Don’t mind at all!

End of May last year. (My exposure date was 1/9, first symptom 1/19, and tests 
weren’t available then.) I hope I had them this year end of May as I got my 2nd 
shot in April. ;)

Deirdre

> On Aug 12, 2021, at 11:04 PM, Gerald D. Nordley via Basfa 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Deirdre,
> 
> Would you mind if I forward this to our family list (about ten people, and 
> without your email, of course)?  It turns out we have some vaccine skeptics 
> and an ongoing discussion.  Also, when you said "By the end of May, I had no 
> antibodies..." did you mean May last year or this year?
> 
> --Best, Gerry
> 
> 
> Gerald D. Nordley
> [email protected]
> www.gdnordley.com
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Deirdre Saoirse Moen via Basfa <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Sent: Thu, Aug 12, 2021 7:13 pm
> Subject: Re: [Basfa] BBQ party for the vaccinated, West Menlo, Saturday, Aug. 
> 14, 4pm-12m
> 
> First, I want to acknowledge that you are genuinely trying to have your 
> family’s best interests at heart.
> 
> I was one of the “lucky” west coast people who got covid last year, but a 
> pre-pandemic strain (that came to the bay area directly from China in 
> January; the pandemic strain came to the US via Europe a bit later) from an 
> asymptomatic person who’d just returned from China. I’d just had a tooth 
> removed leaving a big gaping hole for covid to have easy access.
> 
> By the end of May, I had no antibodies even though I had the “sequelae” of 
> long covid, i.e., the collateral damage it did. After six solid months of 
> being ill, I had to go to the ER as I greyed out. We figured out what I had 
> (postural orthostatic tachycardia) and got treated for it, but it took months 
> and months to feel better even then, and I’m still not back to where I was 19 
> months ago, and I probably never will be.
> 
> During that time, I read more than 3,000 pages of science papers about covid 
> (and also some about dengue, ebola, MERS, and SARS) to try to update my 
> understanding of virology and how it had changed since I took immunology. 
> Some of them are just horrifying, e.g., the “just put the Internet away for 
> the rest of the day” paper about the poor guy (and not the only person!) who 
> got autoimmune encephalitis from covid.
> 
> “Autoimmune Encephalitis Presenting With Malignant Catatonia in a 40-Year-Old 
> Male Patient With Covid-19” 
> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160770v1 (link is to the 
> preprint. It was later published, however that text is not free)
> 
> Personally, I’m glad for the vaccine. A vaccine, even an experimental one, is 
> like being snuck the answers to the test before the final. Sure, there’s a 
> chance the teacher will add a surprise question, but! You’ll still almost 
> certainly pass the test.
> 
> To put that into a chart, here’s one from Georgia:
> 
> https://twitter.com/kavitapmd/status/1425265615468699652
> 
> The ICU and ventilators are needed for the unvaccinated, not the vaccinated, 
> and only a few vaccinated people are in the hospital (about 11% of the total 
> covid patients in those two hospitals; Houston’s overall fully vaccinated 
> rate is 47.2%: 
> https://data.citizen-times.com/covid-19-vaccine-tracker/texas/harris-county/48201/
>  ). Make of that what you will.
> 
> I would not have an unvaccinated party at this point in time, personally. If 
> you wish to offer the best outcome for all attending, I’d suggest reviewing 
> the calculations at https://www.microcovid.org and model possible scenarios 
> to fit your risk comfort level. (They do show the math; they have read many 
> of the same papers as I have.)
> 
> Also, while I’m on the topic, a friend of mine is an intensivist (ICU 
> physician) in Guangzhou, so I got to hear about the ground preparation and 
> all the day-to-day upheavals there. Lots of people have suspected they’re 
> under reporting, but after the last conversation we had about it (last week), 
> I think their numbers aren’t fudged nearly as much as many assume.
> 
> Here’s why.
> 
> WeChat is not only a chat app and a cash exchange app and a photos app and 
> facebook, it also has a ton of other functions…one of which is reaching out 
> to contacts of people who’ve tested positive for covid, *whether you know 
> them or not*. If you stood on the same room in the same building at the same 
> time, they’re notified.
> 
> Also, all tests are reported to the user directly on WeChat.
> 
> There’s a *huge* social stigma with testing positive, and therefore I think 
> people are just super careful.
> 
> My friend was being sent to help manage a small outbreak, and some of the 
> hospital staff got wind of it and resigned rather than risk testing positive. 
> So. Upside to authoritarianism for once?
> 
> Deirdre
> 
>> On Aug 11, 2021, at 07:59, Jonathan Del Arroz via Basfa 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Would love to but definitely not at the expense of getting an experimental 
>> injection. I’ll just host a party for the unvaccinated instead since studies 
>> are showing we spread the new variants less anyway mine should be safer! 
>> Feel free to join. 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> 
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