9 December 2020
Sorry for not posting the past week. I get busy with other things. Monday I had my six month eye check up. My cataracts continue to progress but not to the point I need surgery. Otherwise, my eyes are in pretty good shape. I’ve not needed a prescription change for glasses for the last four visits. I end up going every six months because I am now classified as diabetic.
Since I was out and about on Monday, I took the opportunity to send off my holiday cards. I also needed to post a package to a friend in San Francisco. The line at the post office (with six feet of social distancing) was out to the door. There was one postal clerk operating a window and one person who was answering questions. As I got closer, I overheard the postal clerk tell one of the customers that they only operated one window because there was a severe shortage of personnel. When she went to lunch, she had to close the post office down. I suspect Covid as the reason.
Of course, I walked into the post office without a pen or pencil. I finally found the right size box for my item and had to also purchase some bubble wrap. I also walked away from the house without postal tape to seal the box, so I purchased another roll. I think I now have about four of those in the utility room.
Fortunately, someone was in need of tape (they had only Scotch taped their package) and I was happy to give them as much tape as they needed for their package. Amazingly, the postal clerk only answering questions looked me dead in the eye and said “thank you.” Turn about is fair play because someone loaned me a pen so I could address the box. The postal service quit years ago putting out pens for the public.
Continuing my Monday journey, I stopped in at Publix and bought a few more items I would need in the coming week. It was only after I got home and the groceries sorted and put away did I think that I never bought the items necessary for fruit cake. For the past several years I’ve given miniature fruit cakes out at holiday parties made from the King Arthur Flour recipe. It’s a pretty good recipe and everyone seems to actually like it. It’s one of the few fruit cakes I truly like. The only other one I liked was Mother’s “blonde” fruit cake.
On Tuesday, I checked my stocks and found I needed about five or six items. I sat down at the computer and ordered them to be delivered from Publix. I was a little hesitant since whoever shops that day may or may not try to find the ingredients and some were a little peculiar – like dry candied pineapple and dried cherries. Amazingly, they found everything on my list and delivered it by 4:30 that afternoon.
I chopped all the dried and candied fruit required and set them to soak overnight in rum. Maybe that’s why I like this fruit cake. I started baking Wednesday morning. I toasted the walnuts, mixed the batter and promptly forgot to add the walnuts to the batter. Never mind – I just sprinkled them on top of the batter in the mini-tins. I had enough batter to make a larger bread pan of cake – just to sample, of course. They turned out fairly well.
Once you brush the tops with more rum (Myers Dark Rum in my case) they are good, unrefrigerated, for 6-8 weeks. Believe it or not, there are several friends that ask for a small stash of them and they’ll eat sections over the next couple of months. Why I have this thing for fruit cakes, I’ll never know. I always hated the ones gifted to us as kids. Only Mother’s blonde fruit cake tasted good to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have that recipe.
The Sun-Sentinel, the Fort Lauderdale newspaper, published an exposé on the governor’s office and what they had done to mislead the state on Covid. They had front page stories for two days in a row. Then state agents with drawn guns raided the home of the woman who was in charge of the state Covid dashboard before she was fired after filing a whistle blower complaint. She has accused the state of wanting her to alter the data on Covid statistics for the state to make it look better than it was. She could face up to five years in prison is found guilty of hacking the state’s database on Covid. DeSantis, of course, is a Trump supporter and has followed his line on the virus.
Of all the things that Donald Trump has done in his four years, the worst has to be the distrust he instilled in people for science. I suspect there are large numbers of people that no longer believe the CDC in Atlanta nor any of the information coming out about the vaccines can be trusted.
I’m not even sure I trust everything about the vaccines. Both Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines are referred to as m-RNA vaccines. No m-RNA vaccine has previously been attempted in humans. It has succeeded in animal models but not in humans.
Messenger RNA (m-RNA) is a single stranded molecule that in humans, is produced in the nucleus of a cell to read a segment of a DNA molecule. That m-RNA then exits the nucleus to the cytoplasm where it joins with a structure called a ribosome to form a polypeptide which can fold and form a protein or a part of a protein. That protein then can be sent to the cell membrane and “presented” as an antigen on the surface of a cell.
Antigens are not foreign agents in the blood, contrary to what many high school science teachers preach. An antigen is simply any substance that reacts with an antibody – part of the body’s immune response.
The hope is that the when a pre-made m-RNA molecule is injected into a human, it will be absorbed by the cell and will make a Covid protein antigen and place it on the surface of the human cell membrane. It’s then hoped that T-cells circulating in the blood will use their antibodies to lock onto the pre-made Covid protein and kick the immune system into manufacturing antibodies against the virus. Once antibodies are made in large enough numbers to the viral protein, any Covid in the body will then be attacked by killer T-cells.
The theory is good but no one really knows for sure what will happen – in the short or long term. One of the first assumptions is that the pre-made Covid m-RNA will not enter the nucleus. There’s no evidence that regular human cell m-RNA will enter the nucleus – remember human m-RNA is typically made in the nucleus as it “reads” the gene on a DNA molecule and the sent to the cell’s cytoplasm. I don’t think anyone has done a study on whether or not m-RNA can enter the nucleus. There are RNA viruses that attack human cells but they use the machinery of the cytoplasm of the human cell to replicate, not the nuclear machinery.
Messenger RNA is also short lived. In some cases, it stays around only a few seconds – enough time at the micro level. It also degrades over time. How long it lasts and how long it is effective in making the Covid protein is still unknown. That’s part of the reason why they issue this vaccine in two doses – 21 days apart. It’s hoped that memory cells in the blood stream will re-boost the immunity. It’s much like once you get chicken pox, you don’t get it again even after re-exposure. Your memory cells have the information available to fight any re-introduction of the virus to your system.
Some of the other manufacturers of the Covid vaccines use other methods. Some use killed Covid virus (like in flu vaccines). Others create the viral protein and inject you simply with that. Only time will tell which approach is best. The vaccine used in England is a Pfizer vaccine and we should soon know some of the early side effects of the m-RNA vaccine but not the long term effects.
My song recommendation is “Blue Skies” by Willie Nelson. We need a little hope out there.
Stay tuned and stay safe.
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