Post 267 - December 3, 2020

Day 267…

All of the talk about the vaccine is making it sound like we are all going to be getting back to work next week.

Governor Cuomo announced yesterday that New York has been told by the federal government that we can expect our first batch of 170,000 vaccines in the coming weeks. That means that 85,000 people in the coming weeks can be inoculated.

New York state has a population of 19.45 million people.

Five years ago, the total number of healthcare workers in the state, who are slated to be among the first to get the vaccine, numbered over 1.2 million people. This includes people who work in private, federal, state and local hospitals, people who work in nursing facilities, people who work as receptionists and assistants alongside the doctors in private practice and people who work for outpatient facilities, laboratories, and transportation services.

That these vaccines are coming out at all is still miraculous.

Back on January 10, before the virus had even been named, a team of Chinese scientists uploaded its entire genetic sequence to a public site.

The posting was coordinated by Edward C. Holmes an Australian from the University of Sydney on behalf of the team of Chinese scientists led by Professor Yong Zhen-Zhang from Fudan University in Shanghai. They shared it with everybody.

The first time that a significant portion of a virus was able to be sequenced was in 1981.

Frederick Sanger was born in England in 1918, coincidentally, at the height of the Spanish flu pandemic. He won his first Nobel prize for developing a method to read the amino acid sequence of insulin. He won his second for developing, with his colleagues, what is now called the Sanger Sequencing method. Beginning in the late 70’s, he used that method to partially sequence a human virus called phiX174. It took him about three years.

One of Sanger’s doctoral students, George Brownlee, then started sequencing the virus that causes the flu in humans.

Scientists divide the flu into three basic categories, A, B, and C. Brownlee studied a subtype, H1, of the most virulent type which is A. Influenza’s genome is made up of several RNA strands rather than one continuous one. One of the aims of Brownlee’s study was to find the mechanism by which the interaction of these RNA strands, contribute to the creation of influenza pandemics.

All of that mishmash basically means that if you can identify all of the individual pieces of these strands, you can then pinpoint the ones that are responsible for specific things and target them. Each of the vaccines that are coming to the market now, focus on a slightly different part of the genome sequence.

Obviously, none of this technology was available in 1918 during the Spanish flu pandemic. The first vaccine to fight the Spanish flu didn’t come out until 1942, twenty-four years later. That vaccine was developed without any access to this kind of technology.

The work that Frederick Sanger did over the course of his career changed everything. Since the creation of the Sanger Sequencing method, other, even more sensitive ways to map DNA have been developed. The amazing pace of the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine is largely a result of that work. Add to that, that this type of virus luckily tends to be a much easier target for vaccines than other human pathogens.

By making the sequencing of the virus public, multiple groups of scientists were able to sink their teeth into the problem at the same time. By the time the President announced his Operation Warp Speed in mid-May, scientists had already been working on it in multiple countries around the world for four months.

Twice as much, twice as long.

That’s the saying when you are doing a home renovation. Whatever you think it’s going to cost and however long you think it’s going to take, double it.

When we bought our apartment, we felt like we had gotten a great deal. The guys who had lived here before us, had lived here for several decades. They’d renovated the bathroom some years before, but they hadn’t touched the rest of the apartment at all.

We couldn’t believe our luck when we found it. We had far less competition to buy it than we would have if they’d updated it. We bought it for less than we were planning on spending but knew that we were going to make up the difference in the work that we were going to put into it.

And we did.

And then some.

The majority of the work was concentrated in the kitchen, which we basically rebuilt. We opened up one entire wall, which meant, among other things, that the entire electrical panel needed to be relocated. Another mini wall needed to be constructed.

Everything is more complicated in New York City. You need permits for everything. There is so much work that good contractors can get booked months in advance.

At the time we were living in Michael’s old apartment in midtown. They let us stay there month to month after Michael’s lease was up. I have no idea what we would have done or where we would have gone if they hadn’t done that.

The work on our new apartment started.

Then it stopped.

Then it started again.

The old kitchen floor was pulled up and we found that half of the floor underneath it was rotten. We now needed to replace the floor. How much was that going to be?

The work stopped again.

It started again.

Something else came up. As long as we were doing THIS, we should probably do THAT given that everything is already opened up. How much? How long? You know that your electricity to the bathroom is not up to code? Really? How much? How long?

Mom…? How would you feel about bankrolling us some counter tops for the kitchen?

It dragged on for many months beyond what we were initially expecting. Once it was done, we were thrilled. We still are. (Thanks, Mom!) The bathroom which we loved when we moved in, in light of how the rest of the apartment looks, we now think needs to be redone as well. That’s for the future.

There are already some side effects being reported from the vaccine - fatigue, headaches and muscle pain. The fear is that that is going to keep people from getting the second shot.

Without the second shot, it won’t work. The first primes the body, so to speak, and the second boosts the anti-viral load. Nobody knows yet, how long it’s going to be effective.

How will they find out? They will keep testing people and when they no longer have the antibodies, they’ll know. That information is months or years away.

As wonderful the prospect of the vaccine is, it doesn’t seem like we should be sitting around waiting for it to happen. There’s likely to be a lot of time - maybe as long as a full year - before us ordinary folk can get it. A lot can happen in that year.

There are going to be hiccups with the vaccine. I don’t know what they’ll be, I can’t imagine that anyone really does, they are just going to come up. We can plan for what we are going to do, but not at the expense of living our lives now.

At a news conference in London yesterday, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, England’s deputy medical officer warned that Britons that vaccine or no, they would likely be wearing masks for years to come. He said that they wouldn’t, “have a massive party and throw out our masks and hand sanitizer,” and celebrate like everyone did at the end of World War II.

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, immediately cut him off in a panic and assured everyone that life would return to normal. Professor Van-Tam just pushed on saying that it would be wrong to think that life was just going to return to what we were used to.

Twice as much, twice as long.

As opposed to the first months when we were trapped at home and knew nothing about what was really going on, we are now living our lives. We aren’t unhappy.

I find that while there are certainly many things that I miss about how our lives were being lived in February and March, there are also plenty of things that I am not in any hurry to return to.

Working 24/7 no longer seems as interesting to me as it once was. Traveling I miss.  Getting on a plane once or twice a week, every week, I don’t. I miss working on a show, but I don’t necessarily miss working on seven shows at the same time.

If life went back to the way it was, I would miss being at home with Michael. I would miss the clarity I have found just being still. The low-level anxiety that suffused my pre-COVID life is gone and I am fine with that. Mask wearing can be annoying, but honestly, I don’t even really notice it anymore.

There’s a whole winter to figure out what I really want to do once our lives begin to open back up again. I don’t need to decide now.

We’ve all been given the chance to be still and truly listen to our hearts.

Living month to month isn’t a bad thing. When Michael and I were doing it in midtown, we weren’t just sitting around waiting. We were working - pushing ahead. The new apartment was a lovely future goal but where we were was fine. More than fine. We had a great time on West 50th Street before we moved uptown.

This year has been challenging, heartbreaking at times, and also seemingly endless at times. It’s changed us.

Almost everyone I’ve talked to has adjusted their views about what they want out of life as a result of the experience. That is not a bad thing.

It does look like the vaccine is coming. It will be nice when it gets here. We don’t, however, need to wait until then to get our lives back.

We never actually lost them.