DESQview for DOS was an amazing way to add some multi-tasking capabilities into an otherwise limited environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
Over the pandemic, I used this and OBS with a USB HDMI capture dongle attached to my Nintendo Switch to host Jackbox Party Pack nights with friends over Zoom. Such a great tool!
I have an Amazon Echo Wall Clock, and I got it for its integration with timers set by Alexa. It works great and lets me see the status of multiple timers. But I believe they discontinued it. I know this will never happen, but I would love an Apple-made clock that made timer display a primary feature. Setting timers using my voice and giving them names solves the interface issue, but being able to glance at the status of everything still needs a wonderful solution.
This is where Chef got it right over Puppet, but of which were written in Ruby. But Chef recipes are just Ruby files, and they make use of the Ruby language to do the same thing because it's perfectly capable of describing things that way.
I asked ChatGPT to translate the results, and here's what it said:
This study looks at how the immune system responds to various infections and stimulants after receiving the BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine (commonly known as the Pfizer vaccine).
Before vs. After Vaccination: After getting vaccinated (at a time point labeled "V2 + 28"), the immune system showed a weaker response in terms of specific immune-signaling chemicals (interferon-γ and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1) when exposed to various bacteria and viruses, compared to before getting vaccinated.
Cytokine Changes: Other immune-signaling chemicals (IL-6, IL-15, IL-17) were also generally decreased when the body was exposed to most of these stimulants after vaccination.
Viral vs. Bacterial: Interestingly, these weaker responses in immune-signaling chemicals (cytokines) remained lower for viruses but not for bacteria, six months after vaccination.
COVID-Specific Response: On the other hand, the immune response specifically to COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 and its spike proteins) was stronger at "V2 + 28" and remained stronger six months after vaccination.
No Correlation with Antibodies: The levels of COVID-specific antibodies in the blood (measured at "V2 + 28") did not relate to these changes in cytokine responses.
In plain English, the study suggests that after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, the immune system's general ability to signal and react to various infections decreases somewhat, at least in the short term. However, the ability to respond specifically to COVID-19 improves and remains strong for at least six months. These changes in the immune system's signaling ability don't seem to be connected to the level of COVID-specific antibodies in your blood.
Vaccines are made to target a specific or a specific set of pathogens.
The background states that when you gain immunity to the target pathogens, that’s called “antigen-specific adaptive immunity.” When you gain immunity to pathogens similar to, but not, the target, that’s called “cross-protective immunity.” Sometimes, vaccines provide “beneficial off-target (heterologous) effects that alter immune responses to, and protect against, unrelated infections.” It has never been tested if mRNA vaccines also show a similar benefit.
So the study has concluded that children who received the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine showed increased immune response to pathogens unrelated to COVID-19. Meaning that when children take this vaccine, they are less likely to die from other pathogens too! Which sounds pretty awesome.
You've misread (or not read) the study. "BNT162b2 vaccination is associated with a decrease in bacterial and viral stimulant-induced cytokine responses one month after vaccination." It is showing reduced immune response to other pathogens.
I also think that's the intended interpretation (that it is showing reduced immune response to other pathogens).
I think the linkage with the showing of /increased/ immune response to pathogens unrelated to COVID-19 traces to a finding that, post-vaccine, there is an immediate and general reduction in mortality. (I may have summarised that imprecisely.) The presumption in anti-covid-vaccine-mandate circles is that it is a confounding factor, and the result of biases in how populations are segmented.
But the paper does highlight similar findings in the background ("In high-mortality settings, live-attenuated vaccines are associated with reductions in all-cause infant mortality greater than can be attributed to vaccine-specific protection alone (5–7)."), but it doesn't seem to revisit the topic. Which is a bummer. It would seem to be an important topic to address.
Ah I see what you mean, but live-attenuated might be quite different from the mRNA vaccines. I wonder if the study authors at the outset expected the impact to be similar.
What I find dismaying is that this tiny study is the first and only examination of the impact on broader immune response from the mRNA vaccines (at least, that I have been able to find) after millions of doses were already administered.
I've been holding out on 7 for reasons like this. The native macOS version seems to honour my system locale settings. I don't see myself moving to an Electron-based app, and am really hoping that the updated keychain stuff in Sonoma will be such that I can just say goodbye, despite how much I've enjoyed 1Password for the _many_ years I've been a loyal customer.
The part which I find so unfathomable is that the UI of 1Password isn't even that complicated, nor is it subject to rapid change. Maintaining three or four 100% native platform-specific front-end codebases seems entirely reasonable and trivial. Particularly given that customers are paying good money for this app!
I abandoned it as soon as they switched to Electron. I wouldn't mind if it was something I used it once a month but for an app that is running all the time the overhead is unacceptable to me.
