Favorites May 4 2021

May 05, 2021

NEW: Pfizer expects to submit for Covid-19 vaccine EUA for children age 2 to 11 in September

Awesome! Wish it were even sooner.

A while ago, I started noticing something strange: Very progressive people, who love to talk about "believing in science," were adopting COVID restrictions *over and above* CDC guidelines. I thought, is there a story here? And, well, wow, there is.

theatlantic.comThe Liberals Who Can’t Quit LockdownProgressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID-19 policies, and some liberal policy makers have left scientific evidence behind.

As Yglesias said a few months ago, normalcy is when we can go back to ignoring the CDC about this just like we do about medium rare beef or alcohol. Speaking of Yglesias, he was commenting on all the doom and gloom from some corners regarding the possibility of variants evading the vaccine.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I mean, I worry about stuff too — what if there's a new zoonotic virus? But there's no specific reason to believe that vaccine-wrecking variants are coming. When your kid gets a measles vaccine you don't sit around wondering "what if a new breakthrough variant evolves?"

I'm not sure what seems more reasonable, being overly cautions because of a nebulous feeling left over from a year of precautions, or for specific, somewhat nonsensical reasons.

James Palmer @BeijingPalmer

carrying on the proud Confederate tradition of surrender.

Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews

Man accused of carrying Confederate flag into US Capitol on Jan. 6 might be among the first to fold. Plea negotiations are underway, per hearing underway in DC federal court https://t.co/zYuX7BNjnl

Satisfying burn there.

Josh Marshall @joshtpm

Frankly he’s right. And it’s damning. The message is Trump and the Big Lie, and pretending the insurrection didn’t happen. There’s no other message to deliver. Any policy issues don’t hold a candle to that.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar

"I have heard from members concerned about her ability to carry out the job as conference chair, to carry out the message" -- Kevin McCarthy indicates on Fox & Friends that Liz Cheney is likely toast as House Republican Conference Chair https://t.co/afP2D971Zq

Honestly I didn't realize how bad the consequences of not endorsing the big lie would be for Cheney

Charlie Stross @cstross

Silicon carbide semiconductor circuits could provide the high temperature brains for a future Venus surface rover:

spectrum.ieee.orgFull Page Reload

Image of a future Venus rover on Venus. — Artist’s Rendition from the article

This and the dragonfly drone we're sending to Titan are my current favorite space robots.

Jason Furman @jasonfurman

That is a tiny amount of money relative to the truly massive amount of good Pfizer has done. (And it is revenue not profit.) Moreover Pfizer's stock hasn't risen since the pandemic started even while the broader market is up around 30%. I really don't get this argument at all.

Robert Reich @RBReich

Unlike several vaccine manufacturers that vowed to forego profits during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pfizer planned to profit. Today it announced that the vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in the first three months of 2021, nearly a quarter of its total revenue.

Hundreds of millions of doses, 3.5 billion in revenue. That seems uh, very reasonable? If we could find a way to pay them more money to make it even faster that’d be great. The biggest downside of the vaccine purchase agreements is that they didn’t seem to come with bonuses for earlier delivery.