Category: science

CDC ACIP Meeting Today on Covid-19 Vaccines

Today is the scheduled meeting for the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It meets from 10 AM-4 PM EDT. The final agenda is here.

The presentation slides are at this link.

I also want to recommend the recent article on the new Covid vaccine published in Scientific American on September 1, 2023, entitled “When Will the Next COVID Vaccine Be Available, and Who Should Get It?

I think it’s a nice, balanced article which avoids extreme opinions and sticks to the scientific facts.

FDA Authorizes Updated mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines

Today, the FDA approved and authorized the updated mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, specifically for the monovalent XBB.1.5 variant.

See the announcement on the FDA website for full details. The CDC ACIP will meet to discuss clinically-based recommendations for the use of these vaccines tomorrow.

CDC Update on SARS CoV-2 Variant BA.2.86

New update on the Covid-19 variant BA.2.86 as of Sept. 8, 2023. Highlights:

  • “The current increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the United States are not being driven by BA.2.86 and instead are being caused by other predominantly circulating viruses.
  • Early research data from multiple labs are reassuring and show that existing antibodies work against the new BA.2.86 variant. These data are also encouraging because of what it may mean for the effectiveness of the 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine, which is currently under review. That’s because the vaccine is tailored to the currently circulating variants.
  • Since CDC’s initial risk assessment, BA.2.86 has been identified in additional countries from both human and wastewater specimens. The variant has been identified in nine U.S. states as of September 8, 2023, at 11:30 AM EDT— in people across Colorado, Delaware, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington, as well as one additional human case that is being investigated. The variant has also been identified in wastewater samples in two states, New York and Ohio.
  • The U.S. SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group (SIG) classified BA.2.86 as a Variant being Monitored (VBM) on September 1, 2023.”

The AARO Finally Has a Website And is it Part of a Zero-Sum Game?

The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) finally has a website—more than a year after it was formed.

It looks like there’s an intriguing message in the section “Coming Soon: US Government UAP-Related Program/Activity Reporting.” It says AARO will accept reports of UAP from current government employees who know of any programs or activities related to UAPs dating back to 1945.

One sentence tells you “This form is intended as an initial point of contact with AARO; it is not intended for conveying potentially sensitive or classified information.  Following the submission of your report, AARO staff may reach out to request additional detail or arrange for an informational interview.”

Several other sections provide further information and pictures and videos on UAP.

I wonder if all this is a reaction to the House Oversight Committee Hearing on UAP on July 26, 2023. Either the website has been under construction for all of last year and was just finished a couple days ago or it was just thrown together recently.

This makes me think of a couple of things, one is Dr. George Dawson’s blog post “Is This An Episode of the X-Files?” The other is an X-Files episode itself, “Zero Sum” which Sena and I just saw a couple of nights ago. We don’t remember seeing it when it first aired in 1997. You can read the Wikipedia article about the episode.

The gist of it is that Assistant Director Skinner makes a deal with the Smoking Man in which the latter will save Agent Scully’s life (she’s dying of cancer related to alien experiments) if Skinner hides the death of a postal worker who was killed by a swarm of bees carrying smallpox. This is part of a complex plot by a group called the Syndicate which is either trying to work with extraterrestrials to either exterminate the human race or save it (depending on which episode you watch) by using bees as a vehicle to transmit either smallpox or a vaccine to cure the Black Oil, which screws you up pretty bad. Part of this is my interpretation because the storyline sometimes is not clear about this to me.

Anyway, the back-and-forth actions and reactions of the characters, especially Skinner and the Smoking Man, are pretty good examples of a Zero-Sum game, loosely defined in that neither gets much of an edge on the other as they both try to counter each other’s efforts in what is probably just a power struggle from the Smoking Man’s perspective and a desperate effort to save Scully’s life from Skinner’s perspective.

Anyway, I wonder if the UAP reporters and the government (including the AARO) might be in some kind of zero-sum game. UAP reporters try to get the government to admit that Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EABs) and Extraterrestrial spacecraft exist. But the government denies it. Neither side ever seems to get much further ahead of the other.

CDC Update Today on Covid-19 Variant BA.2.86

Today’s update by the CDC on the Covid-19 variant BA.2.86 is at this link.

Highlights:

  • “The variant has been identified in at least four states in the United States in samples from either people or wastewater.
  • This variant is currently being studied in the laboratory to help understand how the immune system may interact with this virus.
  • The current increases in cases and hospitalizations in the United States are likely being driven by infections with XBB lineage viruses, not the new BA.2.86 variant.”

“CDC’s current assessment is that the updated COVID-19 vaccine, which will be available in mid-September, will likely be effective at reducing severe disease and hospitalization. Immune responses generated from prior infection also help protect against severe outcomes of COVID-19. There is currently no evidence that this variant is causing more severe illness. That assessment may change as additional scientific data are developed. CDC remains committed to releasing updates on trends and observations of this variant.”

“Immune Impacts:  Approximately 97% of the U.S. population has antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 from vaccination, previous infection, or both (hybrid immunity). Immune responses to vaccines and infections are complex and involve both humoral (antibodies) and cellular immunity. It is likely that the humoral and cellular immune responses will continue to provide protection against severe disease from this variant. Laboratories are currently working on measuring antibody neutralization of BA.2.86 as well as other immune responses. This is an area of ongoing scientific investigation.

Therapeutics: The assessment as to the impact of BA.2.86 on currently approved or authorized therapeutics is unchanged. Examination of the mutation profile of BA.2.86 suggests that currently available treatments like nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid), remdesivir (Veklury), and molnupiravir (Lagevrio) will be effective against this variant. This assessment is from the SARS-CoV-2 Interagency Group (SIG), which comprises experts from multiple United States government agencies. Monitoring is ongoing, and CDC will update this document as additional data on the impact of this variant on therapeutics become available.”

X-Files Notes: Alex Krycek Is Not from Tunguska

Sena and I used to watch the X-Files back in the 1990s, but I must have missed quite a few of them. My memory is at best spotty for a lot of episodes, probably because I was on call a lot as a resident and as a psychiatry faculty member at the hospital.

The other night I saw the Tunguska episode in which Mulder travels to a gulag in Russia to investigate the black oil contamination, which was of extraterrestrial origin. A lot of the episodes had titles which I had to look up on the internet to find out what they meant. Anyway, a rock of extraterrestrial origin is found and becomes the subject of an intense search after black oil spurts into the face of a scientist who was dumb enough to poke a drill in it and who then becomes catatonic.

Actually, if I have the Wikipedia facts right, the episode was not inspired by the Tunguska explosion in a place called Tunguska, Siberia in Russia in 1908. There’s a recent story about it posted on the web in June of 2023. The gist is that a large asteroid impact killed animals and destroyed millions of trees in the area. The mystery didn’t leave a crater, though. At one time, some people thought the devastation was caused by a crashing extraterrestrial spacecraft. Long story short, a similar event occurred in 2013 and the explanation is that the asteroid broke apart 15 miles above the ground, generating a massive shock wave that injured thousands of people and blew out a lot of windows. The importance of it is that events like that can occur every several hundred years, making it important to plan on how to prevent them.

OK, so the other science fact pertaining to the X-Files episode is that, despite it being named for the Tunguska episode, it was actually inspired by the Allan Hill 84001 event, which was the discovery of a Martian meteorite in the Allan Hills in Antarctica in 1984. In 1996 scientists thought they found fossils of bacteria in this rock, which led everybody to think this meant there had been life on Mars. Even United States President Bill Clinton made a speech about it, although later he was more often connected with a blue dress than with black oil. Eventually, there were other features of the rock which led to abandoning the idea that the features were bacteria fossils.

Confused yet? The black oil contamination thing is a weaponized extraterrestrial substance which infects humans and against which the Russians and the Americans were both working on a vaccine to combat it. As far as I know, neither planned a vaccine mandate.

This is a two-part show and, get ready for more confusing titles, the title of which is “Terma.” The episode has a tagline, “E pur si muove,” (instead of the usual “You can’t handle the truth!” No wait, it’s actually “The truth is out there”) which is not translated in the show, but which means “And yet it moves.” That’s about Galileo’s investigation of whether the Earth moves around the sun or vice versa. Galileo said the Earth moves around the Sun, but the Roman Inquisition forced him to recant it because the religious dogma was opposed to heliocentrism. He did but under his breath he supposedly mumbled “And yet it moves.” Galileo probably had Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a child.

I’m not sure what the tagline “E pur si muove” means in this context. This is just my guess, but maybe it refers to the persisting opposition of Mulder and Scully to the government hiding the “truth” of the existence of extraterrestrials.

I found out that terma (the word means “hidden treasure”) is a set of Buddhist secret teachings that are hidden from the world. A terma could be a text or object (like a rock) buried in the ground or a crystal, perhaps hidden in space. In the end, an old KGB agent manages to destroy the rock by blowing it up. He gets away and returns to Russia where he finds a guy named Alex Krycek waiting for him and who has an artificial left arm (with which he uses to stir tea) and who congratulates him on his success.

Now this Alex Krycek guy is a known villain who is in and out of X-Files episodes, even coming back from the dead. He’s this traitorous, murdering, lying devil who, judging from Mulder’s reaction to him every time he sees him, is Mulder’s favorite punching bag. This is partly because Krycek probably killed Mulder’s father.

But in this and every other episode in which they meet, Mulder evidently gets a charge out of repeatedly smacking Krycek. A typical interaction would be Mulder seeing Krycek, and then punching the crap out of him while grinning with great satisfaction. Notably, in just about any other fight Mulder gets into with anyone who is not Krycek, it’s Mulder who typically gets beat up. But the usual exchange with Krycek goes like this:

Mulder goes into a bar. Mulder sees Krycek. Mulder whops the stuffing out of him, just for the heck of it. Mulder gets tired and says:

“I’m tired of whopping the stuffing out of you, Krycek. I’m also hungry; so, while I snack on these sunflower seeds I’m incessantly eating in every episode—beat the crap out of yourself right now!”

And then Krycek beats himself up.

The only way to understand their relationship is to assume that Krycek is the worst turncoat double agent and compulsive liar you ever met and typically works for anyone who offers him the most money including most terrestrial countries and any extraterrestrial governments bent on taking over every fast-food franchise on the planet earth (“Yeah, I’ll have the mutilated cattle burger with black oil sauce, three and a half pickles, cheese, ketchup and secret vaccine on the side”).

If you have cable, you can see X-Files on the Comet network.

CDC ACIP to Discuss Covid-19 Vaccines on September 12, 2023

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has a scheduled meeting on September 12, 2023 to discuss Covid-19 vaccines. The information about it is a bit difficult to find. It’s announced as a notice on the Federal Register. On the agenda:

Matters To Be Considered: The agenda will include discussion of COVID–19 vaccines. Recommendation votes for COVID–19 vaccines are scheduled. Agenda items are subject to change as priorities dictate. For more information on the meeting agenda, visit https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/index.html.

Clicking the link as of August 28, 2023 did not reveal a meeting agenda, but I expect this to be updated in the near future.

Parody vs Satire on Old X-File Show

I see Dr. George Dawson blogged about an interesting movie he saw. And Dr. H. Steven Moffic watched an interesting play the other day.

I like science fiction. I watched an old X-File show the other night, “War of the Coprophages.” You can read a Wikipedia article for a nice summary of the plot and more. You can watch X-File episodes on the Comet TV network on cable and a few streaming services.

The reason I like this is because of the parody. Many reviewers say it doesn’t rise to the level of satire, and it’s tough to challenge that view. I usually tell the difference based on a pretty good distinction you can find at this web site. Early on in the show you can tell it’s going to be one of the Monster-of-the-Week (MOTW) episodes.

The show makes fun of itself with funny lines and sight gags, several of which could almost make you gag. One makes use of an effect that makes you think a cockroach is crawling across your TV screen. The Wikipedia article calls that a fourth wall effect.

I like the big sign on Dr. Jeff Eckerle’s building where he has a lot of manure which he’s using to research how to make methane from dung. The sign says, “ALT FUELS, Inc: Waste is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” It’s clearly a parody, although I found a legitimate recycling web site in Helsinki which actually uses the phrase “Waste is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” Who knew? I can’t tell if they got the idea from the X-Files.

I also got a kick out the conversation between the scientist, Dr. Ivanov, and Mulder in which Ivanov pretty much sticks a pin in the balloon of Mulder’s conception of extraterrestrials being humanoid—of course they’d be robots according to Ivanov.

Later as the show is wrapping up with Mulder typing his report, he describes the distinction between simple and direct robotic problem solving and human higher brain function, with the latter suffering by comparison because of our tendency to get lost in default mode network ruminations which often go nowhere. He ends up seeing a giant cockroach which looks robotic crawling towards him—and flattens it with an X-File report.

The show is a string of crap jokes, which I loved. But that’s not because I love crap. I just like it when we’re deflated. It cuts us down to size—about the size of a cockroach. Sometimes that’s about the size of the difference between parody and satire.

Official CDC Update on New Covid-19 Variant BA.2.86

I’ve been looking for official CDC news about the new Covid-19 variant, BA.2.86 and it looks like it was just posted on their website yesterday.

Highlights:

“Last week, a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 called BA.2.86 was detected in samples from people in Denmark and Israel. At least two cases have been identified in the United States. This variant is notable because it has multiple genetic differences from previous versions of SARS-CoV-2.”

“Based on what CDC knows now, existing tests used to detect and medications used to treat COVID-19 appear to be effective with this variant. BA.2.86 may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines. Scientists are evaluating the effectiveness of the forthcoming, updated COVID-19 vaccine. CDC’s current assessment is that this updated vaccine will be effective at reducing severe disease and hospitalization. At this point, there is no evidence that this variant is causing more severe illness. That assessment may change as additional scientific data are developed. CDC will share more as we know more.”