CROSS-IMMUNITY: Common Colds May Have ‘Primed’ Some People’s Immune Systems For COVID-19. “A cold you got years ago may prove helpful if your body has to fight the new coronavirus. According to a study published Tuesday, some people who’ve never been exposed to the new coronavirus may nonetheless have T cells that react to it. Scientists think that’s because those cells previously learned how to identify and fight coronaviruses that cause common colds. . . . Two other recent studies offer even more evidence for this conclusion. The first, published last month, found that among 68 healthy Germans who’d never had COVID-19, more than one-third had T cells that reacted to the virus. The second, published in the journal Nature, found that more than half of a group of 37 healthy people who had never gotten COVID-19 had memory T cells that could recognise the new coronavirus. The Nature study also examined 23 people who’d survived SARS – which is a coronavirus, too – and found that they still had SARS-specific memory T cells 17 years after getting sick. Those same T cells could recognise the new coronavirus as well.”
Archive for 2020
August 8, 2020
LIONEL SHRIVER: Never has a virus been so oversold.
I’m currently in New York, where the medical paranoia is sustained, and social life is nearly nonexistent. This week, a rarity, a couple came inside our house. They didn’t sit down, didn’t stay long, and were careful not to touch anything. When they left they were clearly relieved, and immediately doused themselves in hand sanitizer. I don’t think it’s going to be any different next summer. Google, for example, has already advised its employees to work from home for the next 12 months.
The graph of new cases in the UK roughly leveled off throughout July — but it has not plateaued at zero. The PM gives every indication that only zero will do. Thus as long as the coronavirus persists, the fearful prophylactic measures will continue. In trade for this valiant vigilance on our behalf, we merely have to sacrifice: our friends. Any new friends. All live performance — music, plays. Restaurants. All occasions, like proper weddings, funerals, birthdays and extended-family celebrations. Travel. Colleagues. Any search for love. Any moving communal experience, like festivals. Dentistry. A functional National Health Service. Oh, and the economy — and in case you need translation, that means the country, full stop.
Boris’s ‘nuclear option’ of another total national lockdown remains on the table. Why on earth? The one constructive conclusion to draw from this debacle is that long, indiscriminate national lockdowns to suppress infectious disease are a catastrophe. Yet the most horrifying consequence of COVID-19 could be that lockdown — which once applied only to prisons — becomes officialdom’s established knee-jerk response to any new contagion.
There will be a new contagion, too, and a new one after that. How many times can you send the national debt soaring, devastate small business, paralyze government services — including healthcare — and cancel for months on end the civil liberties of an erstwhile ‘free people’? In preference to this repeated carpet-bombing, a literal nuclear option might at least get the agony over with fast.
Hopefully that’s a Biden-style “literal” unless Shriver is going full Gen. Jack D. Ripper, which I doubt. Which is why, Virginia Postrel warns: Depressed Now? Just Wait for the Rest of 2020:
Last year, more than 55 million Americans traveled at least 50 miles for Thanksgiving. The most traditional Thanksgiving songs are “We Gather Together” and “Over the River and Through the Woods.” It is a holiday celebrated by coming together. Its meaning depends on gathering around a festive table.
Not this year. “This will be the first Thanksgiving in 20 years that we don’t fly to Maryland to see my family,” says an L.A. friend. “That’s particularly hard as this will be the first holiday season since my dad passed. It’s depressing, honestly.”
When Walmart and Target recently announced they’d keep stores closed on Thanksgiving, they weren’t signaling a more meaningful, less materialistic holiday season. They were anticipating the exact opposite: a lonely fall and winter, devoid of the rituals and gatherings that give the season its emotional resonance.
Black Friday is more than a retailing bonanza or consumerist frenzy. It’s a celebration. For many Americans, it’s a way to get into the seasonal mood — to go out in public with friends and family and anticipate Christmas.
Covid-19’s medical and economic impact is notoriously uneven. Its psychological toll is less so.
Even if you’re a healthy, highly paid online worker with a big house, a surging financial portfolio and no homeschooling duties, you can’t host a big dinner to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, visit your extended family for Thanksgiving, or attend a Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve or a performance of Handel’s “Messiah.” All that singing is dangerous.
No matter how insulated you are from the medical and economic effects of the pandemic, you feel its social repercussions.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbles Jo in the opening line of “Little Women.” This year, Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presence.
It’s gloomy stuff, straight with no chaser, and was too much for at least one person: Postrel published a “Redacted version of the weirdest hate mail ever” on her Facebook page.
SO IT’S BASICALLY THREE OR FOUR TIMES AS BAD AS THE SEASONAL FLU: U.S. could see 300K COVID deaths by December, model shows. Assuming the model’s correct, which flies in the face of past models’ performance. . . .
TWEETED IN HASTE, REPENTED IN LEISURE: ‘Yikes!’ Was the Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine 2016 ticket this forgettable? (NYT Opinion deleted the tweet, but here it is):
That’s a quote from the first published version of Maureen Dowd’s latest article: Wow! What a blunder in Maureen Dowd’s new column!
And Hillary (and/or the person who ghost-writes her tweets) is not happy. Maureen Dowd may be sleeping very lightly for some time to come:
Layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors. Or as “Comfortably Smug” tweets, “The NY Times was better when Tom Cotton owned it. New management has run it into the ground.”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: New gonorrhea test identifies patients who will respond to oral antibiotic.
GERMAN MAN GIVING FLORIDA MAN A RUN FOR HIS MONEY THESE DAYS: German Nudist Chases Wild Boar That Stole His Laptop.
MOSTLY PEACEFUL WAR ZONE: Antifa Rioters With Shields, Body Armor Turn Residential Portland Into a War Zone.
THE TRUE STORY OF THE LEGENDARY SAM’S BAR-B-QUE: Tracing the history of the East Austin institution, which has survived two fires, a gentrification buyout offer, and Midland.
Lost forever in the fire, though, was memorabilia from the joint’s most famous customer. Autographed photos from legendary guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan were destroyed in the blaze (although Mays has a few at home). [Business owner Brian Mays], who was a pallbearer at Vaughan’s funeral after the fatal 1990 helicopter crash, says that his mother, Erma Mays, had made Vaughan—a Dallas native—a part of their Austin family. “She adopted Stevie Ray as her son. Not by blood, but by love,” Mays recalls.
Vaughan chose Sam’s as a frequent backdrop for band photos and even had Sam’s barbecue delivered to a New York recording studio while he was working on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance album in 1982. As Edi Johnson, who worked for Vaughan’s management company, remembers in the book Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, “Stevie called me and said, ‘We need some real barbecue here. Go over to Sam’s and send it up.’ They packed it in dry ice, and I drove it to the airport.” A few years later, Vaughan was interviewed at the Lone Star Cafe in New York. “Sam’s Bar-B-Que is the most incredible barbecue in the world,” he says to the camera before saying hello to Erma Mays. Vaughan’s advocacy for the place certainly helped raise the profile for Sam’s, which was the subject of a 1982 story in the Statesman and was given a two-and-a-half star review the same year by restaurant critic Mark Hanna. He wrote that Sam’s “is not a place to go before the symphony. It is simply a bit of Americana which offers no modern-day frills and a lot of old-time flavor.” Little has changed about Sam’s charm.
Vaughan’s connection to the place made the recent controversy between Sam’s and the band Midland even more of a head-scratcher. Musicians claiming allegiance to Texas should crave the association with the legendary barbecue joint, but in a band photo taken outside Sam’s, the label replaced “Sam’s” on the sign with the title of one of Midland’s songs. Mays said they’ve since come to an agreement. “We’re all right,” he said, referring to the payment he received from the band as part of Midland’s public apology.
Here’s the image that Midland Photoshopped out Sam’s name — and the Washington Post ran to accompany their profile of the band in their magazine section last month.
“WOKE” IS PRETTY MUCH A SYNONYM FOR “STUPID.”
BRYAN PRESTON: Did Every Village Elect Its Idiots to City Council and the Mayor’s Office…or Just Democrats?
Bryan’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IS SAVAGE: Biden Tells Staffers To Pick Any Black Person For VP ‘Since They All Think The Same Anyway.’
KANYE WEST’S 2020 CAMPAIGN PLATFORM IS NOW ONLINE.
WORST. WHITE SUPREMACIST. PRESIDENT. EVER. Black Employment Rose Faster than White Employment in July, Black-White Jobless Gap at Historic Low.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Clemson prof: Trump and ‘anyone who still calls themselves a Republican’ is ‘racist.’ For an engineering school in South Carolina, Clemson has a surprising amount of PC idiocy.
‘MOST SOPHISTICATED’ IN US HISTORY: Underground tunnel connecting Mexico and Arizona discovered. “The tunnel had not yet been finished and did not have an opening on the U.S. side. However, the tunnel was equipped with a ventilation system, water lines, electric wiring, reinforcement of its walls, and shoring.”
HANNAH COX: Billionaires don’t deserve your hate.
THEY CANCELLED THE GUY WHO TRIED TO WARN THEM USING ACTUAL RESEARCH: Dems starting to panic that voters will blame them for riots.
TO BE FAIR, THE HATE IS REAL AND THE “ETHICS” ARE HIGHLY MOCKABLE: Ousted aide rips media’s ‘hate’ of Trump, mocks press ethics.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Revolution Comes for Portland’s ‘Wall of Moms.’
Related: Portland mayor pleads with vandals: Don’t you see that you’ve become a prop for Trump’s campaign? “Appealing to their decency is a nonstarter. But appealing to their hatred by claiming that someone whom they detest even more than the cops might be profiting from their rampage? Now you’re talking. America’s political culture is one of intense negative partisanship and Ted Wheeler is all in.”