COVID Vaccine: The first bivalent shot!
It’s about time, but the latest COVID vaccine is making its way to the people. Since I work in a hospital, I just got mine! The bivalent version (the newest vaccine and the one I just got) is designed to be effective against some of the newer strains while still protecting against the older ones. To be clear, this doesn’t mean you won’t get COVID, it doesn’t mean you can’t have serious health problems from COVID, and it doesn’t mean you can’t spread COVID. However, it’s incredibly important to keep getting the shot and today I got mine.
(more…)Living through history
When I was a kid I thought history was something we read about in text books. World wars were from a “less civilized” time, we are a modern people after all. With the fall of the USSR along with the start and end of the gulf war not too long after, I thought, perhaps foolishly, that history was a thing of the past. I never suggested I was the smartest of children. But here we are, living through history. I didn’t realize it could be so painful, then again maybe if I had paid more attention I would’ve known.
(more…)Thanksgiving 2021
Well it’s thanksgiving. As usual for anyone who’s picked up a history book, celebrating thanksgiving is one hell of a choice. Granted it was made generations ago so we do it out of habit and I am happy to have the extra time off, although time off as a student is more of a concept and not an actual thing. Point being, celebrating genocide is something we do here in the US. Because that’s how we were founded.
(more…)COVID Vaccine: The third shot update!
It’s been over 36 hours since my third dose of COVID vaccine. For those who don’t know, I was designated as a vulnerable population and the veterans administration (VA) is apparently giving out the third dose to us now and to the general veteran population in the next month or two. Since I was one of the first getting my last two doses, I thought it would be wise to chronicle my experience.
(more…)COVID Vaccine: The third shot!
It’s official, I got my third COVID vaccine shot. With delta ramping up and the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine being questioned there has been a push for a third shot. mRNA vaccines had the promise of being easily adaptable to new strains, it’s why we’ve been doing research on them since the mid-60’s, so it would’ve been prudent to adjust the vaccine to compensate for the new pervasive strain. Alas! It was not meant to be, at least not yet. It’s a little frustrating, but I am hopeful new variants of the vaccine will be forthcoming. So why did I get the shot?
(more…)Education in a pandemic
Well the term is officially underway and with it comes in person classes! Because if there’s one thing a life is worth, it’s money and there’s money to be made by forcing you into the classroom. Yes the world has changed and we adapted with it, somewhat, but even with hospitals on the verge of collapse (again) we’re given the unequivocal message, “We’re going back to normal!” from schools. There’s nothing normal about it, but the economy is built on the backs of the people, so I guess, in a way, we are returning to normal.
(more…)A funeral is for the living
The steady climb of the death toll from the pandemic is once again ramping back up as more people are exhausted from living like… well like we are living in a pandemic. Misinformation and outright lies are being passed around as truth. What’s worse is the people arguing that COVID is not an issue treat the incredibly high and incredibly senseless amount of death that is a direct result of callous disregard for others as an acceptable price for the right to be selfish. I saw enough senseless death in the military to want to be the direct cause of more. But maybe that’s just me.
(more…)You still need to wear the damn mask
I know, it’s been a long pandemic. I’m tired, your tired, so, so many people are dead. It’s a lot, hell it’s a plot of dozens of horror movies, but it’s not over. So once again I am begging my lovely readers to wear the damned mask. I know there is a lot of confusing information out there. Some of it says don’t bother with the mask, some tells you wear one if you’re not vaccinated, it feels mixed signals sure sure. Well let me make it incredibly simple, wear the damn mask. You put on pants when you go outside, wear the damn mask.
(more…)Conferences in a pandemic
I’m vaccinated, I got vaccinated back before most of the public could because I work and do research at a hospital. Because I work with a vulnerable population, some of whom cannot be vaccinated, I still take the pandemic very seriously. I wear my mask like I wear any other piece of clothing and the hospital understands this risk because unlike schools and other places in the area, masks are still mandatory. It’s not just a vaccination issue, it’s that vaccines are 100% effective and not everyone can be vaccinated or has access to get vaccinated. So when my favorite conference came around, I was torn about attending… was.
(more…)The CDC guidelines and you
The CDC announced that YOU NO LONGER NEED TO WEAR A MASK… if vaccinated. Yep they put the important part in nice tiny font and after a year of people actively putting others at risk because they would rather throw a fit about wearing a mask than help stop the spread. Roughly just over a third (~36% as of this writing) of the population has been vaccinated. What’s troubling is the large number of epidemiologists and scientists in general were shocked by the CDC announcement. So what now?
(more…)The first in-person meeting
Well today we met as a lab for the first time since the pandemic hit in person. I wasn’t a fan, still am not a fan, but didn’t get a choice in the matter so I went. Thankfully everyone was masked and agreed that it was probably for the best since in my case specifically, I work with a very vulnerable population. It was nice to see everyone, but it was mostly a waste of time, mostly.
(more…)COVID variants and our future
Awhile back I wrote a post on everything you needed to know about the COVID vaccine (here), I talked about the science, my experience with it (as someone who got vaccinated very early on), and more importantly why you should feel safe getting your shots too. Very ominously I mentioned that the target for the vaccine was the spike protein because it would (ideally, but not for sure) be conserved across mutations, well it’s time for an update and the news isn’t great.
(more…)Everything you should know about the COVID vaccine
I’ve already written several posts on my experience with the first COVID vaccine dose (here and here) and the second dose (here and here). Today we’re putting it all together. I’m going to run through everything you should know about the COVID vaccine from how it works, to why you should get it, and what to expect when you go through the shots. My goal with this is to make it accessible as possible so you can make an informed decision and feel comfortable getting the shot. Sometimes the science is hard to understand, but I think we can simplify it enough to make sense to just about everyone. That said let’s give it… a shot.
(more…)COVID Vaccine: The second shot update!
Well today is a full day since I had the second dose of my COVID vaccine. I promised honesty and transparency so here it is, the second dose isn’t as smooth as the first. So we’re going to go over why that is, what my issues have been, and why it’s still very much worth it.
(more…)New year’s eve!
It’s that time of the year again, new year’s eve. It’s been one hell of a year, even for the awful last few years. I have a lot of thoughts this year given that we are living in a pandemic and new year’s eve is usually a time for celebration. I doubt anyone will listen, but stay home.
(more…)I got my COVID Vaccine – update
Well today is day 1 post COVID vaccine. That was the first of two shots that I need to get, the second one will be in the middle of January (already scheduled). Since I was lucky enough to get the vaccine I thought I would talk a bit about the side effects of it, at least from my end. My hope is to help people relax a bit and when it becomes available to the public, you won’t be nervous to get it done.
(more…)I’m getting my COVID vaccine today!
Today is the day! About a week ago I got an email letting me know that I could be vaccinated. While I’m a researcher in a hospital, my work involves a high risk population (people with spinal cord injury) so I’m front facing with patients on a regular basis. I’m also disabled which may have factored into my group placement. Whatever the case, I got a spot in line and now it’s my turn. My Co-PI who’s lab I work out of already got his, but he was in a higher group than I was. As usual I have some thoughts on all this…
(more…)Happy Holidays!
If you read my blog, it’s no secret I celebrate a non-religious Christmas, but no matter what you celebrate I hope you and your loved ones have a happy holiday season. While the pandemic means that things may look different for a lot of us, we shouldn’t need a holiday to remind us to be kind and love one another. The holiday season may be a good time to remember that lesson, but it doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate any time of the year. When this is all over we can mourn the loss of loved ones and celebrate being able to be close once again properly. For now, stay safe, stay vigilant, and hopefully the new year will bring some good changes.
The pandemic, holidays, and your mental health
When was the last time you thought about your own mental health? I mean really thought about how you’re doing right now, not the typical, “Huh, I think things are going to hell, but I’ll worry about it later” kind of thinking about things. Maybe it’s just me, but this time of year is hard to begin with, add to that the fact that we’re almost a full year into the pandemic and I would think this time of year would be overwhelming for the majority of people.
(more…)On the importance of vaccines
Once upon a time polio was more feared than the atomic bomb. Thanks to the vaccine we’ve practically (not completely mind you!) eliminated polio from the planet. We successfully eliminated smallpox, the only existing strains live in special labs now. Vaccines are a triumph of science and are so successful that people have forgotten they are necessary for a reason. In short, vaccine fear is a byproduct of vaccine success.
(more…)Please, stay home for the holidays!
Don’t do it. Seriously, why are we having this discussion right now? It makes no sense, there is a pandemic going on and if you live specifically in the US (which I do) you’re going to need to stay home. Sure the holidays can be an important time of year for families, but do we really need a holiday to celebrate with our family? Why not wait until this is over? More importantly is it worth putting all of them, yourself, and the people you come in contact with at risk?
(more…)Thanksgiving thoughts in a pandemic
Today is Thanksgiving, which if we’ve read our history we know is a time of mourning. I mean let’s face it celebrating the genocide of a group of people that was here in the land a group of settlers “discovered” feels a little disturbing. I mean, nothing was discovered, there were people already here, as in the land you and I are living on. The land people generations ago took from the indigenous communities who called it home.
(more…)Stay home for the holidays
Yet again, here we are. We shouldn’t need to do this, but people are quick to kill off grandpa and a whole lot of other people in the process, so once again we need to use uncommon sense. Stay home. Seriously, don’t visit family, there are plenty of other holidays post pandemic to celebrate, for now just keep you, your family, and all the families your family comes in contact with safe. Stay the fuck home.
(more…)COVID and Education
Today I received an email from the Chancellor of the school I attend. This is the person that is in charge of the entire university school system (since there are several campuses). The email was with regards to a survey that was sent out asking how comfortable we would be with returning to school with the pandemic going on. Why it was up to popular vote is beyond me.
(more…)Distractions, distractions
Why people think that we could be MORE productive in a pandemic is beyond me. I can barely get myself out of bed most mornings when there ISN’T a pandemic killing ~1200 people a day. I mean how high does that number need to be before you too are less productive my fellow compassionate human?
(more…)Health in a pandemic
I don’t want to be another link in the chain. I’m selfish, I don’t want to get COVID, I don’t want to deal with the after effects (if I live to tell the story), and I certainly don’t want to get others sick. My travel is limited to places I absolutely need to go. Unfortunately, that means I’m stuck doing research in a hospital setting, but I mask, wash my hands, and do everything I can to keep safe.
(more…)Thalidomide: A forgotten history
The COVID-19 vaccine is coming… eventually. There is a push by Trump to get it out to the general public prior to the election no matter the cost… gee I wonder why? However, we have testing standards in place for a very good reason and while it can be medically necessary to provide promising medicine in a few select cases, this is not one of them. A history lesson is in order and like all history, we may be doomed to repeat it if we don’t learn from it.
(more…)Path planning
One would think that the pandemic would put a lot of things on hold. Unfortunately (here in the US anyway) that isn’t the case, it just makes things harder to do because everyone expects you to perform at a higher rate now that you’re not commuting to school… how the hell that works is beyond me.
(more…)School and COVID-19
School, I would like to consider myself a lifelong student, but formal instruction is a little different than learning on the job or via the web. With classes starting, my stress seems to be slowly ratcheting up. Oh I’ll be fine, I’m taking an online course this term, I’m worried about everyone else.
(more…)Day 339: What will school look like?
Here in the US we paused, it was only for a moment, it wasn’t long enough, and not everyone did it, but we paused. Then just as quickly as we tried to adapt to the changing times we went back to pretending everything was normal. Beaches opened, restaurants opened, bars opened, we saw celebrations and parties and we ignored a single digit daily death count, which turned into a double digit, then triple digit, now we’re hovering in at roughly 1000 deaths a day from the pandemic.
Day 321:Wear the damn mask
Today is just a simple plea to my readers. Wear the damn mask. It’s not that hard. When you go out you put on your clothes, you can put on a mask too. Since people seem to be making this a political statement now, I guess I can explain why it’s not one.
Day 312: Yes, the protests are still going…
It still appears there is a media blackout on the protests (first mentioned in my other post). That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped though! It also unfortunately doesn’t mean the police have stopped. In fact we’re seeing some really… umm scary tactics being used by the police to * checks notes * beat us until we stop protesting police violence.
Day 311: When voting isn’t enough
Rawr! Beware, the Gerry-mander!
I’ve been debating about writing this post and it’s just been rattling around in my head for the past month or so. Voting can change the course of history, frankly we saw that in the 2016 elections, but we also saw something else. Your vote doesn’t matter and that isn’t by accident. But wait, I just said voting can change the course of history, so how does it not matter? Well for that we need to go back, way back.
Day 309: No tests, no worries
If I ignore my bills, I would have very few, if any. If that logic seems, well wrong, then I’m not surprised. Ignoring something doesn’t make it magically go away. Yet, Trump has touted, yet again, that if we slowed or stopped testing, we would have very few, if any cases of COVID19. I mean, with that kind of logic, you could have no more bills with this one weird trick!
Day 307: COVID19 and BLM or why you should wear a mask
Despite the media blackout the Black lives matter protests are still going strong. To say I’m proud would be an understatement. Unfortunately with all the protests going on people are claiming that COVID19 isn’t as bad as people said it was, or that the protesters should stop because of the pandemic. The critiques all miss the point, this one simple trick will slow the transmission and it really works.
Day 304: It’s still just the first wave
♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫
COVID-19 is making headlines again and news reports are claiming the second wave is here. Well, that’s not quite right, we never actually stopped the first. We literally cannot have a second wave of outbreaks if the first wave is still going strong, it’s just a continuation.
Day 281: The New Colossus
The march of time stops for no one, yet we shut down the world. Only for a moment. Then that moment passed, but not by choice. There is a pandemic going on, tomorrow we will most likely pass the somber 100,000 official deaths from COVID-19 in the US. There is a very good chance the actual number is much higher. It hasn’t stopped, it won’t stop, but somehow we are choosing to ignore it.
Day 253: A race to the finish
Well still quite a bit of work to do and some of it was frustrating, but here we are. So let’s run through what I’ve got left to do before the end of the term (ALREADY?!) and talk about the next few posts since I have somewhat of a plan… for once.
Day 252: Dead…line
Today is the day, my group presentation is due. Is it done? Well… sort of? Okay not quite, but we’re getting there. My group member still sucks, but since I yelled at him (in a professional manner of course), he’s gotten a little better and has been more responsive, so what’s the hold up? What a great question, let me explain.
Day 251: Deadline tomorrow
Well the apocalypse can’t stop the gears of education. Tomorrow is our final presentation for the class I am in, so there is work to be done and expectation maximization will come another day. For now let’s give a quick rundown of what I’m working on.
Day 250: Maximum Likelihood Estimation
If we are going to talk about expectation maximization (now that I’m done complaining for a bit), we are going to have to introduce the idea of maximum likelihood. It’s going to be very easy to introduce, but it is a very powerful tool in estimating the state of something. Of course, it takes understanding a little bit of statistics, but trust me, if I can understand it, so can you.
Day 249: A stern email later…
Photo of me responding to his email …
I don’t want to jinx it, I really don’t, but I have an update on my group member situation and it isn’t completely awful! I mean, I’m still doing all the work and blah, blah, blah, but I’ve got an interesting story and I hope that things will be better now.
Day 248: A Virtual Conference
Every zoom meeting I try to break my PI and get him to laugh, this was my last attempt, still nothing… my work continues.
This will be my first conference since the pandemic and it will be a virtual one. To be completely honest, it wasn’t until yesterday that I was reminded we had one today. It’s a little bit different from our normal routine and I think that is what is throwing me off.
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Day 247: The Kalman filter – Part 2
The Kalman filter converges on the optimal state estimate using noisy measurements and a model that we create.
Okay I lied, I think we can do a better job explaining the Kalman filter, more importantly I have a fun little demo I can share with everyone. It’s not mine, but I like it a lot and it will give you a feel for what the kalman filter does. So let’s get started!
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Day 246: The Kalman filter
This is just one application for the Kalman filter, I estimated a two dimensional position using a random walk model. We have 3-dimensions here even though it is a 2 dimensional problem, the third dimension is time. This way we can see the path over the course of the recorded time. Notice there are no units, becuase in this case we were working with synthetic data so the units were meaningless and I did not include them.
Since we’ve been talking a lot about it, I thought it might be a good idea to formally introduce the Kalman filter. This will be a semi-high level introduction (like my knowing your spinal cord series), but at the end of it you should have a relatively good feel for what a Kalman filter is.
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Day 245: Fine, I’ll do it myself.
I will not fail this class becuase of a shitty team member. I will not allow it, I’ve put too much effort and time into this class to do poorly at the last minute because my team member can’t be bothered to do the job he agreed to do. I suppose, this was… inevitable.Â
Day 244: The end of the term!?
Okay, where the hell did that come from?! It’s almost the end of the school term. WHAT THE HELL!? It feels like we just got started, but my instructor just sent out the final assignment, which is due the last week of school… next week. I’m sort of freaking out right now.
Day 243: Deadlines approaching!
It seems like it’s been non-stop for me left and right. I have experiments to do, papers to write, and classes to work on. With the pandemic I was hoping to get a chance to take a break, but nope it seems like I’m even busier than normal. I HAD thought that I was caught up finally when I finished processing some of the experimental data I had laying around, but nope I was reminded yesterday that I had not one, but two major deadlines coming.
Day 242: Experimenting in the time of a pandemic
Another day forward in our new normal. I’ve left the house exactly once in the last two weeks and while it’s nice not having to commute to school, I do miss living in a world without the constant fear of catching the virus. What day is it? Who knows, it doesn’t matter anymore. I do have some things coming up though, so let’s talk about experimenting in the age of COVID-19.
Day 241: Modeling the COVID-19 Pandemic
Today is the day. I submitted my super high level explainer video on how I modeled the COVID-19 about a week ago and I got an email from my professor telling me that it was great (yay) and that she had uploaded it to her labs youtube channel. That means I finally get to share it with all of you!
Lunatic Laboratories 