oldmanfan

This can actually be a serious issue for parents of children born with what is called ambiguous genitalia. Such kids have genetic/chromosomal abnormalities that make it difficult to assign gender at birth. One example is androgen insensitivity syndrome, or testicular feminization. These babies are chromosomally male, but have a defect in the androgen receptor needed for testosterone. Thus, the genitalia do not develop into male genitalia and the baby looks female. The opposite type is CAH or congenital adrenal hyperplasia. In this case you have babies that are chromosomally female, but their adrenal glands pump out so much testosterone that the genitalia appear female. At some point the parents have to decide what gender they want to adopt for their child. I've seen a few of these and it is a emotional roller coaster for these parents.

This has been a tough year, no question about it. But kids tend to be pretty resilient. I think we are back to normal (or should be) this coming school year and kids will be able to do their normal routine again. By the way, I agree with the Internet thing which is one reason I agree with the Biden approach to infrastructure. Other stuff can be scaled back in his plan, but Internet access to all is critical in 2021.

This has been a tough year as I said. But not insurmountable. Kids are more resilient than we give them credit for.

The U.S. will always back Israel because it is the only democractic country in the region and because of the Holocaust. Whether that is right or wrong is immaterial to the fact that JEws and Arabs hate each other and have done so for thousands of years.

Kids will be back in school this fall. One tough year does not mean they never had a chance. My daughter had a first year of college that was tough but she pulled through. Most kids of various ages that I know did. Was it hard? Yes. Did some need some extra help and emotional support? Yes. Does it doom an entire generation? Of course not. The hysteria around here is stunning.

It is an intractable problem and has been so for thousands of years.

Try again. New CDC director for one thing. And she doesn't have a Caputo telling the former CDC people to falsify data for another.

Some of these points are interesting and worth attempting, but I suspect would ultimately be fruitless. To me when you have two groups that think the other has no right to exist, it doesn't matter what diplomatic methods are used.

That is a noble thought and of course all would like to see Jews and Arabs live in peace. But they haven't for thousands of years because they don't want to. Some do, but the ones who don't rule the roost. It just stuns me that so many think a U.S. President can somehow change that.

Again, Jews and Arabs have hated each others for thousands of years. Some Arabs in groups like Hamas want Jews exterminated, some Jews want Arabs exterminated. How exactly is the U.S. government or any other country supposed to broker peace when you have that as the underlying issue?

No cards, boosters are just that, and the initial quarantine was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. Since that time mitigation strategies like masks were used to stop more people from dying. Almost 600,000 people in this country have died and if it were up to you it would be in the millions. If you are so worried, then I presume you got your vaccine? If you are so sad about your kids I presume if they’re 12 and older they’ve been vaccinated? Or if younger they will be first in line when it’s approved for them? If no then shut the hell up.

Not that you have the sense to understand basic virology, but the more people vaccinated the less hosts available for the virus to propagate

Truth hurts. If you don’t get vaccinated, get Covid and die, your choice. Don’t expect sympathy.

It reflects the appropriate caution the FDA uses.

Thanks for adding that info

Generally the FDA wants to get a sizeable number of patients receiving the medication, either in the form of clinical trials or general administration, so they have what they consider adequate safety and efficacy data for approval. The two mRNA viruses as well as the J & J vaccine received emergency use authorization or EUA because of the nature of the pandemic. They each had tens of thousands of patients that went through the phase trials before the EUA was granted. I personally don’t think experimental was the right descriptor given the completed trials. Now that so many have taken the Pfizer showing really impressive efficacy and essentially no serious side effects they have applied for full FDA approval which I suspect will be granted shortly.

One thing to consider is the type of medication. Many drugs on the market target something called receptors. Receptors are on the cell surface and when they get activated stimulate different responses in different cells. So when you get a complication it is because you get a different response in a cell other than the one you’re targeting. The Covid vaccines to me are much simpler. The only active part is the RNA coding for the unique viral protein. The mRNA is degraded after it codes for the protein, and of course the immune system makes antibodies against the protein. You can of course never say never, but if you look at the history of vaccines in general serious side effects are extremely rare, and with the Covid mRNA vaccines they dimply have not seen it happen in the millions of vaccines given. I too am a man of faith and would give you another thing to consider. Perhaps God is working in this by providing researchers and physicians with the insight and skill necessary to so quickly develop such effective vaccines.

Let me try to explain, and I hope it will help you decide to get vaccinated. When they say that Covid-19 was a novel virus, that is precisely what was meant. With new viruses expressing new spike proteins in Covid-19's case, the body has not had a chance to build immunity. And this virus was very unpredictable. First, the long latency period of two weeks before symptoms occurred. That greatly enhanced the spread of the virus, in that people could infect others without knowing they had it. Add then that the clinical course of the infection was unpredictable, in that some remained unsymptomatic whereas the number of deaths now approaches 600,000, and you see the seriousness of this virus. I don't think anyone would argue that boosting one's own immune system and such is a bad thing. But in the face of a very infectious pathogen like Covid-19, the issue is what if doing so doesn't work? Then you die, or you have serious long term morbidity if you are one that becomes seriously affected. The reason vaccines are being advised, and even for children, comes down to basics about virology. Viruses need host cells to replicate, specifically our cells. The more people vaccinated such that they no longer become hosts (i.e. herd immunity) the less opportunity for the virus to hang around and it eventually becomes controlled or hopefully eradicated. The reason children should also get vaccinated is that they too can get Covid (although the mortality rate is much lower it is still there as are longer term complications) and because they harbor the virus and act as hosts. The longer we let the virus hang around, the more it can infect and the more it can mutate and potential become even more infectious (such as the U.K variant). Now to concerns about the vaccine. The mRNA vaccines have actually been in development for a long time, and before getting EUA they had to go through the usual phases of clinical trials to look at potential damaging effects and such. I sit on an FDA advisory panel, and I can assure you that these clinical trials and the data obtained from them are taken extraordinarily seriously by the FDA. The tens of thousands of patients enrolled in the trials for especially the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines showed no serious side effects and extremely good rates of success in generating an immune response against Covid. And now since those vaccines have gone into widespread use there are millions of people that have been vaccinated, and the FDA and CDC follow up on adverse reactions. The sum of that is the two mRNA vaccines used in the U.S. show remarkably high effectiveness rates in promoting an immune response and helping the vaccinated individual fight off Covid. Serious side effects and deaths from Covid with these vaccines are virtually nil. And more recent data provides evidence that the ability of vaccinated persons to harbor and spread the virus is also very low. These findings, together with the efficiency in preventing illness and the marked decrease in infection and mortality rates since widespread vaccine distribution has started, allowed the CDC to make their recommendation last week. And they have made the Pfizer vaccine a candidate for full FDA authorization, which I expect to see shortly. Concerns about long term effects from the vaccine are understandable. But if you look at the mRNA vaccines they are basically the mRNA, some salts, and some lipids (fats) to help keep the mRNA soluble. There really is nothing there that should cause any long term effects; the mRNA is degraded by the cell after it is used to direct synthesis of the viral spike protein part. Regarding masks, flip flopping, and such, it is regrettable that what is a public health crisis turned into a political football. There has not been flip flopping per se. Rather, what we have seen is an evolution in how we deal with Covid as scientists gather more data on prevention and treatment and such. Dr. Fauci is criticized time and again for flip flopping on masks, with the statement in March of last year about how the public should not wear masks being misinterpreted. What he was referring to at that time was that he did not want the mask supply to be taken away from front line health care workers. At that time we did not know exactly how the virus was transmitted, and what the effectiveness of various masks, distancing, and such would be. Studies were done showing that masks of different types mitigated against the spread of droplets and aerosols, which were found to be the main modes of transmission. Note I said mitigate and not prevent; anti-mask folks like to say the masks don't prevent anything as if it were a black and white, works or doesn't work issue. And it is not. As more and more studies are done we find that the risk of infection outdoors is much lower than indoors and recommendations then change when you're outside. And so on. This is how science works; it is not flip flopping, it is good science. You continue to build information and as you do you change treatment strategies and recommendations. Look at other medical conditions such as heart disease or cancer. We don't treat people the same way today as we did even a year ago, because new data and findings come into focus and cause changes is strategies. The same thing has happened with Covid over the past 14 months and will continue to do so. In your last sentence you indicate you want to see more results before deciding. The results are in on millions of folks now, and they show that these vaccines are tremendously effective against Covid. Almost historically effective. And with few if any serious side effects. So please do your part and get the vaccine. I hope some of what I've written here helps guide you down that path.

Me. Or at least I used to be until the insanity that took over the party. Now I'm independent.

Not interested. What we really need is a centrist party that attracts the centrists/moderates of both current parties. Since both parties are now more represented by the extremes in each, a centrist party would win.

Started with Isaac and Ishmael and to me it’s folly to think the U.S.A. will make any meaningful changes.

The fundamental issue here is that both sides want the other eradicated from the face of the earth. You have some noble ideas but they won’t change thousands of years of history.

I would be for that amendment. I would also be for a balanced budget amendment in a federal level.

All good points. I would say given the low mortality/morbidity in kids under 12 I think most states will say that schools will open without masks this fall.

I think it got influenced a lot by the several studies indicating vaccinated folks have very small likelihood of spreading virus. So they are protected and also won’t infect others. That said, I wish they would have given a head’s up to the governors so they could have been ready with their state specific directives.