I expect to be back to cocktail writing next week, but lately my focus has been entirely on vaccines. Today at the Center for New Liberalism’s Exponents magazine, I ask, where are the pro-vaccine protests? America is rolling out its vaccinations faster than most other countries, but we’re significantly lagging compared to several peers. And unlike other countries, we have no excuse: The safe and effective Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is already in production in Baltimore, with doses sitting in refrigerators and ready to go. While the UK, EU, and fifteen other countries have authorized the vaccine, American regulatory policy will delay its availability here by months. I argue that our complacency on vaccinations is a major political failing. We should demand far better. We need Immunity Now!
Closer to home, Oregon’s vaccination program was supposed to be guided by an advisory committee focused on health equity. That’s a perfectly valid concern, but the execution went out about as poorly as you’d expect given Portland’s and Oregon’s general politics. For Reason magazine, I covered the committee’s proposal to allocate vaccines explicitly by race. This idea would have raised obvious constitutional issues and the state eventually informed the committee that it can’t actually do that. In the end, it appears that for as much as the state touted its deference to the advisory committee, its recommendations will end up affecting very little.
Covering COVID
Could we ramp up production of mRNA vaccines to fix the shortage if only Pfizer and Moderna would release the instructions? Derek Lowe explains why it’s not nearly that simple. I take this as all the more reason to expedite the use of vaccines that use other platforms, such as those from AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson.
Everybody wants the best vaccines, but efficacy numbers can be difficult to compare directly. For the most important outcomes — avoiding hospitalization or death — they’re all performing remarkably well. So when the opportunity comes, take whichever you can get!
Alex Tabarrok rounds up some of the latest evidence on first-doses-first, including the new AstraZeneca trial I mentioned in my Exponents article.
Social distancing
To drink: I had to buy a new bottle of sloe gin for the cocktail in last week’s newsletter. Sloe gin is a once or twice a decade purchase for me, as I suspect it may be for you as well, so that got me looking for additional recipes to use it in. An intriguing one I came across is the Modern, a cocktail dating back to 1905 that David Wondrich wrote about for Esquire in 2015. It’s a weird combination of ingredients in weird proportions, but Dave raved about it, so I had to give it a try.
The verdict? It’s actually pretty great! The mix of scotch, sloe gin, and absinthe seems like something you might have found on the menu of fancy cocktail bar around 2010, making the name newly apt. The fact that it uses just a splash of lemon juice is also appealing; I tend to drink more spirit-forward cocktails in the winter, but the touch of tartness paired with the plummy notes of sloe gin makes this a good cold weather sour.
Wondrich recommends Johnnie Walker Black for this, and since I happened to have a bottle on hand, that’s what I used, too. The hint of smoke works nicely. More important is the choice of sloe gin. I’m using Plymouth, but as I mentioned last time, just be sure to avoid the cheap options. A good sloe gin makes all the difference.
1 oz scotch
1 oz sloe gin
1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
1 dash orange bitters
1 dash absinthe
cherry, for garnish
Shake everything with ice and strain into a chilled coupe, garnishing with a cherry if you have it.
A favor
If you enjoy this newsletter, whether you read it for the articles or just for the cocktails at the bottom, consider forwarding it on to someone you know who might like it, too.
Newsletter details and obligatory self-promotion
Subscribe here. Read the archive. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or my blog. Buy my books. Browse the newsletter bookshop.