As reminders…

Alpha–Variant first identified in the UK

Beta–Variant first identified in South Africa

Gamma–Variant first identified in Brazil

Delta–Variant first identified in India

Omicron–Variant first identified in South Africa

Updating the chart above:

Ancestral: B.1.1.529 Omicron

Transmissibility: All the +

Immune Evasiveness: All the +

Vaccine Effectiveness: Check (for hospitalization)

Also as a reminder:

–Yes, I know, it seems like COVID was an early casualty of the Ukraine-Russia war–but there is still COVID news to cover!

–First off, great big welcome back to our Chinese “readers”! Throw China and Taiwan into one of these, and you guys are scraping the website where we archive these pretty quick huh? Still not a Chinese citizen guys, don’t worry. But just to keep our readership within the CCP strong:

China Taiwan China Taiwan China Taiwan

Independent Taiwan

Uighur genocide

Xi Winnie the Pooh

and of course, as always, “CCP иди нахуй”

–South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, China and New Zealand are all riding high on omicron waves. Parts of Europe are coming down off their omicron waves, and not much at all is happening in the US. Or South Africa still. BA.2 is not making any kind of pandemic headway.

Most of China’s cases are occurring in Hong Kong, despite “zero COVID” policies, and the rumors on the internets (tough to find around omnipresent geopolitics these days) is that China is trying to quietly pivot from “zero COVID” policies, lest they be stuck in permanent panic shutdowns for years to come. However, there are some public health officials who believe that China may need up to a year to raise vaccination and booster coverage particularly among the elderly and in rural areas. I know, I know. I have seen China’s official vaccination and COVID statistics too and I am just as -shocked- as you at these predictions, seemingly at odds with stated effectiveness of Chinese COVID vaccines and official numbers of shots out in China.

Shocked, I say.

Depending on -how- they land this plane, expect one big or several fairly sizeable outbreaks of omicron or similar to hit China this year.

–Several science updates this week… First, poison control centers are issuing a caution on the at home rapid antigen tests. Many of the more popular brands use a “dropper” reagent where you put a few drops on a spot after you collect the nasal swab. This dropper, called the “Reagent Solution” or something similar depending on the kit, contains a small amount of sodium azide, which can cause low blood pressure, dizziness, headaches or heart palpitations. In exposures involving kids, they have gotten into the kits and just drank the liquid. Adults apparently have been exposed mistaking the COVID test dropper for their eye drops. You should not do either of those things. So keep the kit someplace safe, away from other things its components might be confused for, and use and dispose of the kit per its instructions.

–The New York State Department of Health released a study on the Pfizer vaccine for kids age 5-11 during the recent Omicron outbreak. You can read the pre-print version here. The long story short is the vaccine was effective in preventing severe COVID and hospitalization in this age range, especially for kids with underlying conditions that might predispose severe COVID and hospitalization. But, breakthrough infections were not uncommon, especially after more than 4 weeks post vaccine, so it was not really stopping infection in this age range pretty well. Also worth mentioning that hospitalization due to COVID in this age range is extremely rare, absent underlying conditions. As we pointed out in another paper last week, flu is 3 times more likely to result in hospitalization than COVID for this age group.

Our previous discussion of the vaccine for these kids is here. I believe it is still worth a read, and stand by my “I wish the CDC had taken a ‘high risk kids first’ rollout approach” conclusion at the time.

–There were two papers making more conjectures about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, this time concluding that natural evolution in animals followed by accidental transmission to man is more likely. You can find one of them here. Is it possible a cross like this happened in a lab working with a lot of animal coronaviruses that then leaked? Yes, it’s still possible. All really comes down to your assessment of the probabilities. All of these papers, on either side, are really making educated guesses on what genomic evidence can be pieced together after the fact, plus assignment of probability to how SARS-CoV-2’s genome arose from their evidence. My stance remains that it’s largely irrelevant because absent a smoking gun in a Wuhan lab notebook, we’ll never really know, and won’t for 50 years because of China-US geopolitics anyways–plus you still don’t get the last two years back if you solve the puzzle.

I only mention these because one of the co-authors to both papers is a signatory to one of the early letters asking for an investigation into the “lab leak” hypothesis, and he, as a result of these papers, now believes natural origin is more likely.

–Next on the science beat is the obvious weekend Twitter explosion over this paper.

“OMG! BILL GATES WAS RIGHT! THE VACCINE GETS TURNED FROM RNA TO DNA AND THEN GETS INTO YOUR GENES! WE ARE ALL X-MEN NOW!” I hear you say, Hypothetical Twitter Scrolling Reader.

First off, let me give you a shortcut to Twitter feeds, headlines and websites that did not read this paper.

Any of them saying that this paper shows or proves that the mRNA vaccines are turned into DNA and that it incorporates into your genome (and there are a LOT of those that I saw on a cursory DuckDuckGo and scroll)? THEY. DID. NOT. READ. THIS. PAPER.

But they had -all- the takes anyways!

To prove to you that they did not read this paper, I am going to quote directly from the “discussion” section of the paper:

“At this stage, we do not know if DNA reverse transcribed from BNT162b2 is integrated into the cell genome [emphasis mine]. Further studies are needed to demonstrate the effect of BNT162b2 on genomic integrity, including whole genome sequencing of cells exposed to BNT162b2, as well as tissues from human subjects who received BNT162b2 vaccination.“

See?

They did not read this paper.

Alright, so now that you know who you can completely ignore on the internet where this paper is concerned (because they did not read it, or did not understand it, or did, and are now misrepresenting it to you), let’s get into what the researchers here did, and what it actually shows.

To warn you, we are going to Sciencepalooza the living hell out of this, because to understand it, we need to go into some more complicated molecular biology. Sorry–but it’s the only way to put this paper into context.

First, some background. You may recall from our explainer on how the mRNA vaccines work that we presented the “central dogma” of molecular biology, which is that DNA genes are transcribed to mRNA copies of those genes, and the mRNA is then translated into protein, which is the molecule that does most of the “stuff” necessary for life, and builds cells and tissues etc.

Basically, this:

DNA —> mRNA —> protein

We also said that SARS-CoV-2, and coronaviruses in general, are not the kind of viruses that go backwards from RNA to DNA, and that the RNA would not turn into DNA copies.

We admittedly simplified a lot when we said this, because I know most of you reading this did not take upper level molecular biology courses.

So this is central dogma because it’s the way things usually run:

DNA —> mRNA —> protein

There are exceptions, and HIV was actually one of the earliest examples of those. It’s a “retrovirus”, retro meaning “backwards” in this case, because it actually goes backwards down the central dogma. HIV is a RNA virus like coronavirus, but its genome is NOT a mRNA in its own right. To replicate, HIV must first make a DNA copy of its RNA genome, which is “backwards” in the central dogma.

HIV RNA –> HIV DNA –> HIV mRNA –> HIV protein

Viruses that do this will come with their own special tool, called reverse transcriptase, which makes a DNA copy of RNA. For a very long time, we thought our cells could not do this trick.

But they can!

In your DNA, and everyone’s DNA, is a section called LINE-1. We won’t go into the acronym; we will just focus on what LINE-1 does normally. LINE-1 is a reverse transcriptase that your cells make, and turns an RNA copy of itself into DNA, and it can then “jump” around in the genome, causing mutations if it “jumps” into the wrong place. (this is also called a “transposable element” which won Barbara McClintock, whom we have name dropped a few times here, her Nobel Prize)

What is important to know about LINE-1 is that nearly every cell in your body has it shut the f*** off as completely as it can. LINE-1 is really only normally expressed in early embryogenesis, where it likely plays a role in making all your genes active when you are just a few cells in size so those cells can then divide and start “specializing” into your various growing tissues and organs.

Once you are more than a few cells big, LINE-1 is shut off, and shut off hard. We are talking a bewildering array of other genes and proteins with techniques that turn off LINE-1 at every conceivable part of molecular biology.

If LINE-1 goes active again, it’s a mistake, or in a really rare, and super undifferentiated stem cell (of which there are very few in you).

So where we see LINE-1 active is in cancers (unsurprisingly), where other mutations have knocked out the brakes on LINE-1, and LINE-1 finally gets loose. In liver cancer, in particular, LINE-1 is frequently active, where it takes out other genes that would stop the cancer. There is even a hybrid form of LINE-1 that pairs with Hepatitis B Virus to drive HBV caused liver cancer.

That “liver cancer has high LINE-1, even if normal cells don’t have ANY LINE-1 active” is important to remember. It will be relevant in a moment.

The other place seems to be senescent cells, which are cells that are damaged and “shut off” to keep themselves from regulating. So LINE-1 -may- be part of aging in some of these cells, as you accumulate senescence over time. But part of the pathology of aging is that these cells ARE shut off, not dividing, and thus not helping tissues and organs recover and heal like they used to.

So in normal conditions, in full size humans more than a few cells in size, LINE-1 is ONLY active when things are going wrong. Like in cancers, or in badly damaged cells that are becoming senescent and releasing IFN-1 (a particular kind of inflammation), or old already senescent cells.

So TL;DR version of that background?
–LINE-1 is a human gene in your DNA that can turn RNA back into DNA. Sometimes, not always, this DNA can move back into your genome.

–LINE-1 is only normally active when you are just a few cells big and then it is shut off, hard and in depth, after that.

–LINE-1 will only ever become active again if those fail safes are damaged.

—Thus cancers (especially liver cancers) have very active LINE-1. -Normal cells do not-. Older cells may have active LINE-1 if they are senescent, but senescent cells are like centenarians on rocking chairs outside of the nursing home–they don’t really do much but sit there and watch life pass by.

See why we didn’t go into this during the “how mRNA vaccines work” section? : )

Anyways, now that you have the relevant context, let’s dig into this paper that has Twitter all a’-confirmin’ its biases everywhere this weekend…

Alright, our merry band of intrepid researchers from Sveeeden took Huh7 cells, a liver cancer cell line (remember why I said that was important?), and shot them up with Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine in a petri dish to see if LINE-1 would turn the mRNA in the vaccine into DNA copies of that spike protein mRNA.

Spoiler alert–LINE-1 did just that. Their method is good for it, and they do convince me they found DNA copies of the Pfizer mRNA in the cells later.

“OMG! WE REALLY IZ ALL X-MEN NOW!!!!“

Chill, Hypothetical Reader, chill. We’re going to point out a few other points about this -before- we freak out.

First, remember that LINE-1 is shut the HELL off in normal cells. To find elevated LINE-1, they went to a cancer cell line. Huh7, the line they used, is a human liver cancer cell line, which was established in 1982 from a Japanese patient with a liver cancer.  I cannot find in the original paper if the patient was known to have HBV or HCV, but either would be likely given the demographics.  In fact, the line is used for HCV research frequently.

Both chronic viral hepatitis (which may include virus damaged cells well on their way to cancer or senescence) AND liver cancers like this -start- with higher LINE-1.  The overexpression of LINE-1 may be responsible for some of the features driving this particular cancer line.  Cancer cells are also, by definition, deranged cells playing by their own rules.  Huh7, for example, has 57-60 chromosomes instead of the usual 46. 

But let’s go to Figure 3, which has some money data for discussion:

This is busy, but what you are seeing is LINE-1 gene expression at 3 time points and in 3 different doses of the Pfizer vaccine.  The control group receive NO vaccine at all, and is labeled “Ctrl”.  The green, red and blue dots are different cultures of these cells in petri dishes at 6 hours, 24 hours and 48 hours after “vaccination”, respectively. The dose of the Pfizer vaccine given to the cells in the petri dishes goes higher from V1 (lowest vaccine dose) to V3 (highest vaccine dose) at each time point.

The vaccine doses are set at the lowest to highest estimates of the amount of Pfizer vaccine that will actually reach the liver, based on rat studies we discussed previously, and using the human dose (not the 50 fold greater dose the rats got).  So their dosing is reasonably realistic.

So what does Figure 3 teach us?  At 6 hours, the highest dose of vaccine (which they titrated to the highest level of vaccine that reaches the liver in rat studies we previously discussed) shows higher LINE-1 levels.  This is almost certainly an artifact, as every other dose and time point of the vaccine shows -lower- levels of LINE-1 than control when the vaccine is given.

Put another way, the vaccine may be suppressing LINE-1, which is needed to turn the vaccine from RNA to DNA copies.

Further, there is NO dose dependency here.  Which is to say you do NOT get increased LINE1 expression as you increase dose of vaccine.  Instead, what you see is that at 48 hours, LINE1 expression is going ballistic in Huh7 cells that received NO vaccine.  In fact, LINE-1 expression is HIGHEST at 48 hours in cells which did not receive vaccine. This suggests that LINE1 is likely active, and volatile, in this cell line to begin with, no matter what you are doing with the vaccine.

So aside from “normal cells don’t express ANY LINE-1”, it suggests this Huh7 line may not be the -best- choice to suggest what may be happening in the clinic in normal full size humans where LINE-1 will not be highly expressed, other than to try to “force” LINE-1 to make DNA copies of the mRNA vaccine, if LINE-1 can do that at all.

It’s also unclear why they did not test other cell lines in addition to Huh7, for both LINE1 expression and for any evidence that the Pfizer vaccine was being reverse transcribed to DNA.  Particularly normal cell lines, just to see if, in normal cells, there is the kind of DNA copy formation they are so concerned about.

Secondly, let’s talk about how long those DNA copies are sticking around. Yes, in the discussion section we quoted, the researchers, from Sveeeeden, were all concerned about these DNA copies being inserted BACK into the genome of the Huh7 cells permanently, possibly causing additional mutation. As they mentioned, they did NOT test for that, and proof would require additional studies. If they had, this would be in Nature, and not a more obscure journal like it is now.

So let’s look at Figure 5 from their paper, which does indeed, convincingly show that at least some of the vaccine copies were turned into DNA:

See all those thick grey lines under the “BNT”s? That’s the DNA copies of the RNA from the Pfizer vaccine. These are the replicates they did with lowest dose of Pfizer vaccine. How dark those bands are is a rough indication of how many DNA copies there are. So, do you notice something about the darkness of the bands under “BNT” as you go from cells 6 hours after vaccination (upper left) to 24 hours after vaccination (upper right) to 48 hours after vaccination (bottom) in Figure 5?

I do! They’re getting lighter at 48 hours. In fact, it’s getting tough to see the first and last BNT bands at all on the bottom of Figure 5, at 48 hours. Now, that’s not perfect, because the ladder bands (under the “L”s on top on bottom, with lots of bands in a column) are a little lighter at 48 hours too, and so the 48 hours section may just be less exposed.

Yes, this technique is like developing film photography–longer exposure equals darker too, regardless of how much DNA is in the band.

So it’s a suggestion that the DNA is not sticking around long, and may be degrading at 48 hours, rather than integrating into the genome. Something they really should have looked at properly, given their data raises this possibility–and the answer has major implications for the freak out their discussion section causes on Twitter.

Second, let’s remember that LINE-1 expression was starting to rocket up for these cells at 48 hours. If that DNA was getting transcribed, and thus turned into more RNA, then more of that RNA should also be back converting to DNA as well. The bands should be getting darker at 48 hours.

They’re not.

At best, this suggests that cells which already have sky high LINE-1 (normal cells DO NOT) convert some of the vaccine mRNA to DNA in a single initial burst that then stops. The bands are not getting darker at 48 hours. In fact, they -may- be getting lighter, suggesting these DNA copies are NOT getting put into the genome of even an already genomically unstable cancer line, and may even be getting degraded by 48 hours. Your cells don’t just leave loose bits of DNA floating around for long. Certainly, they are not getting transcribed, because we should be seeing even more DNA copies given LINE-1 only gets more active in these cells over time.

Other issues with this paper. They tested only the LOWEST dose of the vaccine for the presence of reverse transcribed Pfizer vaccine DNA.  That is a lost opportunity.  I would be more convinced this was an issue of major concern if there were dose dependency to this–at higher doses of the vaccine, are you detecting MORE DNA copies as a result?  We don’t know.  They didn’t test.

More importantly, as the authors themselves acknowledge, they did not test their vaccinated liver cells to see if they were expressing pieces of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.  If they are, as we mentioned before, cytotoxic T-cells will find and kill them all, taking the DNA’d Pfizer vaccine pieces with them.  Again, varsity level Among Us players.

If that’s the case, this is much ado about nothing. The cells which accidentally make DNA copies of the vaccine, even if that DNA pops back into the human genome, will almost certainly have been killed by T-cells because they made spike protein from the vaccine mRNA, in addition to DNA copies.

The other thing our researchers should have done, but didn’t?  Infect with SARS-CoV-2 itself and look for DNA copies of the spike protein.  My guess is they will find them, suggesting that LINE-1 can make DNA copies of this sequence in COVID infection too, and this isn’t limited to the vaccine.  This possibility was suggested early in the pandemic. If that happens at all, it’s so rare that it cannot be differentiated from lab artifact in assays trying to find it.

Alright, but the researchers in the discussion and Twitter raise the possibility of like, what if, man? What if this is really happening, especially in embryogenesis, or like bone marrow stem cells or something?

Again, I’m going to point to the billions of doses out already over the past year plus. I won’t bore you with the data (you can check it yourself) but there have been NO changes to the fertility rate, birth rate, or infant mortality statistics for Israel, Portugal or Chile (all HIGH vaccination status countries; Israel for sure has used lots of doses of Pfizer)–or the US. All of them stayed steady on (US), on the same gentle slope of birth/fertility rate decline they had from 2018 through 2022 (Israel and Chile) or had fertility rate actually go up a bit in 2021 (Portugal). No differences at all in rates of infant mortality.

So again, if this is a huge clinical risk to embryogenesis and fertility, where the hell are the cases of it? We should see some by now, surely?

“Well, what about long term cancer risk? I mean, what if, what if, these DNA copies really are getting popped into genomic DNA and causing mutations and more cancers?” I hear you ask Hypothetical Reader.

Here I will concede that we are in early innings. It’s possible there is a rare, but real, increase in cancer risk that may not be apparent for a few years yet–if this mechanism happens at all in normal humans. Which is unlikely, since the vast majority of your cells don’t make LINE-1, and your T-cells should kill all the cells that pick up vaccine and make spike protein with it–which should doom any cells that accidentally turned the vaccine to DNA and popped it into a place that might cause cancer. But we don’t have enough elapsed time with the vaccines to know for sure. Again, I see no theoretical reason why this same mechanism wouldn’t happen with LINE-1 expressing cells and SARS-CoV-2 itself either where this hypothetical increased cancer risk will be confined to the vaccine. COVID itself would increase the risk.

Since your cells will NOT be expressing lots of LINE-1 when either the virus or the vaccine meets them (and the vaccine, per this paper, may even -suppress- LINE-1 to some extent), I don’t think the risk of cancer association is very high for either vaccine or COVID. Only time will tell though.

So what have we learned from this study?

Well, in this one liver cancer cell line already predisposed to make LINE-1, and thus an ideal set up to detect DNA copies of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the Pfizer vaccine made from the RNA by LINE-1, we do, indeed, detect those DNA copies.  They may be losing steam by 48 hours, despite INCREASED LINE-1 levels across the board in this cell line.  We have no idea if there is dose dependency to this, which would be more convincing.  We have no idea if this happens in other lines that don’t make as much LINE1 as this line does in general, which would also be more convincing.  There is also reason to suspect this might happen in this cell line with SARS-CoV-2 and is not a finding limited to the vaccine.  Finally, even if it happens, the immune system is still likely to find and kill all the cells that picked up the vaccine.  That’s how the T-cells work.  So it’s unclear how much of a clinical problem this finding really is.  Based on real world data so far, I don’t see convincing evidence that this translates to the clinic.  Which is no surprise, because your cells NORMALLY do not have LINE-1 turned on to make DNA copies of the RNA vaccine. So I’m not convinced by this study alone that we will all become X-men for having taken a mRNA vaccine.

Will this paper and the attention it got spur more studies? Probably. If I were in Vegas, I would bet on those studies concluding that more likely than not, it’s a “cool story bro” limited to cancer lines in petri dishes (where LINE-1 is already really active) and not much in the way of any clinically relevant impact.

–Again, major props to the reader who sent last week’s Twitter thread example of confirmation bias using Wordle, because the Twitter takes to this paper were –ALL– the confirmation bias.

–And see CDC? Misinterpretation of data ain’t nothing to be afraid of. You just need the time, patience and courage to sit down and walk folks through the best way to interpret the data, what it says, what it doesn’t say, what more data is needed, and what, if any, impact it has to people. It can be done! I swear!

Socioeconomic

–Right around Thanksgiving, we excerpted and linked a speech Putin gave last October in Russia, at an event where he typically just kind of riffs on the world. He highlighted the divisions in the West and we highlighted his last two paragraphs as an example of the end of the Pax Americana–even as he was discussing the opportunity he believed a divided and decayed West gave him (and Xi) to form a new world order. Explicitly replacing the decayed and fragmented Western system, which he believed had proven itself unable to rise to the challenge of the pandemic and the changing technological world. Within 4 months of that speech, Putin would be at the Olympics where he and Premier Xi would be announcing a new, close relationship without limitations. The moment the Olympics were over, he attacked the Ukraine.

Ukraine has responded with a courage to which we all aspire.

The West, which Putin and Xi believed was fractured, decadent and decayed has united and responded forcefully, reminded by the Ukrainians that there are fundamental values which bridge the schismogenesis that has been forming. Europe has finally found unity in its union, at least temporarily. Recent polls in the US show that Democrats, Republicans and Independents are all ~10:1 against Putin’s invasion, and strong sanctions have broad support across the political spectrum as well.

We mentioned above that you can save yourself time by muting those twitter accounts and websites that read the LINE-1 conversion of vaccine mRNA to DNA as “proof the vaccine gets into your genomic DNA!” because they so clearly did not bother to read the paper at all.

You can do the same now with the extremes of online and media voices, who have either lost the script on Russia’s aggression or are trying to paint their Other political tribe using a war of Russian aggression. Even as both sides of Ukraine’s political scenes are picking up rifles and javelins to fight together against the Russians.

Owning your preferred of the “libtards” or “trumptards” is the epitome of a First World problem, and a game one can play with the intensity of the last several years only while there were no other serious, common problems in the world.

Well, we have serious common problems that demand common solutions.

But we must wean ourselves of the schismogenesis in order to confront them. Our tribalism emboldened our enemies. The extremes you are shown in media and online are NOT the average of the Other tribe they are presented as, but a means to capture your attention to monetize it. Remember, both tribes are 10:1 against Putin.

I know–I know. You have seen things in your preferred information silos that make you -think- a different proportion of the Other Tribe condoned/made possible/doesn’t care/is actively supporting Russia with care packages of cookies they are flying in on drones to Russian soldiers in the Ukraine while hiding oligarch yachts under tarps in their back yard. You are being presented with the extremes to make you -think- they are the center of mass and opinion in the Other Tribe. This promotes schizogenesis. Avoid this thinking, or at least remind yourself that you are being shown the minority opinion in the other tribe.

There are shared core values (there are!), and we need to stop the name calling and extremism to find the correct and best path out of what will be a historic, and challenging, decade.

–And while we continue to get our house in order, stay hard Ukraine.

–One more week before we talk about the intersection of financial technology and the tipping point between greater authoritarianism or individual liberty… I will get back to that part I wrote and held up last week! I swear it!

–In terms of supply chain effects, the war in the Ukraine will not only impact food prices. We mentioned before that globalization means the critical widget in global just in time supply chains is not always obvious, but if disrupted by natural or man made causes, will have surprising ripple effects. Turns out the supplier of half of the world’s neon gas for the lasers that etch microchips is in the Ukraine… where it turns out they are the major refiner of the gases (which include relatively high neon) released by Russian steel manufacturing techniques. While the plant itself is thus far undamaged in Odessa, well, Russian precision targeting leaves much to be desired. Finding additional sources of the neon will be difficult. You may be looking at yet another microchip shortage in the back half of this year depending on how, and how quickly, things resolve in the Ukraine.

To say nothing of wheat. An Estonian ship hit a mine in the Black Sea, making insuring cargoes and ships in the Black Sea going forward for a bit a challenge. Ports in the Black Sea are how the #1 and #4 wheat producers in the world (still currently shooting at each other) get most of that wheat to the people who buy and eat it. Finding the marginal barrels of oil instead of buying Russian oil will be an increasing challenge as well–and we may not have a choice in that in a few months, since the major Western oil companies are pulling people and equipment, and it is those drilling techniques and partners doing the lion’s share on a lot of Russia’s big deposits. Those barrels are going to be gone, even if some countries want to break ranks and slink back to Russian supplied energy a few months from now.

–“Some of the kids at school said that Russia was going to nuke the US, and that if they did, [Nearest City to Paladin] would be hit too?“

Ever had to explain the game theory of mutual assured destruction to a 5th grader, and why Russia and NATO have been so careful (so far) to not directly shoot at one another in Europe?

I got to do that this week.

Yes, the world remains set on Maximum Stupid…

–So it was in 1736, and an 11 year old boy stood under crisp blue skies, a lazy river on which billowing white clouds ambled along. He was seeing the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, among the gentle creak of the wooden deck, the soft sharp zip of the sail canvas, and the songs and shantys of the British sailors crewing the man o’ war he sailed on. He was awe-struck at the ancient beauty of the sun drenched Greek islands, and could smell the faint spiced scent of tsouks along the levantine winds which pushed against the sails. -This- world was bright and new. From where he stood, young, eager, new and strong, all things were possible.

All things.

This would be the first of 6 trips he would make with his father, a British Navy captain whose command was assigned to a Mediterranean squadron. His father could hardly leave the boy at home with a step mother he barely knew, and the boy’s biological mother had died of tuberculosis when the boy was 7. These trips to the Mediterranean Sea were happy times, which showed him the world and taught him the sea.

Which he learned, all too well, could turn suddenly and terrifyingly rough with swells and storms.

Dark clouds can hide just beyond a bright horizon.

Before he was 30 years old, that same boy had been pressed into service on a British warship (which had to kidnap its “volunteer” crew at the time), attempted to desert only to be caught, flogged and left behind in Sierra Leone. He was kept a slave by a man involved in the slave trade there for several years, escaping only when a British naval officer his father had sent to search for him was able to locate and rescue him. On a merchant ship back from Sierra Leone, a storm hit off the coast of Ireland. As he would later tell it, he was in the hold helping man the pumps to control flooding pouring through a hole in the hull, knowing it was futile, and prayed for the first time in his life. A section of the cargo dislodged, managing to block the hole enough that the ship didn’t sink and managed to limp to port. Believing it a miracle, he would call -this- the hour he first believed. Perhaps having not yet learned of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s illustration of survivor bias in his travels just yet. Alas, that faith (and even his own recent experience) didn’t keep him from taking a job as first mate on a slave ship on the African trade. His faith, however, did create a growing moral dilemma within him between what he was reading in his books and the inhuman and evil business which paid his bills.

Unsurprisingly, then, he had a stroke at age 29.

He left the slave trade for good after that, and went to seminary, becoming an Anglican vicar. The remainder of his life was dedicated not only to his faith, where his sermons and especially his hymns drew crowds and converts, but his work as an abolitionist. Which he described as the first moments he truly believed in the gospel he preached. He testified before the privy council, and his monograph on the evils of slavery from his first hand experience on all ends of it, along with his personal repentance and conversion from those evils, became a best seller in England when it was released. By the end, blindness had taken the eyes that had so long ago gazed in wonder at the blue Mediterranean skies on a rolling ship deck–but he had lived to see the abolition act pass the English parliament, ending British participation in the slave trade.

You know his most famous poem–even if you did not know before the biography of its author.

To this day, it is used in secular and religious settings, for its poignant message of hope, perseverance through trial, and redemption.

But once you know the biography behind it, to know just what struggles, what radical life change, and in the end what fierce dedication, to the last full measure, to fighting the good fight… How an 11 year old went from endless possibility among billowing white sails and a creaking stained oak deck in the warm Mediterranean to man physically and spiritually shattered and reformed, reflecting in all these words in amazement at how that came to be… well, this old familiar just hits different.

And we, too, will have many dangers toils and snares before us still this decade. So that you remember that the greatest good, too, can sometimes come from the worst of hours:

Amazing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come,
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.

–John Newton

–Your chances of catching coronavirus this week are equivalent to the chances I put in a $1 (USD) for Chelsea FC, now that expatriated Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has put the club up for sale. As well as $1 USD bids on some prime location New York and London real estate. Lest you accuse me of trying to take advantage of a highly motivated seller with these bids, let’s please remember that $1 USD is like a bajillionty rubles right now. In ruble terms, then, these are extremely fair offers. You will all, of course, be welcome in the owners box should the Chelsea bid be accepted.

<Paladin>