Not the same old Operation Warp Speed vaccines which are to Delta 2021 what the Model T is to 2021 Ferrari. I propose Operation Hyper-Warp, or whatever, to manufacture new vaccines targeted specifically at Delta but also, knowing that Delta’s spikes are longer than original COVID’s and that it has original vaccine-evading capabilities that only CDC is now begrudging to acknowledge, I would task Big Pharma to construct vaccines that have anti-transmission potency, stronger dosages than Pfizer-BioNTech, that is an obvious desideratum, and that are 98%-99% effective against infection, for the fully vaxed now can still, with alacrity, infect others. I would want the pharmaceutical companies to think beyond Delta in addition, to anticipate Doomsday mutations that are surely coming in constructing these new vaccines. We have dumbed down the meaning of vaccine efficacy so that “can’t get out of bed, sick as a dog with COVID”(!) is deemed “really good” because you didn’t go to hospital. No more of that bull crap. YES, DR. GOUNDER, WE WANT VACCINES THAT PREVENT INFECTION. My specs would include vaccines that are age-unrestricted. We have to be able to inoculate kids. If confidence in vaccines is waning, and I really don’t think it is, it is because the way that these first generation COVID vaccines worked is not what the public thinks when it thinks “vaccines work.”
Confidence in masks is waning, it never waxed very high. Masks work, but masks are a non-starter with too much of the population. Already, teachers have been physically attacked to remove their masks. One person who attacked a teacher said she did so because she and her child couldn’t hear the teacher. We are going to have parents fighting teachers, parents fighting other parents. I am previously on record in print as expressing skepticism that “everyone under the school house roof must be masked” is even a wise educational environment for students. The masks are going to be distracting to children who have age-ADD to begin with. That is, admittedly, not a science-based opinion. I do think it has a sound basis in common sense, but I am happy to shelve that intuition for the practicalities: parents are going to oppose their kids being masked and kids being kids they are not going to mask up for eight hours of instruction (minus recess breaks) a day, and we’re already seeing a backlash with schools largely not opened yet.
It is fair criticism of this proposal that the future is now and that new vaccines will take too long to develop. I agree. New vaccines should have been ordered to development in May after we saw Delta's detonation on the subcontinent. We can't engage in shoulda's, coulda's when we have the fact of "didn't." Now is the earliest time we can start. In the meantime we have no choice but to mask up in schools.
Good night.
