What to do AFTER covid vaccination, lessons learned

 

I have often recalled the old saying "The sight of the gallows has a remarkable power to focus the mind." Even though I often remember that saying, I can still be surprised when MY mind encounters a physical direct issue. Today, fortunately, it was a good issue -- what to do AFTER I finally got a covid vaccination (Pfizer, yesterday).

One of my local friends (who handled covid related proposals to NSF before her retirement) also got vaccinated yesterday, and warned me:

Paul,

Absolutely no acting "normal" for at least 10 days after the 2nd shot when we should be 95% protected.

I have wondered: what IS the best way for us to act in the day and weeks right after the shot?

It all seemed pretty simple to me yesterday. They handed out lots of paper, which I took. Luda and I walked home, three miles, in sunny open air. After a slight change of clothes and washing hands, I sat down to read what they gave us. It didn't say much we hadn't seen already, except for giving us a CDC web site to get their latest information on the Pfizer vaccine.

It was reassuring to look through the list of about ten possible side effects to watch for, most of which were already impossible for me after the three mile walk. But what about "fatigue"? That one reminded me of how people can construct all kinds of fables in their mind, like the hysteria Freud treated in his first real money making work. But I really did feel tired, maybe because of the walk but maybe more because of the vaccination?

It seemed pretty obvious what I should do. If my body said to rest, I should rest. This is a very special day, a bit like Easter, a special time. If my mitochondria have a whole lot of reconstruction work to do, I shouldn't be like one of those crude dumb bosses who gets in the way of the folks doing the work. 

BUT HOW LONG SHOULD I REST? How long do the mitochondria take to respond to the new signal from the messenger RNA injected yesterday? If it's "near instant" (a day? three days?),

why wait three weeks and ten days, as you suggest, based on what medical people seem to be saying? (The papers they handed us certainly did not say, but they did encourage us to stay alert for that kind of time period.) 

Luda suggested a picture... maybe it is only a day or three for the mitochondria to start pumping out proteins which REPRESENT proteins that might threaten the cell spikes where covid enters. So maybe the three weeks plus two weeks is all about the good old IMMUNE system learning ITS response, as it would be with a more traditional type of vaccine. So after the first one to three days (?), are we simply called to help our ordinary immune systems somehow?

We talked a lot before about MODELS of covid processes, but I don't remember the kind of model which would really sharpen or clarify what WE should be doing ourselves in this period!

In old times, when my goal was to help my immune system kill off a virus, I would take antiviral tea, rest, and make sure I had the right moderate level of food, enough to feed the immune system but not overwork the digestive system. Showers, mouthwash, fresh air... whatever moderate degree.

But Luda has told me that the SECOND SHOT is needed because the immune system may find it TOO EASY to kill off the simulated bad protein, and thus NOT LEARN what it needs to learn.

The goal is NOT to destroy the simulated protein as soon as possible, but to LEARN. So we are called to prolong and strengthen the learning process, not to make it easy. (That reminds me of what teachers and education systems have to do, and what some folks say God does with US.) 

So now, today, should I plan to act more normal than I was planning to yesterday, when I thought about rest?

Not entirely. After all, I do not want to weaken or distract my immune system from learning

the lessons right in front of it TODAY. 

And what about those mitochondria? This will not be the last we hear about THEM!!!!

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Three weeks ago, when we last walked miles for a covid vaccine (not administered, managed in a more chaotic place), I was DEEPLY disappointed. In the early morning in bed, the time I trust most, I had built up a vision of that day being like a personal Easter, to go from vaccine to walk to deep rest. It failed so badly, and disillusioned me! But yesterday was a  lot like what I had envisioned that other time, more like Easter than any day back then could be -- birdsong, flutes, sunlight in many directions, great breezes and pleasant nature smell, mostly a walk through forest by Four Mile Run (a stream used by George Washington in old times). So the loss was only a normal, necessary time delay.

In addition to covid, quantum annealing and UN response to "existential threats" (from climate change to Terminators) also created thoughts and impressions in the early morning today. But I will try NOT to distract my immune system by overdoing it today. While my immune system does its thing, my brain and soul will lightly dream about what it might mean to "herd cats" when they sound like 10**300 big Schrodinger type cats, remembering and smiling down on all the mitochondria below. 

Best regards,

HOW New Internet Technology Could Do Much More for Climate

Many people have told us that more and better use of new internet technology could have massive benefits in preventing climate extinction, at much lower costs than some of the giant Christmas tree climate proposals we have seen.

That is absolutely true, and it is a matter of life or death, but it is not happening because of institutional problems.

When I worked at NSF, I got to see how those kinds of problems can work, first hand. For example… to really prevent climate extinction, I have argued for a 5 point approach, where point one is reduced net CO2 from making electricity. I have seen how RD&D money can be wasted in that area, and also how it can be massively transformative. 

SOME funding agents would look for those projects which can help, which have the lowest level of risk. Some would focus on the big targets for how AI could make the maximum contribution, regardless of risk. Our big problem today is the diversion of funding to less relevant, lower risk projects where the AI people don’t have to learn much new, as if they were auditioning for jobs as janitors, but the core needs of climate change are not addressed as well as they could be, by orders of magnitude.

This kind of problem came to me very vividly in 1993 or 1994, when I was a reviewer for the interagency defense conversion research program:

SR-1994-Defense-Conversion-Transition-and-the-Industrial-Base-Report-of-the-1993-AUSA-ADPA-Joint-Panels.pdf. The people who built that program created a list of review criteria to use in deciding which offer to fund. In that program, I once saw a choice between two offers:

(A(A)  A near certain min, delivering $1 million worth of net new benefits

(B(B )  A 50% serious but risk program, worth billions if it succeeded

The review criteria we were given strongly favored A. Most workers would strongly prefer A, which would give them secure income and a secure future. Many bottom up efforts reflect those preferences for A. (This reminds me of Schumpeter's prediction about how hard it would be for the US to maintain the spirit of honorable competition in general, so essential to growth in productivity.)

I have seen many massive consortia funding stuff like AI for good, to help with climate change and such, and most of the people end up in type A consortia. I did see one great group in Canada, with leadership from Michael Barnard, which focuses on what we really need to solve the real, important climate problems, but big public funding and attention is mainly on other activities which become like Christmas Tree programs.

There are a few big flagship programs in special places, like Dubai, where one on one personal connections do focus on big goals, but without the kind of general competition we need to mobilize the whole range of the best technology we need.

What WOULD work?

After I ran the NSF electric power area for a few years (mainly 2010-2014), I summarized what we really learned, what would really work, in a paper jointly funded by power people in France, Chile and Brazil: www.werbos.com/E/GridIOT.pdf .

Above all, project selection was open and competitive, and the criteria were well focused on the goals. Maximum serious potential benefit to what really matters was operationalized. I even remember part of instructing review panels: “Do not focus on what the worst case risk to the project is. [Worse case risk to earth climate is a very different kind of risk, since we only have one earth.] For each project, ask how big the loss might be if we don’t fund it, if it would have succeeded.”

The strange thing is, I learned at NSF that the projects which SOUND like low risk are usually MORE likely to fail, to end up as a waste of money. That is because they take approaches others have already tried, and do not invoke the kinds of new directions necessary to a big change.

So which do you want to buy: one big antiquated flagship, 1000 janitors, or 100 tough pioneers of whom 50 (or even just 10) produce something which totally changes the game? With climate, we KNOW where real game changers ARE doable, but we need a radical change in funding cultures to actually make it happen.

Until about 2013, when Lamar Smith began his remaking of NSF, NSF was maybe 25% efficient in doing this kind of stuff, which made it the number one wonder of the world for what it did. Proposals to totally avoid risk in NSF itself would have led to 0% productivity, through uniform type B funding or flagships by friends/graft. Where it will go now, post Smith, is hard to predict, but the world needs something like the classic NSF to do better on worst case climate risk. That included many elements which need to be reinvented, starting with Vannevar Bush’s initial manifesto and updated with new computer systems.

And, of course, never ever to forget the larger goals.