This is the closest this country has come to the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic nearly 2 years ago.

[WH advisor Anthony] Fauci said he expected it to be months before antiviral drugs can be mass-produced and available to anyone who needs them. While he did not foresee the kind of lockdowns that were put in place in the early days of the pandemic, Fauci also noted that it would be difficult to keep the virus under control when there remained “about 50 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated.”

Just another sign that I am aging and there’s nothing I can do to stop the inexorable march of time. Ken Kragen dies.

He created and organized historic humanitarian projects including “We Are the World” after Harry Belafonte reached out to him, and “Hands Across America,” for which he was honored with the United Nations’ Peace Medal, as well as Cisco System’s “NetAid.”

I actually bought the “We Are The World” charity single on vinyl, because, you know, I wanted to make a difference.

AP: Closing out a year filled with death.

Lindsey Buckingham: time has been good to “Tusk”.

Transmissibility versus pathogenicity. Fauci warns to “prepare for the worst”, by optimizing vaccine. A return to 2020 style lockdowns? He hedges on the latter.

Omicron unknowns as of this morning.

More Americans have died in 2021 than in 2020 from COVID, due to many well documented factors.

New COVID variant? No problem, according to biotech firm Pfizer.

As concerns over a new coronavirus variant sent the stock market into a downward spiral Friday, its worst day of 2021 so far, Pfizer and partner Biotech offered a potential sigh of relief, saying that “in the event that a vaccine-escape variant emerges” they can have a new vaccine ready in 100 days.

“We expect more data from the laboratory tests in two weeks at the latest. These data will provide more information about whether B.1.1.529 could be an escape variant that may require an adjustment of our vaccine if the variant spreads globally,” Pfizer said in a statement Friday.

The B.1.1.529 coronavirus variant, first discovered in South Africa and dubbed Omicron by the World Health Organization resulted in various travel restrictions, including the U.S. banning all flights from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.

UPDATE: POTUS gets out in front of likely issues with respect to vaccine equity in the face of the omicron variant.

One-third of The Gap Band passes away.

Alexa: It’s time to take your medicine now.

534,000 health care workers quit their jobs in August, up from about 404,000 during the same month in 2020. [PDF] link

Tales Of The City author gets real.

AI-driven diagnostics. It’s happening sooner than you may think.

The healthcare sector is seeing massive digitization of everything from patient records and radiology data to wearable computing and multiomics. This will redefine healthcare as a data-driven industry, and when that happens, it will leverage the power of AI — its ability to continuously improve with more data.

…AI will surpass all but the best doctors in the next 20 years. Studies have shown that AI trained on sizable data can outperform physicians in several areas of medical diagnosis regarding brain tumors, eye disease, breast cancer, skin cancer and lung cancer. Further trials are needed, but as these technologies are deployed and more data is gathered, the AI stands to outclass doctors.

Yetnikoff dies.

Under Walter Yetnikoff’s leadership, CBS released insanely successful blockbusters like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA”. During that time, Yetnikoff cultivated a reputation as a loud, snarling, hard-partying power broker, and he launched feuds with people like David Geffen and Paul Simon. In 1990, Yetnikoff left CBS, blaming former protege Tommy Mottola for pushing him out.

The first two hours of MTV. You’re literally watching history unfold. Classic.

Today in Apple history.

Glad to know Mashable is all in with my VPN choice.

Thinking about going to Hawaii, finally, some 15 months later? If you’re unvaccinated, then go for it.

Almost all current COVID deaths in this country are from the unvaccinated.😩

And CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said on Tuesday that the vaccine is so effective that “nearly every death, especially among adults, due to COVID-19, is, at this point, entirely preventable.” She called such deaths “particularly tragic.”

Deaths in the U.S. have plummeted from a peak of more than 3,400 day on average in mid-January, one month into the vaccination drive.

About 63% of all vaccine-eligible Americans — those 12 and older — have received at least one dose, and 53% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. While vaccine remains scarce in much of the world, the U.S. supply is so abundant and demand has slumped so dramatically that shots sit unused.

Andrew Yang concedes.