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Wed Feb 23 06:00:02 EST 2022 ======================================== Slept from eleven to six. Much colder. Mostly cloudy. Highs in the mid 20s. Northwest winds 5 to 15 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph until late afternoon. # Work Last day with Beacon/Lightstone! * ✓ return hardware * ✓ send final hand-off document to Randy and Meir * ✓ set final out of office on email and phone Twenty-minute walk at lunch. Colder. A few snow flakes falling. Done! My last comment in Ticketbook: > So long, and thanks for all the fish. # Home * ✓ pick up prescription at Meijer * ✓ delete work keys from authorized_keys files on Inky, etc. * ✓ order birthday present for Hardy (five years old already!) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/health/covid-vaccine-antibodies-t-cells.html > The Omicron variant can dodge antibodies — immune molecules that prevent the virus from infecting cells — produced after two doses of a Covid vaccine. But a third shot of the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech or by Moderna prompts the body to make a much wider variety of antibodies, which would be difficult for any variant of the virus to evade, according to the most recent study, posted online on Tuesday. > The diverse repertoire of antibodies produced should be able to protect people from new variants, even those that differ significantly from the original version of the virus, the study suggests. > What’s more, other parts of the immune system can remember and destroy the virus over many months if not years, according to at least four studies published in top-tier journals over the past month. > Specialized immune cells called T cells produced after immunization by four brands of Covid vaccine — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax — are about 80 percent as powerful against Omicron as other variants, the research found. Given how different Omicron’s mutations are from previous variants, it’s very likely that T cells would mount a similarly robust attack on any future variant as well, researchers said. > This matches what scientists have found for the SARS coronavirus, which killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 epidemic in Asia. In people exposed to that virus, T cells have lasted more than 17 years. Evidence so far indicates that the immune cells for the new coronavirus — sometimes called memory cells — may also decline very slowly, experts said. > Editors’ Picks > The Beef Patty Is Jamaica in the Palm of Your Hand > When It Comes to Wordle Strategies, It’s Personal > Restoring ‘The Godfather’ to Its Original (Still Dark) Glory > Continue reading the main story > “Memory responses can last for ages,” said Wendy Burgers, an immunologist at the University of Cape Town who led one of the studies, published in the journal Nature. “Potentially, the T-cell response is extremely long lived.” > In the newest study, another team showed that a third shot creates an even richer pool of B cells than the second shot did, and the antibodies they produce recognize a broader range of variants. In laboratory experiments, these antibodies were able to fend off the Beta, Delta and Omicron variants. In fact, more than half of the antibodies seen one month after a third dose were able to neutralize Omicron, even though the vaccine was not designed for that variant, the study found. > “If you’ve had a third dose, you’re going to have a rapid response that’s going to have quite a bit of specificity for Omicron, which explains why people that have had a third dose do so much better,” said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University who led the study. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/top-performers-have-a-superpower-happiness/ > While we expected that well-being and optimism would matter to performance, we were taken aback by just how much they mattered. We saw four times as many awards earned by the initially happiest soldiers (upper quartile) compared with those who were unhappiest initially (lower quartile) — a huge difference in performance between those groups. This gap held when we accounted for status (officers versus enlisted soldiers), gender, race, education, and other demographic characteristics.1 In fact, happiness — and, to a somewhat lesser extent, optimism — were better predictors of awards than any demographic factor we examined. Servings: grains 7/6, fruit 1/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 4/2, meat 2/3, nuts 0/0.5 Breakfast: left-over curry, naan, banana, green tea Lunch: Clif bar Dinner: pizza

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