Today we planned to have our own Ellen I. talk to us about finance and investments and about how to make sense of the markets. However, every one of us had the Super Bowl game on in the back. Some were recording it, but others were actively engaging with the multiple touchdowns Tom Brady insisted on making. The commercials were fun, and even though we could watch them the next day, they were distracting. I thought we’d stop for the halftime show with The Weekend, but we didn’t, just watched off to the side. So rather than mix focus for our guest I decided to postpone her talk to tomorrow, and everyone agreed, most said they’d return, and I suspected we’d get more people.
I figured we’d end the call early, but people still wanted to talk. The conversation veered mostly about the vaccine, where to get it and how to get on the list to get it, how the eligibility was expanding who could get it, but that the scarcity didn’t help the expansion manifest. So many people are against getting it that there may be enough to go around sooner rather than later, especially as availability increases with more companies producing their versions. One of our attendees, younger and working in healthcare, had recently gotten her second shot of Moderna and said she experienced arm pain and some fatigue. The older person on the call had had no side effects. It seems that’s what’s being reported, that the younger people have more side effects, perhaps corresponding to a greater immune response. She reported that they were down to thirty COVID patients in her hospital, which was lower than it had been for quite a while, good news, but bad news in that we’re hearing even those who are conservative and careful with COVID are coming down with the virus more frequently, and her hospital is requiring eye cover as well as masks for protection as cases threaten to be more virulent and contagious. We mentioned other vaccines on our lists, the HPV one perhaps, now that’s offered to those up to age 46, and the shingles vaccine for others who are older, but that maybe mixing vaccines, taking them to close to the COVID vaccine, is not a good idea.
We then turned to politics, this being a big week in the impeachment story with Congress meeting to determine whether there will be consequences for Trump. We asked what constituted “high crimes and misdemeaners” and speculated maybe they would invoke RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which had been used to bring down many who seemed otherwise impossible to bring down. But we were not to positive about it. Instead we turned back to yet another Brady touchdown, and agreed to end for the night until tomorrow.
