock Pharmacy doin’ its part

Jonathan and Pam Marquess’s Woodstock Pharmacy was featured on Atlanta’s WSB-TV as pharmacists there provided Covid-19 vaccines to a long line of patients.

Woodstock Pharmacy, reporter Tom Regan said, is “one of hundreds of independent pharmacies across Georgia now playing a critical role in the vaccine rollout.”

Here’s GPhA CEO Bob Coleman getting his shot from Jonathan Marquess.

We all thought he was 46.

But let’s take a step back

For all the talk about how clumsy the Covid-19 vaccine rollout has been, we need a little perspective. Sure, it could have been better, but keep this in mind:

1. The U.S. is ahead of a lot of just about every other country. Israel and the U.K. (both geographically small) are #1 and #2 when it comes to distribution, but get this — we’re ahead of Denmark, Canada, Germany, and even Norway (which typically tops every list).
2. The rollout isn’t “slow” objectively, it’s slow compared to what we hoped we could do. The problem is more with our overenthusiastic predictions than with the vaccination process itself.

All that said…

West Virginia is waaaaay out in front of other states in getting people vaccinated. What’s the secret — the crossroads at midnight? Nope, there’s a bit more, and the Conversation explains it all.

Mission creep?

Walgreens is getting into the credit card business. Go figure.

BioNTech’s next move

Pfizer gets the attention, but it was Germany’s BioNTech that actually developed the Covid-19 vaccine. And before the centrifuges have stopped spinning, the company is taking that same mRNA technology and developing a vaccine against multiple sclerosis.

[BioNTech CEO Ugur] Sahin’s team showed that an mRNA vaccine encoding a disease-related autoantigen successfully improved MS symptoms in sick animals and prevented disease progression in rodents showing early signs of MS. […] Clinical trials on mice revealed the jab not only stopped the disease from progressing but restored some motor skills which had been lost.

I can’t see clearly now

Chinese researchers have found yet another unexpected side effect of the pandemic: In 2020 “the prevalence of myopia in children aged six was three times more than in those of any previous year.”

It’s not the virus. It’s the lockdowns and the lack of being outside, where their eyes are exercising more, looking at both close and distant objects.

While we can only speculate over the cause of the widespread change, staring intently at books and screens for long periods while isolated indoors will do the trick just nicely.

Another asterisk for 2020

When we look at life-expectancy graphs in the future, expect a dip for 2020.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences projects that Covid-19 will reduce US life expectancy in 2020 by 1.13 years.

Revenge!

An international group of scientists is infecting mosquitoes with malaria so they can test 400 chemical compounds. The goal: to see which are best at both reducing the infection in the mosquitoes as well killing the parasites that actually transmit the disease. They hope to determine the best compounds to be used in mass drug administration in a mosquito-infested area.

(Today I learned that “mozzie” is slang for “mosquito.”)