The Berlin Files #86: new day
Big time vaccine progress, and much more on hopeful signals, quarantine life, and radical transformations.
Hi all! Eric here, back from a little break.
While a lot's changed and is continuing to change in the world, look for more of the same here. Big time vaccine news to look at this week, followed by lots of fun morsels of people doing wacky things while cooped up, and some music and election data nerdery abounds as well if you've an interest.
Hopeful Signals, Quarantine Life, & Radical Transformations
Vaccine Progress
There's lots of bad coronavirus news these days. Real bad. We all know that. However, there's strikingly great news on the vaccine front, with only the tantalizing and exasperating prospect of getting an effective vaccine from -- and I apologize for the non-scientific take on things here -- from the "Okay, we're pretty sure this works pretty well and is safe" to "Everyone who wants the vaccine can get one cheaply and quickly."
That being said, I was super encouraged in the following assortment of stories that came out over the last few weeks:
Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective, company reports in its analysis
Early Data Suggests a Successful Covid-19 Vaccine Could Be on the Way
“There’s a lot at stake for humanity,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s C.E.O., said (via the Times). “If we get it right, the world can be saved.”
Pfizer says early data indicates its COVID-19 vaccine is effective.
This interim analysis, from an independent data monitoring board, looked at 94 infections recorded so far in a study that has enrolled nearly 44,000 people in the U.S. and five other countries.
So what's next?
A possible timeline for the vaccine, Carl said, could look something like this: At the end of this month, Pfizer and BioNTech may apply for emergency use authorization. It will probably take a few weeks for the F.D.A. to make a decision. If authorized, we may see the first few million doses of the vaccine given out at the beginning of January to at-risk people like health care workers.
There are still major questions that we don't yet have the ability to answer, or at least in detail. Three big examples: Is it safe, will it work for everyone, and how long will it last?
Whether the Pfizer vaccine is safe: The company’s press release summarizing the first data from its 44,000-person Phase III trial left big questions unanswered. There was no data on safety, including the type and severity of any side effects experienced by trial participants. That should become clearer by the time Pfizer files an emergency-authorization application with the FDA, likely later this month. The agency has told vaccine developers they should not apply for emergency authorization until they have two months of post-vaccination safety data on at least half of their trial participants.
Whether it works for everyone: Pfizer’s eventual application to the FDA could reveal whether the vaccine is broadly effective — a crucial question, given that the elderly have weaker immune systems generally, and kids seem to respond to the coronavirus differently than adults do. Pfizer is also testing its vaccine on people with some pre-existing conditions, including HIV and hepatitis C, and has tried to ensure that volunteers come from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
How long the immune response lasts: Pfizer determined the vaccine’s effectiveness by comparing how many people in the trial became infected within a week after receiving the second of two doses. The more effective a vaccine, the greater proportion of infections will occur among those who got a placebo, vs. those who got the vaccine. But seven days is a short window — so scientists are eager to see if the vaccine stays effective over a longer period.
This Axios piece gets into the details of the challenges of getting the vaccine to many millions of people, including massive distribution, safe storage, accurate record keeping, and managing follow up doctor visits.
In short, a long way to go from here to there, but very good news that we have an ever clearer path out of this thing. Something to hold onto during a long winter in which many people in the U.S. and around the world will continue to get sick.
And, to state the obvious: a new administration getting installed in January will be far more effective stewards of this progress than the current one could have ever hoped to be.
Remote work and remote art
This New York Times piece about artists leaving London for more affordable, smaller towns in England got me to thinking about a number of things. A quote from an artist known as “Dominic from Luton” particularly struck me:
“Almost everything can be achieved online,” he said. “All you need is a laptop and a half-decent smartphone.”
There's still so much that we don't know about the long term structural and cultural changes that the post-pandemic world will see. There’s lots of coverage of how remote work is changing the way many companies and industries operate, but I think it's equally likely that people from all different walks of life -- students, artists and entertainers, entrepreneurs, craftspeople, digital gig economy workers, as some examples -- will have different considerations about where to live and work versus pre-COVID days.
It's interesting too to consider that communities may form in disparate areas -- smaller cities and suburbs and towns -- based on some common interest or type of remote work or form of artistic expression.
Quarantining
I'm not even totally sure what's going on here, but I know it's really cool.
Similarly.
And I think this covers how most of spent election week pretty well.
This is really cool.
Weirdly and hilariously, this thought by Conan O'Brien speaks to our feelings about how things are going as we're eight-plus months into this thing.
Finally, this is from a little while back already, but I really love this creative and highly inventive take on keeping up the Halloween spirit for kids this year.
Election 2020
If there's one thing about the recent election I'd point out that you may not have seen elsewhere, it's this.
Zoom into that map, and it visually tells so many fascinating stories about the 2020 election all at once. The most striking one is the splashes of blue all over the country -- which notes better Democratic party performance for the presidential candidate in 2020 versus 2016 (or how Biden performed versus Trump versus how Clinton faired versus Trump the last time around).
Look at the suburbs of Atlanta and Phoenix, and you see the story of how Biden flipped those two states that were solid red for Republicans for decades. And by glancing at Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, you can see how Biden reconstructed the "blue wall" (by way of modest yet crucial wins) that Clinton lost in 2016.
You can also see the dull yet persistent red hues across states like Ohio and Iowa. They are no longer "purple" or swing states. For now, they are firmly in Republican control. Likewise, Colorado and Virginia, which until recently were considered "battleground" states, aren't any longer.
Things get really interesting when you look at Texas and Florida, both states that Democrats maybe thought they had a shot at but Trump carried fairly easily. The brightest blot of red on the map is in Miami-Dade county, where Cuban Americans and working class white voters voted for Trump in surprising fashion. And in Texas, while all of its major cities (save for El Paso) drove in massive margins for Biden -- as Beto O'Rourke also did in his narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in his 2018 senatorial race -- the border towns down south, assumed to be strong Democratic bastions with loyal Hispanic voters -- voted heavily for Trump versus 2016 and helped keep Texas' electoral votes in the Republican column.
The reasons for why this happened are interesting and complex -- I'll get more into this future editions.
The Music Club
I'm still having a blast doing a deep dive on Rolling Stone's top 500 albums list. Perhaps not surprisingly, the stuff that tends to resonate with me the most tends to be from the 1990s, an incredible era for music but also a time in my own life when music took on a particular significance.
Here's some 1990s albums that are worth your time or a revisit.
Blur's Parklife (1994)
Beck's One Foot in the Grave (1994)
Sonic Youth's Goo (1990)
Weezer's self-titled "blue" album (1994)
Climate Watch
Tweets of the Week(s)
It's a Wrap!
You made it. Now get back to your shack, and play that track.
Also:
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And one last time…