As we stumble through the last weeks of 2020, there’s some good news:
- The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is being distributed in the U.K., will start to be distributed next week in the U.S., and other countries will soon follow. Other vaccines are also close to approval, either full or emergency authorizations, and should continue to expand the vaccination of humanity against the cause of the biggest social upheaval in the last century. The vaccines are highly effective, have few side effects, and while there will be significant challenges ahead in the logistics of getting people vaccinated, there’s definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. One of the biggest remaining hurdles is getting people who are skeptical or who have bought into disinformation about the vaccines to actually get the shots. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who say they will refuse to get vaccinated are the same ones who won’t wear masks and won’t follow social distancing guidelines.
- In the long run, the “miracle” development of the various COVID-19 vaccines bodes well for the future. As this article in New York magazine explains, the Moderna vaccine actually only took a weekend to develop back in January, even before we started to see how disruptive COVID-19 would be. This is the product of incredible advances in the understanding of how viruses work, but it’s as much a result of sheer computing power. Scientists can now model, in three dimensions and in real time, the structure and behavior of viruses, and can try out theories and hypotheses in days instead of months or years. The vaccines against COVID-19 have their basis in work that was done on other coronavirus infections, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012. This has positive implications for our ability to combat future viruses and also other diseases and illnesses, including cancer.
- The U.S. Supreme Court refused – twice – to play ball with the Trump campaign’s ongoing attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election with nuisance lawsuits. On the 8th, the court refused to stop Pennsylvania from certifying the results of the election, issuing a single sentence response to the request from Republicans in that state. And late Friday, they also refused to consider the ridiculous lawsuit brought by the state of Texas that sought to invalidate the results in four key battleground states that went to Biden, based on alleged irregularities in the voting, including mail-in balloting. (Of course, similar “irregularities” happened in a number of states that went for Trump, but apparently those are okay.) The justices, in a 7-2 decision that included Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voting with the majority, determined that Texas didn’t have standing to bring the case in the first place, so they didn’t actually make any judgment on the merits of the case, but it seems to bring to a conclusion any legal recourse the Trump campaign has.
- Finally, the Lions have a new leader in coaching winning percentage, at least until tomorrow’s game with Green Bay. Darrell Bevell won his first game as a head coach last Sunday when his squad came back from behind to beat the Bears, 34-30. That gives Bevell a perfect 1.000 winning percentage. If the Lions somehow beat the Packers tomorrow, he might be on his way to taking the “interim” tag off his title, though I’d prefer that the team come up a with a long-term plan before rushing into that decision.
Enjoy the good news, and have a great week!