Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

A nice 7-km descent, average speed 40 km/h, maximum – 59 km/h, almost the entire time maintaining 42-43, had to brake at several intersections. I enjoy this

Nadia and I rode our bikes to Purcellville. Here in the local coffee shop-bakery, there’s an excellent painting in the bathroom. It really made me want to buy that picture from them.

It turns out that Moderna received $2.5 billion in funding from the USA. $1 billion was given a while ago, and now $1.5 billion was allocated a couple of weeks ago. Approximately half of this amount will be granted upon successful development and market launch of 100 million COVID-19 vaccines (mRNA-1273). The article states that similar agreements (now without details on the amounts) exist with Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc, BioNTech SE, Sanofi SA, and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, to reach the necessary 500 million vaccines.

It was also found that RNA vaccines — specifically those being developed by Moderna — have not yet been released for human use by anyone. There are about 100 vector vaccines, like the one currently being produced by Gamaleya, (both released and in trial phases, according to clinicaltrials.gov). As for RNA vaccines approved for human use, there are none yet.

A good dashboard for vaccines:

An excellent (but now quite outdated) overview: https://meduza.io/feature/2020/05/08/ischerpyvayuschiy-nu-pochti-putevoditel-meduzy-po-vsemu-chto-uzhe-izvestno-o-vaktsinah-protiv-covid-19-kogda-gde-i-kakimi-oni-budut

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-inks-1-5-billion-020816629.html

It turns out we have secret farms here where chickens are raised to lay special eggs (fertilized) for breeding flu vaccines. Each year about 145 million such eggs are needed. The locations are classified because this is a matter of national security.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/27/health/chicken-egg-flu-vaccine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

Decided to check on Yandex, and it gave me a captcha in Japanese. Hmm.

Google trends – and what happened between August 2-8 that caused the popularity of covid-19 to momentarily soar to the levels of March-April?

News from #VirginiaTech, #covid, #sports, #campus, #Lisa!

A cicada has arrived. That means they are screaming under my window. This fly is called, apparently, black house fly. It flies very loudly and quickly, and just crashed into Nadya through the open balcony. Some kind of Darth Vader

A timid attempt to master watercolor

It was supposed to be Masha 🙂 Masha Alieva

“Another ten thousand buckets of water, signor, and the golden key will be in our pocket!” (c)

Surprised. It turns out it’s not disfunction, but dysfunction. And, it appears, to borne out means “proven,” because Borne is the past participle of bear, just like born, except born is used only in the sense of giving birth. I also encountered the word efficacy, which seems very similar to efficiency (doing things right, effectiveness), but in reality, it is closer to effectiveness (doing the right things, result-oriented or usefulness). In the context of medications, Efficacy shows whether a drug works under “ideal” conditions, Effectiveness shows the drug’s performance in conditions closer to real life, and Efficiency shows whether it is sensible to use the drug considering its cost, the number of potential consumers, expected treatment outcomes, and so forth.

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/dysfunction-vs-disfunction.1450998/