A Night with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

In my experience, a Neil DeGrasse Tyson event is a bunch of scientific true believers.  I can say for certain that was the case for me, JT, and my friend H.  We saw Tyson on Thursday night and, like the fan crew we are, we cheered when the wisdom of science range true.  

Talks like this - surrounded by hundreds of people who know that only science can save us - provide a sense of real hope in a world that often feels bleak.  That’s happy.

The Faint Light Ahead

The Pfizer vaccine has received emergency FDA approval and distribution in the United States will begin this weekend.  The Moderna vaccine is expected to follow within two weeks.  

The amount of hope that this news brings is hard for me to quantify.  Thanks to a complete absence of national leadership, the pandemic is worse than ever in the U.S. at this moment.  We are averaging one million new cases a day; deaths are approaching 1,000 a day.  In New Jersey, with a population just below 9 million, things are better but we are struggling as well, with somewhere between four and six thousand new cases each day.

There is still a long and dark Winter before us but this vaccine news feels like a faint but steady light at the end of a very long tunnel. 

The Kindness of Strangers

Yesterday morning, listening to Morning Edition, I heard a story about the need to register more bone marrow donors, especially potential mixed-race donors.  The interview was with the mother of a little girl named Maya.  Maya is a four-year-old mixed race child (her mother is from her India; her father is of European ancestry).  This story about her need for a donor was a powerful reminder that the advances of the most amazing of sciences, in this case a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer, still rest upon the kindness of strangers.

I have been on the bone marrow registry for eleven years.  I got on the registry when a colleague's son was diagnosed with cancer and needed a bone marrow transplant.  When a child is diagnosed with cancer, there is a feeling of powerlessness that takes hold.  Parents, people devoted to the protection of their young, are suddenly faced with a threat well-beyond their ability to vanquish.  John's cancer diagnosis galvanized our small town; many of us waited in line for the blood draw that would place us on the registry. 

Every few months, I get a newsletter from the registry that confirms my address.  Without doubt, if I am ever called upon to donate, I will step forward to help.  There are 7 billion people in this world; 300 million of them in the United States.  The National Bone Marrow Donor Registry has just 13 million people on the list.  A few more kind strangers would certainly help.