New Rivers of London book in APRIL!!!

Amongst Our Weapons is the title, cover art has not yet been revealed. *sigh*

Love the title! Wonderful little Monty Python Spanish Inquisition callback. As my wife said, NO ONE expects a Newtonian practitioner!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647346/amongst-our-weapons-by-ben-aaronovitch/


Here is Ben speaking with actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who narrates the audiobooks of the series, as they travel on a... river of London. I haven't watched it yet as I am at work. Should prove interesting.

Watch on YouTube

Now I just have to make sure my wife doesn't buy the Kindle version before I can get the Apple ebook version! I hate buying it twice. I can easily break the DRM on the latter, not as easy on Kindles.

I got some good news today, medically-speaking

My wife watched a video on the Immune Deficiency Foundation web site today, a doc was talking about, among other things, Covid and the antibody replacement treatment pools. Since my body doesn't produce antibodies, I do antibody replacement therapy. I infuse donated antibodies that go through a six month(!) purification process before they reach me, so what I'm receiving right now are approximately from mid-year 2021.

He was showing graphs from data from CSL Behring, Griffols, and other manufacturers of drugs used in primary immunedeficiency treatment, and the upshot is that LOTS of Covid antibodies are entering the donor pool, so in addition to being double-vaxxed and boosted, I'm now also getting Covid antibodies every week with my infusions! So that's pretty spiffy!

We also know that my body actually produced antibodies in reaction to my Moderna vaccination. My immunologist had a titer test run and the count was effectively greater than zero. There is no standard saying it must be greater than X to say that you are protected, the disease hasn't been around long enough to know what level really confers effective protection, so as long as it is a measurable number, they assume that you are protected.

So some spiffy news to start the weekend!

Of course, it will be several more months before Omicron antibodies start appearing in the pool, but that's the way it is. Meanwhile, just have to trust my vaccinations, keep my mask up, and stay careful.

The one problem, of course, is that monoclonal antibody treatment is pretty much ineffective against Omicron. They will re-jigger it and a new MCA will come out, but that will take some time to redo it and then get the production lines back up to volume, and then odds are that Florida will suck up most of the production. All they'd have to do is encourage vaccination and their consumption of MCAs would drop by half, but that would be admitting that vaccines work and the virus isn't a hoax.

Can't do that!

Russet is still in the twilight zone of trying to get connected with local doctors. The Rat Bastards LOST the records release form that she filled out in their office, and DIDN'T BOTHER CALLING TO TELL HER. The only reason she found out is she called THEM to find out if they'd received the records from her Las Cruces doctor!

Bastards.

So still in a holding pattern there.

It's not like it's life or death.

Oh, wait.

It is, kinda.

Increased risk of stroke from living at high altitude.

Yeah. Kind of important.

Bastards.