Covid summer #2

[Frank]

So....
1-how is everyone doing?
2-anyone getting out? Planning to get out?
Easiest - best social distancing possible 🤣

[wolverine]

We are on a road trip.  NC to GA to visit a sister in law.  Then on to AZ to visit old friends.  CA to visit another old friend.  Now 3344 miles into the trip we're in Provo, UT for the night and then on to Whitefish, MT where our daughter is due any day with their second boy.  After several weeks there it's on to IL to visit the older daughters and bring the 15' sailboat back with us. Along the return home we'll stop in VA to provision the new to us sailboat for the sail to NC.  It was 113° today!

[Frank]

Quite the road trip!
Amazing scenery along the way.
Enjoy yourselves!
Enjoy the boat!

I can’t do 113.... pretty sure I’d melt 😄

[Norman]

I envy that road trip.  I miss those trips, partly in motels, patly at relatives.  We saw a lot of the country that way.

We have made one to Long Island, and then there by train, both good trips, and a week at Bethany Beach, Delaware.

How many crew for the sail to home?

[wolverine]

I traveled all over the country in my 30s by motorcycle.  3-6 weeks at a time.  My wife was very understanding of my wanderlust.  Now she's traveling with me.

I'll be sailing her back alone.  It's a 4-5 day sail, buy not having sailed a boat over 23' before, it will be an adventure.

[CapnK]

1 - Doing good. Getting by on my own self-made antibodies just fine (after my spring dance with C19), puzzled as to why people who've gotten the vacc tell me I should as well, and then proceed to tell me the story of someone who has the vacc and who has subsequently re-contracted the disease... That don't make no sense to me. The world as I see it is buggered up.
2 - Not much in the way of off-dock boating at all, but plenty of work on-dock. Finishing deck paint on I-36 in a couple days (when it stops raining), and then - at last - she's first up on the auction block. Depending on response, the A-30 may follow shortly after. Ideally, both will sell and this late summer and fall will be finishing out the interior of Katie and putting a junk rig on her.
3 - Have my mini power boat and the daysailer as side projects. Not much work left to do on them, and then I can make short hops.

[Bob J (ex-misfits)]

I've just been hanging out between home & the boat, using it like a floating studio apartment. Going back up in a couple days, plan on staying through August. Going to drop the mooring pendant & float around. Much as I like my boat thinking about getting something a few feet bigger with a flat sole in the cabin. The curved sole in a Sabre 28 is really starting to raise heck with my back. Plus I have this urge to take her down to the Carolinas. Getting tired of putting her up for 8 months out of the year.  It would be nice to have a place to hang out to escape winter in NH.

[Norman]

Kurt, there is good reason to still get vaccinated after recovering from Covid 19.
I am fully vaccinated, and plan to get a booster at about 12 months.

Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2021  Page A2
Unvaccinated people are more than twice as likely to be re infected with Covid 19 than people who are fully vaccinated, underscoring the importance of vaccines in controlling the pandemic.
The study published Friday by the Center for the Control and Prevention of Disease looked at nearly 250 patients in Kentucky who had Covid 19 in 2020 and tested positive in May and June, 2021.  People who were unvaccinated were 2.34 times as likely to re infected than those who were fully vaccinated, the researchers found.


Cutting the odds of reinfection to less than half is a pretty good investment, with the degree of risk to your ongoing health as great as it is.  You do not want to go through what you have just done, again, possibly worse.  I have relatives more than 6 months into long haul recovery, and regret they did not take the vaccine.  They plan to get it as soon as they recover enough strength.

[Tim]

Misfits have you considered redoing the sole, is there enough headroom?

The curved sole in a Sabre 28 is really starting to raise heck with my back.

[Bob J (ex-misfits)]

Tim, when I renovated the boat I took quite a bit of the curve out when I put the new stringers in. It never bothered before but for whatever the reason it's bothering me this year.  Course I'm year older too 🤣

[CapnK]

Norm - Thanks for the thoughtful reply and concern, I appreciate it!

I have been diligent, taking care to stay educated and abreast of the science and discoveries, and based on very recent studies I've read from sources like Emory/Fred Hutch, Rockefeller University, the Cleveland Clinic, and Washington University School of Medicine, it seems that antibodies resulting from 'natural' infection are active and effective for at least a year, and quite possibly for a lifetime.

I do understand from my research that dropping the experimental mRNA vaccs on top of the antibodies I have already may result in a quantitative but not necessarily qualitative boost to the immune system. Whether that is worth the risk, I believe should be an individual choice.

For myself, as it is likely that non-experimental vaccs and/or treatments created by well known and studied 'traditional' means will be out and viable in a matter of a few more months, I'm electing to avoid being a part of the experimentation. This is exactly what is recommended by the very person who *invented* the (still experimental) mRNA technology currently used to produce both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Seems to me that with that credential (among many others), he is plenty qualified and ought to know what he is talking about. :)

I am hedging my response by boosting my immune system with selected vitamins and supplements. I do sincerely hope that those who have taken the mRNA vaccs experience nothing but great success with them. In fact, I am urging my 85 year old mother to take the current vacc. That said, as I have been given the 'luxury' of some time yet to choose due to antibodies created not in a lab but within my own corpus, I am taking advantage of it as wisely as I know how.

In the vein of demonstrating that my belief in self-determination is not solely limited to this topic, it should also be noted that I was both an early adopter and proponent of using LED's and composting toilets in sailing vessels, before these were accepted for common use by governmental authorities.  ;) 8)

Peace, Good Health, and Fair Winds. :)

[Owly055]

Calling these MRNA vaccines "experimental" is a bit absurd.  The technology has been around for over 30 years, though not widely used in humans.   It has been used to fight cancer mostly.   It is an ideal technology for vaccines.  Most previous vaccine technology called for propagating the actual virus, and using chemicals to kill it or render it incapable of actually infecting cells.  A process that has a potential to go wrong and has on rare occasions, resulting in batches containing live virus.  The messenger RNA is like the tape on Mission Impossible and self destructs after passing instructions to the cell(s) to produce a specific protein which is found in the spikes of the virus. It has no effect on the nucleus or the DNA.  It's the way the body passes instructions to cells all the time.   

     Vaccines do not in and of themselves produce immunity.  They trigger your own immune system and make it ready to fight infection.  Break through cases are not a failure of the vaccine itself, but of the immune systems of those who were infected.   A big factor is the number of viral particles you are exposed to, and in breakthrough cases the person was often exposed to a LOT of virus.    Your immunity does NOT prevent infection, but gives the body a head start in fighting it off to the extent that you will likely be unaware that you have been infected at all.   If your immune response was weak, or you had a large exposure, you will likely be symptomatic, but most likely not seriously ill.  This applies to any kind of immunity, naturally acquired or vaccine acquired.

Boosters are a good idea weather you have naturally acquired immunity or vaccine immunity  (essentially the same thing).  Both wane over time.

I got my vaccine as soon as I could.... early April, and never looked back.   This virus will continue to mutate so long as there is a pool of unvaxxed people.  Getting vaccinated is not about just protecting yourself, but about stopping the spread.  We now have the Delta mutation running wild, and Lambda should be of great concern.  Mutations are random, and the ones that help the virus to replicate faster are the ones that become dominant.  It is inevitable that mutations that will bypass our immunity to a greater extent will be the more successful ones.  The only way to beat this is to reduce the number of infectable people. 

    I will continue to avoid gatherings   (I do anyway), and wear masks in crowded areas.  I'm not worried about "light exposure", but I have no way of knowing weather I've been exposed or not.   Light exposure to Delta is probably a good thing after having been vaxxed.   It should act like a booster, and familiarize your body with the mutated virus so it's better equipped to fight off Lambda, or whichever one comes next.   Vaccines will not keep up with the mutations.   I have a very robust immune system because of my lifestyle.  I get exposed to a lot of microbes in day to day life.  I trust it to fight off infection, but it is stupid to be careless.    I get vaccinated for whatever I can, including flu.  I'm not interested in being sick if I don't have to.   

     Everybody focuses on deaths........... the most dramatic outcome, but far from the only one of concern.  This disease often causes permanent organ damage to organs like the heart, liver, pancreas, even the brain.  Imagine surviving covid like one man did and having to get a double lung transplant, or having to take insulin for life as some others have, or having to live with permanent lung or heart damage.......   

       Just get the darn vaccine.  The stories that are floating around about the vaccine are all either blatantly false or grossly exaggerated.  I listened to a lady yesterday justifying why she was not vaxxed, and every single thing she said I knew to be false........ (facebook poop?)   For example she claimed that there was an outbreak among Yellowstone Park employees (where she had once worked), and only vaccinated people were infected.......  That sort of nonsense stems from the fact that some Covid tests are antibody tests, and vaccines produce antibodies against covid, so you WILL test positive on that test.