Cat crawls out of the bag. Seeing Eddie off. Medical magic.

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The cat is slowly emerging from the bag. Rasmussen Reports, an independent polling firm about which even Wikipedia can’t seem to say anything terribly bad, polled the American public about Covid and the vaccines.

Full disclosure. My brief look at all of the issues involved in the polls that they have conducted over the past few months suggests that they have a tendency to ask questions that the administration would rather that they wouldn’t.

They posted the Covid vaccination results on YouTube with the disclaimer that they edited the results to steer very widely around Google’s restrictions on freedom of speech. They also state that what they are reporting can’t be considered misinformation since it is simply the opinions of the American people. Anybody claiming misinformation would have to attack their polling techniques, which have to be fairly robust for them to have maintained credibility for two decades.

Interesting to me:

·        The percentage of vaccinated Americans is lower than what the government would have had you believe.

·        The Republican/Democrat party affiliation among respondents had a great deal to do with whether they thought that the vaccines were effective.

·        The Republican/Democrat party divide did not so much affect reporting of side effects, both minor and serious.

·        12 million Americans have had what they consider to be serious vaccine side effects.

Last night Zoriana came along as I took Eddie to the train going to Ukraine’s Western border at Uzhgorod.  We took the regional electric train, the elektrishka, because it goes directly to the railway station and because it keeps running even during air raids. Eddie and I had looked at the train schedule in the morning as we went to Toastmasters and decided to take the 7:15 train. However, the Nervous Nellies of the house convinced us we should take the 6:45 train shown on the schedule published in August just to be on the safe side.

When it didn’t show, we had a half-hour conversation in the cold and total darkness about the vagaries of train schedules and the virtues of following your own advice. Oksana thinks Zoriana is sick today. I’m not so sure, but I am happy to agree so I get to go shopping by myself. Enough snow has melted that I can take my bicycle, getting more bought in less time than if I had help.

I am pleased to have given up my slot on the Toastmasters agenda yesterday. Vira, a PhD in biology, gave an amazing speech about research being performed by a doctor Levin in the United States that might lead to the ability to replace lost limbs. Key points are:

·        Our DNA has the blueprint for making every part of the body, however

·        It takes electrical impulses as the embryo develops to get things going, so

·        This Dr. Levin discovered the electrical impulses that trigger the DNA to make a frog embryo grow eyes where they belong

·        He then applied the electrical impulses on the frog’s back

·        The frog grew an eye on its back, which in turn sent forth neurons to connect with the brain. They didn’t get to the brain, but did link to the spinal cord, which did the job.

·        Levin has used the same approach to have a frog regrow a severed arm.

This is truly amazing stuff. An Internet search shows that this is Dr. Michael Levin of Harvard. I’m going to keep my eyes open, and certainly expect Vira to keep us abreast of new developments. Meanwhile, I’m going to deliver my speech on Why We Sleep, in which electrical impulses in the brain also figure prominently, next Saturday.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man is going to pull the bicycle out and brave the mud to go to the farmers market while the girls stay home with the good-looking woman.

Graham