The Berlin Files #81: well hey
What the end of the pandemic might look like, and much more on hopeful signals, quarantine life, and radical transformations.
Well, hey there. Eric here.
It's been the kind of week... where news of potential extraterrestrial life in the clouds of Venus is a welcome distraction.
Nonetheless, I'm still looking at the hopeful signals, the radical transformations for what's coming next, wacky stuff we're doing to get through in the meantime, and nerdy deep dives into pop cultural arcana. It's all in The Files. Or... mostly in The Files. Short and sweet edition for you this week!
Hopeful Signals, Quarantine Life, & Radical Transformations
Vaccine & Prevention Progress
The first coronavirus vaccine that aims to protect people with just a single shot has entered the final stages of testing in the United States, in an international trial that will recruit up to 60,000 participants. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer of J&J, said there may be enough data to have results by the end of the year on whether the vaccine is safe and effective, adding that the company plans to manufacture 1 billion doses next year.
There's still a lot that is unknown about COVID-19 due to complexities in the virus itself, how it’s transmitted, and how it affects different people in different ways. Some of this complexity stems from the notion of "viral load."
How sick a person gets from a virus can depend on how much of the pathogen that person was exposed to and how much virus is replicating in their body — questions that are still open for the novel coronavirus... Knowing a patient's viral load could be helpful to providers in determining how therapies should be directed, says [Michael Satlin, an infectious disease specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian].
I know I'm not the only who thinks, with some regularity, "When is all of this going to end?" And the ever popular, "When are we going to get back to normal?" This piece, "Here's How the Pandemic Finally Ends," attempts to answer both questions.
And this is how it could happen in the United States: By November 2021, most Americans have received two doses of a vaccine that, while not gloriously effective, fights the disease in more cases than not. Meanwhile, Americans continue to wear masks and avoid large gatherings, and the Covid-19 numbers drop steadily after a series of surges earlier in the year. Eventually, as more and more Americans develop immunity through exposure and vaccination, and as treatments become more effective, Covid-19 recedes into the swarm of ordinary illnesses Americans get every winter.
And while I've heard various timelines over the wrenching and at times seemingly endless six-plus months that COVID-19 has upended life in the U.S. and globally, a November 2021 milestone seems reasonable to get back to… if not “normal,” than to something closer to a post-pandemic era.
“I’ve said November 2021,” predicts Zeke Emanuel, former Obama adviser and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think you’ll have enough herd immunity [in the U.S.] that we’ll have an unremitting decline.” Herd immunity is the point at which so many people are immune that the virus can no longer spread widely.
It's important to note that "herd immunity" isn't simply "everyone gets it so everyone's then kind of immune."
“We can get [to herd immunity] with vaccination and clinical disease,” he says. “The question is how long can we stay there. Meaning, if we get to, say, 75 or 80 percent immune projection, would it stay that way if we didn’t do anything else?”
The TV Club
If you've been following along at home, or from wherever your e-mail inbox hangs out, I've been on a deep nerd out project to figure out my favorite TV shows of all time. Which, as a slight update, is looking like it'll be a Top 25 list when all is said and done.
One of the fun things about doing this is figuring out what I should pick versus what I want to pick for such a list. What I mean by that if I picked all "classic" and old timey shows, I maybe could show off my cultural acumen and critical ranginess or some such to the 3.5 of you who might care about such things (All in the Family, Deadwood, and Love, American Style on the same list, ooh, this guy must know what he's talking about!). Or if I went with all "standard" consensus picks -- Cheers, M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, et al -- I'd be compiling a list of all time popular and beloved shows that aren't necessarily my personal favorites.
I found this pretty easy to get around by keeping in mind that I should lean into what I personally love versus what I think "everyone" loves. Another challenge is recency bias, which, I've found, is a tough one. I'm thoroughly enjoying rewatching two shows with the word "love" in them of late -- Love and Lovesick (both available on Netflix) -- but should they be on the list versus The Shield, a show I haven't revisited in over a decade?
That said, I wound up selecting two shows -- The Twilight Zone and Monty Python's Flying Circus -- that are both beloved classics and that are deeply influential on me personally. Python influenced my love of absurd and even bizarre comedy that's still grounded in fantastic writing and performance while The Twilight Zone embedded within me a lifelong love of genre fiction filled with mystery, atmosphere, and surprising reveals.
Overall, I'm typically attracted to shows with strong narrative arcs and serialized storytelling, but The Twilight Zone and Python prove that sketch-long or episode-length content can have a lifelong lasting impact.
The Comedy Club
Here's some Key & Peele for you this week. I'm astounded that this sub-2.5 minute sketch manages to be funny and interesting while also baking in some cogent social commentary and poking fun at classic tropes around the notion of time travel. Enjoy.
And here's one of Monty Python's most famous sketches of all time (so famous, in fact, that it's referenced heavily throughout the Gwyneth Paltrow romcom Sliding Doors!), the Spanish Inquisition. Which, in fact, no one expected. And if they did expect... it's a long story, you see. I'll just let them explain.
Election 2020
Climate Watch
Tweets of the Week
It's a Wrap!
You made it. Now get back to just saying hey.
Also:
Support The Berlin Files: buy me a cup of coffee, only if you want to. I'll use the money to support local coffee shops here in Seattle.
Once upon a time, I wrote a book about the TV show Mad Men. If you're a fan of the show, my writing, or that era of U.S. history, give it a check out.
E-mail me. I get it here: eric@forwerdmedia.com.
Social media for a socially distanced world: Twitter | LinkedIn
And one last time…