Agreed.

Even if the experience getting to this point sucked, this is still excellent and I’m going to steal it wholesale. May have to print it out on a card for future use. :) Stay healthy!

This is legitimately the best framing of this I’ve read, and as someone who has certainly been the depressive partner, I wish I’d had the wherewithal to lay it out like this to my “normal” partners.

They’re not being used for anything substantive yet. Those cards are primarily intended to be used as a way to remember to go and get your followup dose, and they’re not the equivalent of, say, the WHO’s “carte jaune” international vaccine cards.

Really missed an opportunity to title this “Fantastic Yeasts and Where to Find Them.”

To coin a phrase, this.

Thanks for linking to that NEJM article, too; the graphical abstract is really nice, and I’m absolutely using that as a reference for folks who have questions about efficacy, etc. It’s great to see that graphical abstracts are becoming the new standard for publication, even though they’re not my favorite thing in the…

You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!

even when you get the shots that wearing a mask would still need to be done

As @bassguitarhero pointed out above, this is a new (but extremely well-tested) method for producing vaccines. When I say “new,” I mean “this is the first vaccine created with this technology that’s been deployed on a large scale.” The technology itself is at least 10 years old, according to my super brief PubMed…

Right there with you.

I agree with your conclusion generally, though the wrinkle is that, as I read it, there were 4 incidents within the 2-month window of the safety trial, so scale that up by a factor of 6 for an annual rate. I saw different published numbers for annual incidence of BP based on the type of study: anywhere from 15-20 to…

Your numbers look pretty much in the ballpark. From the FDA briefing document[1], “Safety data from approximately 38,000 participants≥16 years of age randomized 1:1 to vaccine or placebo... suggest a favorable safety profile... among non-serious unsolicited adverse events, there was a numerical imbalance of four cases…

I cannot recommend Figure 1 highly enough, even if you’re not in the field. Think: Instagram for medical professionals, so instead of artfully arranged salads, you get interesting pathologies and (less often, but often enough) beautiful treatments. I’ll just say that based on one set of photos, I am never driving with…

Absolutely. As someone who works indirectly with folks who deal with these pathologies, my immediate reaction was “that’s a diabetic foot ulcer.” She might want to get her A1C checked, if she hasn’t already. Either way, maybe a good candidate for HBOT.

I posit that dry ice is very safe; your local Walmart and grocery store probably sell it (by the pound, in Chee-to size pellets), so it can’t be terribly dangerous. But let’s do the math and see if I’m right ... or is dry ice a hidden threat to health and safety?(???!!!)

I’m doing this back-of-the-envelope plus Google,…

Similar potential problem with LN2, since nitrogen offgasses from Dewar flasks as the liquid nitrogen boils off (you can’t fully seal a Dewar because otherwise you’ll build up enough pressure to crack the seal as the liquid turns to vapor). DOT regs ban transportation of filled Dewars in closed vehicles, though open…

I have to respectfully disagree. You are correct that there are few static -70C freezers except in industrial labs or at universities, but -200C storage in liquid nitrogen is much more widespread, particularly in rural areas. Ranchers use Dewar flasks with LN2 all the time to cryopreserve bull semen samples for…

Since you seem to be up on the literature, is there any reason why Pfizer’s vaccine can’t be transported or stored at temperatures below -70C? I’ve been casually looking for this information, and I haven’t found it yet.
I ask because there is a very well-established method for storing samples at about -200C: liquid…

On a cursory readthrough of the experimental protocol, it’s not quite “just those showing symptoms.” They do use nasal swab testing to confirm COVID-19 infection if any of the long list of symptoms are reported (and of course, they swab at both vaccination visits). However, page 57 of the protocol also says “In…