Remembering Biden

So, I just thought I'd make a quick summary of my takeaways from the Biden years, since someone asked me.

1. While Trump fumbled on the pandemic response, I do think Biden handled COVID very poorly, particularly in acting like the vaccine meant the end of the pandemic. While the vaccine was helpful (I got one, but never bothered with a booster since I got COVID anyway), the virus had already mutated to the point of being vaccine resistant. This was a known fact by health officials, but the Biden administration gave misleading information. Also under Biden, the CDC lowered the quarantine time from ten days to five days, not based on any science, but based on a request from Delta Airlines' CEO.
2. Leading up to the invasion of Ukraine, Biden was shipping billions of dollars in weapons to Russia's border, and everyone was saying Biden was going to provoke Russia into doing something ugly. Russia invading Ukraine was exactly what Biden wanted: a proxy war to make Russia look bad and exhaust their resources without commitment of American troops. When Ukraine was willing to start peace talks, Biden talked them out of it. Biden wants war in Ukraine, and clearly doesn't care how many Ukrainians and Russians need to die for it. (He apparently also wants one in Taiwan, as we are shipping weapons there, despite the US not even recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation. This would be like China shipping weapons to Hawaii.)
3. Inflation was out of control these last four years. It wasn't a problem with the economy that Biden created, but was rather price gouging by greedy corporations. Yes, Biden didn't cause it, but he also didn't do anything to fight it.
4. The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, and while this was due to Trump stacking the Court, Biden didn't do anything whatsoever to respond to the crisis. Democrats could have killed the filibuster and pushed through a law protecting reproductive rights. Biden could have expanded the Court, as was done before in history. NOTHING was done.
5. Biden, who Democrats keep calling "the most pro-union President ever," broke the railroad workers' strike, which was largely about safety. Shortly after this, a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, causing one of the worst ecological disasters in history.
6. Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, and while I do not condone the attack (although as an occupied nation undergoing ethnic cleansing, it was arguably not a war crime), Israel's response has been to murder somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 Palestinian civilians. This is absolutely genocide according to the United Nations' definition, and it has been chiefly powered by American weapons. No weapon has gone to Israel that was not approved by Biden.
7. Democrats keep saying the economy is great under Biden, but all I can seem to see is record levels of poverty and homelessness. I don't care how the stock market is while Americans sleep in the street, and the Supreme Court allows making it a crime. We have billions to support killing people in other countries, but can't afford to house our own people.

This is just off the top of my head; there's really so much more. And Kamala Harris said if she was in charge, she would have done nothing different. Is it really a surprise that Americans didn't turn out to vote for her?

COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines

Okay, I wanted to take some time to explain how the mRNA vaccines work. I'm not a biologist, but perhaps that's a good thing, as I have studied enough of the science to understand how they work, and I believe I can explain it in very plain English.

First of all, it's worth dispelling some rumors that were common in the early days of the vaccines, and I still hear occasionally today. The vaccines do not have any affect on a person's DNA; your DNA is stored in the center of your body's cells, and there is nothing in the vaccines that actually enters into the cells.

The vaccines are essentially made of mRNA, which is something that naturally occurs in the human body. When your cells need to build a protein for some reason, your body produces mRNA to tell your cells to do so. The mRNA is essentially a chemical blueprint explaining how to build that particular protein.

What scientists have done in the case of COVID-19 is they have used the body's method of using mRNA to get the body to build a special protein that is called the "spike protein". While the technology of pretty much every previous vaccine was to inject the body with some weakened form of the virus you were supposed to be getting protection from, these new vaccines have mRNA blueprints of the "spike protein", which mimics the form of the actual virus. In both cases, your immune system reacts as though it is infected, and fights off the infection, but has the advantage of not actually fighting a live, dangerous virus.

Unlike what many people have either outright said or merely implied, this process *is* creating a form of natural immunity. Your immune system is learning what it's like to have an infection so that if it gets another infection (this time a "real" one) it has the tools to fight it in the form of antibodies. Contrary to what most people think, vaccines were never about stopping you from getting infected; they were about teaching your immune system to deal with an infection effectively.

Now yes, there is a downside in the case of COVID-19, and it's similar to the problem with the flu vaccine. No vaccine is 100% effective, but in the case of some diseases, the effectiveness is actually quite a ways off from 100%. The flu is a disease that frequently mutates, and will tend to come back different every flu season. So if you get a flu vaccine, it actually is a vaccine against two or three variants of the flu virus that scientists are expecting to be going around. Like the flu, the COVID virus has done a lot of mutating, and there are a lot of variants. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are only designed to help your immune system fight off the variants that existed at the time the vaccine was developed, so, yes, a vaccinated person can get COVID.

The good part of this, and a big part of the reason doctors are suggesting getting the vaccine even if you've been infected, is that while the vaccine won't stop you from getting infected, it still has been shown to help you fight the virus so that your infection is less severe than it likely would have been without the vaccine.

As for what happens in your body when you actually get the vaccine, the mRNA in the vaccine goes to your cells and without entering them, it delivers the message to build the spike protein. Having delivered the message, it naturally breaks up and dissolves like every mRNA in your body. When the spike protein is built, your immune system reacts, knowing immediately that this protein is not one that belongs. It figures out how to break it down and eat it, which is exactly what it will do to the virus if it encounters it later. So within about 48 hours or so, there is nothing left from the vaccine but the knowledge of how to fight the virus.