Podcasts about because covid

Fresh off pandemic fame, Moderna wants consumers to know how it's applying mRNA technology to reimagine health and wellness. Among other strategies, the company is leaning into sports and music to reach consumers when they're likely to be most receptive.  Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio. Damian Fowler: (00:01)I'm Damian Fowler.Ilyse Lieffring: (00:02)And I'm Ilyse Liffreing.Damian Fowler: (00:03)And welcome to this edition of the current podcast.Ilyse Lieffring: (00:10)This week we sit down with Kate Cronin, the chief brand Officer for Moderna.Damian Fowler: (00:15)Moderna is a biotech company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The focuses on MRNA therapies and vaccines against a wide range of illnesses including cancer, COVID-19 and the flu.Ilyse Lieffring: (00:26)Although the company was founded in 2010, it became a familiar brand name during the pandemic when it received full approval for its CVID 19 vaccine by the US Food and Drug Administration.Damian Fowler: (00:38)Since then, it's positioned itself to become a more commercial company and it's opening up direct to consumer marketing channels using digital messaging to reach healthcare providers and patients alike.Kate Cronin: (00:53)If you think about the healthcare landscape and where we are, we came out of a pandemic that changed everything. The pandemic turned every company into a healthcare company because companies were focused on the health and wellbeing of either their employees or their constituents or their customers. And that means hotels, airlines, travel, restaurants. It changed everything. And I think what happened is in a post pandemic world, people are laser focused on health and wellness. And looking at Moderna, we are leaning into that new focus on health and wellness and new understanding of health and wellness. And so as a company, we're leaning in on educating the world about our technology and what we believe we're going to do to change the future of healthcare.Damian Fowler: (01:40)And on that point, how has that impacted the way you go to market and the way you have rolled out marketing strategies? I understand it's a pretty big shift for the brand.Kate Cronin: (01:50)For the first 10 years of Moderna's life, we were an r and d company, so we focused on research and development. That means we studied products, the lab, and we did not have any products commercialized, so we never took a product to market. When Covid struck our CEO realized, hey, we have an opportunity with mRNA to see if our technology works against Covid. And the good news is it did. And so we are super proud of the fact that our first commercial product was for Covid, shot in the arms of billions of people around the world, literally prevented serious disease and hospitalization. And so that changed our company. And because the pandemic was the first time when people actually asked for a vaccine or knew their vaccine by name, you know, people would walk around and say, I, you know, I've got Pfizer or I got Moderna, or whatever it was.Kate Cronin: (02:39)And they were proud of the fact that they got the shot to prevent Covid. And so there was instant brand recognition. So Moderna was not a household name until the pandemic and suddenly became a global brand. Everybody knew the name Moderna and what everybody knew was Moderna was a company that manufactured a COVID-19 vaccine. What they didn't know is everything else that we were doing. And so I was hired in the middle of the pandemic to start educating around who is Moderna? What is our brand? What do we stand for? What's our identity and how do we reach consumers about the future of MRA technology and where we're going beyond covid. That's been the the focus. And that's not just for healthcare providers. People were getting it from pharmacists. They were not going to their doctors to get shots. So it was a very much of a consumer driven market. And because it was consumer driven, that's where I was leaning in on my focus on consumers and educating them about mRNA. So many people had it in their arms, did they know exactly what it did and why should they care? We started changing the dynamic in terms of how we reach our audiences.Damian Fowler: (03:45)Would you mind defining what mRNA is? I know it's in the name of the company, Moderna.Kate Cronin: (03:51)Interestingly, the agency that I worked at named Moderna, it's basically about mRNA. And mRNA is known as Messenger ribonucleic acid. And mRNA is a molecule that contains a set of instructions or a recipe, if you will, that direct cells to make a protein using the body's natural machinery to fight disease or prevent disease. And that's really what it is. It's a set of instructions and if you think about Moderna, the name, we came up with Moderna because it's modern, we believe we're gonna transform medicines, but it has RNA at the end. So it was very, it was a very nice play on modern and then RNA, so ModernaDamian Fowler: (04:33)A perfect brand name.Kate Cronin: (04:35)Yeah, yeah, it worked out. It worked out really well.Ilyse Lieffring: (04:37)Do you think Covid and Vaccine Awareness opened up new direct to consumer channels? Do you think it's good timing with immunization season?Kate Cronin: (04:47)So I think COVID definitely opened up new channels and here's why. People started to really care about vaccination in ways they never did before. During the pandemic, you weren't able to go out, you weren't able to see your friends, you weren't able to see your family. Getting the vaccine meant everything and getting the vaccine meant you were able to live your life again. And so you cared about that vaccine and you wanted to know who makes this vaccine. You wanted to know what's in this vaccine and why is it letting me get back to my life? How does it work? How does it all work? I mean, imagine, you know, pre pandemic when you would get your flu shot, people get the flu shot, it's great and you just know you're gonna prevent flu. In the pandemic world, you got your covid shot and it meant everything to you.Kate Cronin: (05:29)And so there became this loyalty to the brand that started. You know, you never knew who manufactured your flu shot, generally speaking, you just generically asked for a flu shot. But when Covid struck and you'd get your booster, you said, well, I got Moderna before, so now I want my Moderna booster. And you were loyal to Moderna, A fandom was created. How do we build on that? People who are fans wanna know like, how do I interact with this company? And you know, what's next? And when we launch a flu vaccine or a combination Covid flu vaccine, we want people to understand, oh, that's the company that brought me the Covid shot. I understand mRNA and I understand what I'm putting in my body. As you know, there was a lot of debate and discussion about these new vaccines and can they be trusted? And the reality is, if you understand the technology and that it's a set of instructions and it's teaching your body to fight, you understand that this new technology is effective and tolerable and there are, it was generated with safety in mind. As we move into new categories, it's the same methodology and it's not a new chemical entity, it's just a new set of instructions. And that's why we think it's important for people to understand it. So as we launch new products, they don't have to understand the intricacy, but the general gist of how it works,Ilyse Lieffring: (06:41)How would you say Moderna is going about fusing this education in with its marketing strategy?Kate Cronin: (06:49)So knowing that we want to reach folks and educate them, we lean in on this idea of education and entertainment, which I'm calling edutainment. People retain more when they're being entertained, I think. And so with that in mind, we're reaching people where they are. So instead of lecturing consumers about, you know, you need to get vaccinated, we spend more time engaging with them when they're at sporting events or when they're at concerts, reaching them when they're having fun and they're open to hearing more. So for example, at the US Open, we sponsored it two years in a row and as a sponsor we also have a booth and we're able to engage with consumers at the booth. They can download a QR code, they can sign the lens, which is something that champions do. And then they, we create a boomerang they can use on social media and then they can become part of the Moderna community where people are able to opt in and say, yeah, I wanna hear more from Moderna.Kate Cronin: (07:43)Same thing with the iHeart Music Festival. And we actually had wristbands where they could download a QR code, find out where they can get their vaccines, so go to vaccines.gov. And also Ryan Seacrest did some informational podcast stuff for us and he announced the concert and you know, announced this idea of stay healthy, stay up to date, get your vaccine, bringing this model in. We also looked at habits of consumers and there are people who are religious about getting their flu shot. Those are the people where you say, well if you're religious about getting your flu shot, how do we make sure you also get your covid shot? And the CDC says it's safe to get your flu and your covid shot at the same time in terms of compliance. It's easier to get that message and say while you're at the pharmacy getting your flu shot, get your covid shot and then you don't have to go back for another visit. And that increases compliance as well. The future for Covid is gonna be very similar to flu once a year, get your flu shot, get your covid shot, and then you don't have to get another one until the next year. That's for most people. I think for the highly immune compromise or the elderly, there might be a boost needed in the spring, but the current recommendation is once a year.Damian Fowler: (08:45)It's fascinating to hear you talk about, you know, using sports, using music celebrities, you know, to reach audiences. And I know that Moderna has taken this omnichannel approach using these very tailored messages. And I know your CCO talked about this as a priority. Could you talk a little bit more about that omnichannel approach across different digital channels is an effective way of reaching, I mean an audience of potential patients, I suppose is the way of putting it.Kate Cronin: (09:10)We're in a world where the channels where people get their information has exploded. 10 years ago we didn't have Instagram, TikTok, pharma traditionally would use DTC advertising. And so we look specifically at our audiences and where they are, where they get their information, including inline broadcast tv. I mean a lot of older people watch, you know, shows like CBS this morning. If you think about when I find myself watching CBS this morning, I've sort of realized I'm I'm, I've hit a certain age, but uh, , we also do media buys based on where we have sponsorships. So we did a whole thing with series of ads with ESPM where we did a changemaker campaign where we celebrated changemakers. So last year we celebrated Billie Jean King. This year we did creative that celebrated Arthur Ashe. Again, Moderna is really associating ourselves with change makers because we believe we are change makers in the healthcare industry, which is part of our platform.Ilyse Lieffring: (10:33)Now Moderna has to work directly with healthcare professionals. Would you say the same channels to reach consumers are also just as beneficial perhaps in reaching those healthcare professionals?Kate Cronin: (10:44)Healthcare professionals, they get a lot of their information through journals and studies. And I like to say the number one journal that physicians read is the Wall Street Journal. So we really push out our data and our clinical trial information through earned media and also specific to physicians. There are medical meetings and associations where they get their information, but we've been incredibly transparent as a company. When we get new data out, we issue a press release, we call top journalists, let them know. We offer up our executives and our doctors as spokespeople to share the information and spend more time with the journalists. This has been like this through the entire pandemic. And I think that's one thing about Moderna is we are incredibly open and transparent with everything in our data. And so I think earned media is the fastest way to get information out. Once you issue a press release, you're able to talk to the media directly and then folks trust the media and they're gonna give an unbiased objective story.Ilyse Lieffring: (11:40)Now I know during covid, like social media was full of disinformation regarding Covid and it was a challenge for any company. Do you feel that disinformation is still a big challenge?Kate Cronin: (11:52)Challenge As a company, we need to focus on what we do well, which is deliver the science and deliver the information and education around the science. We've struggled with disinformation about Moderna and about our executives and we look at that through the lens of what can we change and what should we change and what do we just need to leave alone because we're never gonna be able to change. We then focus on education. We also did some things with kind of debunking myths. We actually hired somebody to do some work with our employees on pre debunking myths versus facts and getting our ed, our employees educated on, here's some things you're gonna be hearing about on the internet or from friends and family and here are a set of facts that you can use to debunk some of the things that you might be hearing so that our employees are better armed with information and can be good ambassadors for the brand.Damian Fowler: (12:43)Now I guess, you know, other biotech companies must also be kind of lockstep with you in the sense of that myth or debunking or myth busting. But at the same time I'm wondering, you know, about the space and your sense of place in it. How do you think about the space?Kate Cronin: (12:58)So we are very different from a pharmaceutical company in that we are a platform technology company. So when you look at competitors, we don't really see pharma as competitors. We see ourselves as a unicorn because we are a platform technology company. An analogy would be Apple with the iOS system and Apple's iOS system is basically everything runs off of iOS and when you have a new app, it's off of the iOS. So it's updates to the iOS. We look at our mRNA platform the same way we have mRNA platform technology and whenever we have a new product, new vaccine, new therapy, it's basically like an updated app to the iOS system. So we take that iOS, we recode for a new product using mRNA, and then we tweak it based on the needs. So for example, we have a flu vaccine that we're studying. We had to tweak it because we're working off of one system and we're basically recoding the product. We were able to update it very quickly and study a newer version of it. And then that's the one that we're gonna be continuing to study and hopefully, you know, launch, it's very unusual 'cause when a pharma company has a product, it's a new chemical entity, they call it an NCE, they test it. If it fails, it's done, it's over, they have to start over again. We don't start over again. We can tweak and modify very quickly. So we have agility in a platform.Damian Fowler: (14:20)Yeah, that's a fascinating analogy. And at the same time, you know, you're creating these new products and you obviously have to give them brand names too. I know that the Covid vaccine isn't, isn't now Spike vax, right? For instance.Kate Cronin: (14:32)So it's an interesting conundrum. As I said earlier, the pandemic made Moderna a household name. So now we're out of the pandemic and we're an endemic market. An endemic market, you have to have a brand name, I wanted to name it Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. And they don't let you do that. They won't let you do that, you have to call it something. So the team came up with Spike Vax, but we couldn't just call it Spike Vax because no one's gonna know what Spike Vax is. So we call it Spike Vax by Moderna. If you think about consumer branding overall, there's this idea of a branded house or you have a house of brands. We are a combination of a hybrid of a branded house and a house of brands. So hybridizing it is making sure the company name is included because everyone knows our name and also attaching it to a product name. And then there are other ways to connect the dots in terms of the brand. So we have little M that shows up. And then just in terms of the architecture, the visual architecture works when you have different products that you're launching. 'cause we want people to know when they see it, they go, oh, that's a Moderna product. So Bio Moderna is very intentional in terms of how we brandIlyse Lieffring: (10:02)Can you tell us a little bit about what the Spike Vax by Moderna campaign looks like?Kate Cronin: (10:07)Spike Vax by Moderna is our branded campaign and it's about all the things you do with your body. You know, you exercise that body, you provide nutrients to that body, you spike vax, that body. And so just normalizing what you do with your body. It's just like you wanna keep your body healthy and you wanna live your life and do all the things you do with that body. Spike vax, that body. We also say, you know, you flu shot that body spike vax, that bodyIlyse Lieffring: (15:36)Now. What has aligned with kind of the rise of healthcare data and general consumer interest in their healthcare has also been the rise of retail media and data being that Moderna is going direct to consumer. How important is retail data to its vaccine marketing?Kate Cronin: (15:54)We look at data and analytics, that's something that drives everything that we do. If you think about Covid vaccines, we're able to look on a weekly basis and see how many people are getting shots in arms, where are they getting the shots? All the way from when it goes to the wholesaler to when it's shipped to the retail pharmacies. We have a good sense of the penetration of the market in terms of vaccination and we can see regionally attitudes as well. You know, where are people inclined to get a vaccine, where are they on the fence? And so we're able to target our efforts and educational efforts in markets where we think we can move the needle and where we can get people to understand the importance of going and getting their vaccine. We work closely also with the retailers, the CVSs and the Walgreens of the world who are working with us to educate and use their channels as well to make sure that when people are in the store, they are hearing information about staying up to date with their COVID-19 vaccine. So super important to have that information. It's also important to know where are their outbreaks of covid, how many outbreaks there are, what are the hospital, what are the weekly hospitalization rates? Because Covid continues to be quite serious. People are still getting sick unfortunately. And so we're monitoring that as well. And that informs a lot of our marketing efforts also.Damian Fowler: (17:10)Do you think there's still more work to be done in the sort of educating the consumer about the virus? I mean, I've heard people say, well I've had Covid or I've had my covid shot, so I therefore I have antibodies, I don't need to get a shot. I mean, how, how do you think about these different cohorts?Kate Cronin: (17:26)There's the people who, who are gonna go and get vaccinated. There're the folks who are hearing misinformation and saying, you know, I'm just not sure should I, I've already had COID. So those are the people we really need to lean in on because we need them to understand. We just need to do our part and educate people on that. And then there's the, the vaccine fatiguers. That's a new category. This is a new category based on covid. I mean, vaccine fatigue is not anti-Vax vaccine fatigue is someone who did the right thing. They went every time they got all their shots and they're tired of getting shots. They're tired of being told they need to get another vaccine. And those are folks who are, you know, they wanna do the right thing, but they're just, they're tired of it. The market has changed. It's a one shot, not a booster system anymore.Kate Cronin: (18:10)You get one shot just like flu and then you go back the next year. Them understanding that is important too. 'cause then they know that the vaccination plan is normalized. We've been focused on this idea of stay up to date, stay vaccinated. Our campaign is called No Time for 19, the Unbranded campaign. Get your flu shot, get your covid shot, stay healthy. And that's the focus. So we don't even mention spike vax and that's intentional because we are all about market growth in terms of get people vaccinated and a rising tide floats all boats. That's very different from a very branded campaign where you're leaning in on product attributes versus your competitors. In this particular case, we're more about getting people into the pharmacy and getting their vaccine. So that's our focus.Damian Fowler: (19:05)And that's it for this edition of the current podcast. We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.Ilyse Lieffring: (19:10)And if you love this podcast, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. While you're at it, check out our other show, the current report, our weekly roundup of what's happening in the world of digital media. The current podcast is produced by Wonder Media Network. Our theme is by love and caliber. The current team includes Chris Brooklier and Kat Vesce.Damian Fowler: (19:29)And remember,Kate Cronin: (19:30)Edutainment people retain more when they're being entertained. We're reaching people where they are. We spend more time engaging with them when they're at sporting events or when they're at concerts, reaching them when they're having fun and they're open to hearing more.Damian Fowler: (19:44)I'm DamianIlyse Lieffring: (19:45)And I'm Ilyse,Damian Fowler: (19:46)And we'll see you next time.

Oh hey! Dan and Maureen are swinging into the first week of 2024 with ease and style! Maureen has left behind her dead snake and gotten a fast car back to New York City because things got complicated. Dan dropped his son off at the airport to return to school and is definitely not still crying. But also, VAXXING. Because COVID is back for year four. And would you believe it, it's infecting people in the SAME EXACT WAY it surges every year. Who would have known.Meanwhile, Trump is in court in Washington DC to try to argue that being President gave him superpowers. It's not going well. And actual New York City mayor Eric Adams is under fire for a recently unearthed 2009 book about school safety in which he tells the story of taking a loaded gun to school. Or did he? Take a gun to school? Or tell that story to a ghostwriter who got it wrong? Or have a ghostwriter? Or even make the book at all? It's a study into whether or not books or writers are even real, and Maureen is INTO IT.Also, Dan has to watch three Twilight movies. He can't edit this out of the notes. These notes were written by a ghost.Booooooo! Says Who is made possible by you, through your support of our Patreon at patreon.com/sayswho

Katie returns on the Disruptors podcast to once again bring her signature no nonsense attitude and give an uncensored interview on everything from obesity to the corrupt banking system. Rob and Katie also review the major events of 2023 involving freedom of speech controversies with Andrew Tate, Russell Brand, and others. Katie doesn't mince words - expect the unexpected from this tell-all episode! Katie Reveals: Why she would never repress her opinions to have a "normal" life That there is no real rule of law Her thoughts on the COVID inquiry Why cash payments represent freedom and rebellion The death of the NHS What she thinks of Russell Brand, Prince Harry and Andrew Tate Why entrepreneurship thrives when people are free from overbearing government regulations and taxes That maximum personal effort helps you find your destiny Why adding comedy helps Katie discuss controversial opinions BEST MOMENTS "Kids are really overrated” "You have to allow people to put labels on you. And allow them to sit there." "There's not enough naughty now either, no, I'd agree." "Because COVID happened and they shut our business down and I wasn't just going to roll over and go, oh, okay." "If you worked for the government, you were going to get your salary and you were going to sit in your garden." "Cash is freedom. And that's rebellion." "The more that you endeavour...the more that you sweat...the more you find your path." "When you apply comedy, you can say stuff you couldn't otherwise say." VALUABLE RESOURCES https://robmoore.com/ bit.ly/Robsupporter   https://robmoore.com/podbooks  rob.team Episode Sponsor - AG1 Claim your exclusive offer of AG1 at the link below drinkag1.com/disruptors ABOUT THE HOST Rob Moore is an author of 9 business books, 5 UK bestsellers, holds 3 world records for public speaking, entrepreneur, property investor, and property educator. Author of the global bestseller “Life Leverage” Host of UK's No.1 business podcast “The Disruptive Entrepreneur” “If you don't risk anything, you risk everything”   CONTACT METHOD Rob's official website: https://robmoore.com/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robmooreprogressive/?ref=br_rs LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/robmoore1979   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.disruptive, disruptors, entreprenuer, business, social media, marketing, money, growth, scale, scale up, risk, property: http://www.robmoore.com

When a virus is new, especially a global pandemic virus, it's hard to know what to expect when it comes to longer term effects and symptoms. The only way to know is to experience it, and we're three years in, so more and more folks are reporting a variety of symptoms and aftereffects. Experts know now that long haul Covid is not a single illness, but it's an umbrella term. Are you someone who has tested positive for Covid, or maybe you had all the symptoms that indicated you had Covid? How are you feeling post-virus? Because Covid is an inflammatory disease and condition that hits the respiratory system and the mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, and eyes, we want to share with you today how to reduce inflammation in your body, understand the phases your body goes through when catching a virus, and how to create an anti-inflammatory eating plan to be your best prevention plan going forward!

When a virus is new, especially a global pandemic virus, it's hard to know what to expect when it comes to longer term effects and symptoms. The only way to know is to experience it, and we're three years in, so more and more folks are reporting a variety of symptoms and aftereffects. Experts know now that long haul Covid is not a single illness, but it's an umbrella term. Are you someone who has tested positive for Covid, or maybe you had all the symptoms that indicated you had Covid? How are you feeling post-virus? Because Covid is an inflammatory disease and condition that hits the respiratory system and the mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, and eyes, we want to share with you today how to reduce inflammation in your body, understand the phases your body goes through when catching a virus, and how to create an anti-inflammatory eating plan to be your best prevention plan going forward!

Joe and Carla are from Long Island, NY, where they took the train into the city at the very beginning of their journey. During their commute, they discovered the Growing Your Firm Podcast, taking in as much information as possible. They started Cycle CPA at one of the most challenging times any of us have faced, Q4 of 2019 as it led into the testing time of 2020. Thankfully, due to Carla's previous professional experience, they landed in the right niche. Because COVID-19 created much demand for home improvement projects and investments in people's homes, this allowed for their business in the green industry to thrive and grow, both figuratively and literally.

Twas two nights before Crhristmas, a time to get lit and Craig was wondering 'Where is Britt?' When what to his wonderous eyes should appear It was Sinch himself! Holding an open pumpkin beer. 'I've come to talk football, I have to admit.... Because COVID has claimed your poor partner Britt' So talk football we did and even Mallrats While drank fancy beers but not a Labatts So join us for playoffs, fun and cheer. While the crew wishes you Happy Holidays and a Great New Year! PS - Britt will be back when his vocie returns. Happy holidays everyone  

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan:Section 8 of the Charter provides that everyone has the right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure. A search conducted by the police, without prior judicial authorization, is presumptively unreasonable. One of the exceptions to this principle is that police are permitted to conduct searches incidental to a lawful arrest. If a police officer has reasonable grounds to believe that someone has committed a criminal offence, they are permitted to arrest them. When arresting someone, a police officer is permitted to search them, and the areas surrounding the person being arrested for safety, means of escape, and evidence of the offence for which the person is being arrested. In a case discussed on the show, the Supreme Court of Canada considered if the police have the authority to search a person's home, beyond the immediate surroundings, when arresting someone. The Supreme Court of Canada concluded that, when arresting someone in their home, they are only permitted to conduct a search, beyond the area immediately surrounding the person being arrested, they must have reasonable grounds to suspect that there is a safety risk that would be addressed by the search and the search, for safety purposes, must be conducted in a reasonable manner, given the high privacy interest in a home. Also, on the show, a proposed class action against the University of Victoria for failing to refund the cost of parking passes when in-person classes were suspended because of COVID. One of the claims being made by the student who made the claim was that the contract for the parking pass was “frustrated” because of COVID and the university stopping in-person classes. For a contract to be frustrated, in a legal sense, there are two requirements: 1.A qualifying supervening event for which the contract makes no provision, is unforeseen and is not the fault of either party, which2.Causes a radical change in the nature of a fundamental contractual obligation.Because the 12-month parking pass contract provided that it could be cancelled, for any reason, within the first 4 months, for a pro-rated refund, the judge hearing the case found that provision had been made for intervening events of any kind. In addition, the judge concluded that the parking pass contract provided only for parking and did not include an implied term that the university would be open for classes. The student was still permitted to park at the university, even if there would be no reason to do so. As a result, the judge dismissed the claim and ordered the student making the claim to pay costs to the university. Finally, on the show, a judge dismissed an application for an interim injunction to permit mink ranching to resume in BC. Because COVID passes easily to and from mink and humans, the province of BC has prohibited their ranching. This easy transmission has the potential to facilitate mutations in the virus. Despite the potentially irrepealable harm to mink farmers, the judge concluded that deference was required to the government's efforts to promote the public interest. Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed. 

Because COVID-19 can create a status of systemic inflammation, which can affect multiple organs, including the kidneys, the adjuvant therapy of blood purification has gained some recognition. Host Pamela Peeke is joined by Javier Neyra to discuss clinical cases and the use of extracorporeal blood purification in COVID-19 patients.

Because Covid is still disrupting ordinary life and our church gatherings in some ways, Caro created some short videos to communicate all kinds of church info for 2022 so that everybody could view or listen to it. This episode is the audio taken from those videos.

This is a GenteCare Health Alert from HealthCare Untold about the COVID-19 virus Omicron that is spreading quickly through our families and our communities. Many of us are getting sick with flu like symptoms. The symptoms of Omicron that makes it different it from the flu are: **The loss of smell and taste, which you will not find with the flu. **High fever and sometimes severe headaches, which is being reporting by those infected with Omicron. If you do have those symptoms, it's much more concerning that you may have gotten COVID than the flu. Because Covid testing is now taking more days to get your results, it's important to take better care of yourself for your family and your community If you can't find n95 or kn95 mask wear two masks even if you are vaccinated. Wear a disposable mask and a cloth mask. This virus is staying longer in the air and can get through a single cloth mask. It's also really important get your Covid 19 vaccines. The data shows that those without vaccines are the vast majority in our hospitals. Our Elders are also at high risk for hospitalizations, so wear your masks for the elders around us. If you are NOT vaccinated, then double mask to protect yourself and others around you. Don't be afraid to tell people you you are sick that's the responsible thing to do, so they can take extra care of themselves Help Stop the spread of Omicron! This is a GenteCare Health Alert from HealthCare UnTold.#cdc.gov#chhs.ca.gov#latinocovid.org#healthcareuntold#gentecare

This week on Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan:The approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 5 – 11 has resulted in family law disputes between separated parents who disagree about getting their children vaccinated. A number of these cases have now been litigated, across Canada, and the consistent outcome has been for court orders permitting the children to be vaccinated, despite the objection of one parent. On the show, one of these cases is discussed which involved two children, aged 10 and 12. The mother of the children wished to have the children vaccinated, while the father objected based on information he had gathered from the internet. The father had been providing age-inappropriate information he had collected from the internet to the children to persuade them that the COVID-10 vaccine was not safe.  Because judicial decisions require a reasoned analysis, and explanation for how a decision has been reached, these cases afford an objective assessment of evidence concerning the safety and efficiency of COVID-19 vaccines for children. Legal disputes of this kind are determined based on an assessment of what's in the best interest of the children. This judge in the case discussed ordered that the mother was free to get the children vaccinated, despite the objections of the father. The father was ordered to stop providing the children with the material he was collecting on the internet claiming that the vaccine was unsafe. Also on the show, provisions of the BC Emergency Program Act and the COVID-19 Related Measures Act, that limit liability for spreading COVID-19 are discussed. Ordinarily, people and organizations owe a duty of care to avoid acts or omissions that could cause harm to others. The standard of care that a person or organization owes would be assessed based on what a reasonable person would do. If a person or organization fails to act reasonably, they can be liable for damages that result based on their negligence. The BC acts discussed limit liability for acts or omissions related to COVID-19. They exempt the government, and others, from liability for action or inaction related to COVID-19 except in cases of “gross negligence”. Gross negligence is a legal term that has been interpreted by the courts to mean conduct that is a very marked departure from the standard of a reasonable and competent person. The standard of care implied by gross negligence can be modified where the standard of care is very high. In BC the provincial government has made vaccination for government employees mandatory. Those who chose not to be vaccinated for COVID-19 have been placed on unpaid leave and will eventually be terminated if they do not get vaccinated. Despite clear legal authority to require the same of teachers, they were exempted from this requirement, and it was left to the school boards to mandate vaccination. Various school boards have decided not to require teachers and staff who are interacting with young children to get vaccinated. Because COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 5-11 were only made available at the beginning of December, and because an eight-week delay between first and second doses was decided on, almost no children under age 11 in BC have been fully vaccinated. As a result, teachers or school staff who decide to keep working without being vaccinated, as well as school boards and the provincial government, may be liable for the transmission of COVID-19 to school children and their families if their conduct is found to constitute gross negligence. Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases and legislation discussed. 

This is a weird episode. I am trying my best to understand what has happened to Christmas and why men would want to play in women's sports. Maybe you can help me out. Covid has bashed Christmas in the head with a shovel and transgender men are ruining women's sports. Are we ever going to get back to a normal that you and I can recognize? I doubt it. Because Covid is not going away. Control with fear is the battle cry of the Dark Side.

COVID has been sweeping the globe for almost two years now, and social media has exponentially heightened our awareness of this deadly virus. However, the media and medical attention that the virus has received often overshadows other life-threatening viruses. Over the past five years, obesity, specifically in the United States, has reached alarming new heights, but has obtained far less media and medical attention than COVID-19. On today's episode, co-hosts Vince and Erica shed light on the effects obesity has on society and what steps we need to take to beat obesity and other viruses that have not been prioritized due to the pandemic.   Vince addresses the detrimental effects of COVID-19 on the world's obese population from his background in functional medicine. Seventy eight percent of the individuals who have died COVID-related deaths over the past two years were obese. Vince explains that the only way to effectively reduce obesity rates is through the creation of a free, worldwide health services and education initiative. Erica shares her experience with getting COVID and how it triggered another virus she assumed was at bay: the Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). Because COVID was able to penetrate her immune system and stir up other viruses hibernating in her body, Erica is still dealing with the repercussions of EBV over a year after getting COVID-19. Erica explains that COVID feeds on preexisting health conditions such as other viruses, poor health, and obesity.  Tune into this week's episode of the E3 Podcast to learn more about the effects of obesity on our nation's health. Learn about how COVID-19 targets your body's weaknesses, what happens to your body when you become obese and how to clean up your diet in a healthy way.  Today's food for thought from co-host Erica: “It's not a no. It's a not right now.”   Quotes • “It's not a no. It's a not right now.” (0:08:19-0:08:24 | Erica)  • “When you give statistics without context, in a way you are kind of lying.” (0:27:08- 0:27:13 | Vince) • “There are people that have an initial immune response that is very strong, and there are people who have a secondary immune response that are very strong, and both have problems.” (0:38:54-0:39:06 | Vince)  • “So I had COVID, didn't know it, and then I was fine. And then all of a sudden, my EBV symptoms started to flare up.” (0:48:33-0:48:37 | Erica)  • “You know, these things are crucial, because if you reduce that inflammatory load, you improve immune function.” (1:00:34-1:0045 | Vince)    Links Follow Erica on IG: https://instagram.com/ericafitlove?utm_medium=copy_link Follow Vince on IG: 
https://instagram.com/vince_pitstick?utm_medium=copy_link Learn more about the E3 Podcast: 
https://instagram.com/e3_podcast?utm_medium=copy_link Check out our YouTube channel: 
https://youtu.be/BtZjWT9VYv8

Get the full show notes here.Theme for the dayPaying Your Writerly DuesAgendaSCWA Upcoming events and goings-onHow have those book promotional events gone?What to know about “paying your dues”Even some super famous authors sat alone in a bookstoreMy mom joined me at M Judson Books in Greenville back on September 12th. Four people bought books, two bought shot glasses and one got a wine glass, too. Then last week's library event, two publishers of an online magazine and the librarian attended. I sold six books, a wine glass and a shot glass. At the neighborhood event my friends threw, two people came by and bought four books. Then I signed another half dozen that had been purchased by people who couldn't attend.So, overall, three events sold 20 books. Because COVID shut down my After December promotional calendar, these events were my first ever.Is it usual to sit, lonely, waiting for people to stop and ask about your work? What are author events? What should you expect? How should you prepare?

Because Covid 19 came with restrictions, lockdowns and border closures,  plans for my Cross Canada tour was not a possibility. Instead of taking on the huge disappointment as a cancellation, I saw it as an opportunity to adjust my plans.Instead of cross Canada, I opted to fully tour Ontario - a province I had lived in my whole life but never fully explored...till summer 2021.Instead of being a speaking and book signing tour, it became a friendship tour as I visited friends I hadn't seen in a very long time. Instead of being about delivering my message of doing what you can while you can for as long as you can, I lived it fully every day.Act I became my practice tour. Act II will be planning for the cross Canada tour of 2022 and Act III will be the execution.Listen in as I share how Act I set the stage for the rest of the play - Don't Die Before You're Dead.

Russell goes on a deep dive, explaining all the fun things that went on behind the scenes of the first day of this year's Funnel Hacking Live event! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. It's been a little while since I've talked to you personally. That's not completely true. You guys have been listening to some of the Traffic Secrets episodes over the last few weeks, but right now I'm recording this episode about two weeks after Funnel Hacking Live 2021 is over. And I wanted to share some of the thoughts, some of the behind the scenes, some of the craziness and chaos that happened, and how we pulled off the biggest events since the coronavirus has hit inside of our industry. So with that said, I'll queue up the theme song. When I get back, we'll hang out and talk about the event. All right. So first off for those who came to Funnel Hacking Live that was so much fun. Thank you for coming, for participating, for playing all out. Folks who weren't able to come, but watched from home, thank you as well for participating. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was really cool. This is our first year ever doing a hybrid where we were going to have people in person and at home. And honestly, I've never told anybody this, but about 30 days before Funnel Hacking Live actually happened, we had to make the decision if it was going to happen. And it's one of those weird meetings where it's like, "Do we do this? Or do we not?" Because COVID numbers are spiking and all sorts of like just the chaos and just all the things that were happening. And we had to basically put down a down payment on Hogwarts because yes, we rented Hogwarts for the inner circle and two comma club winners. And so that was like the drop dead. We have to write a check right now for, I don't know how much it was, quarter million dollars or whatever it was for Hogwarts. "Are we do this or not because there's no way to get this money back if we decide to not do Funnel Hacking Live," and I was like, "Wait, we may not be doing Funnel Hacking Live?" And they're like, "Well, this is the last shot to change it." I'm like, "Ah." So there's all the fear behind that. So finally, I was like, "All right, we're doing it. Put the money down. This is happening." As we got closer to the event, one of my kids got COVID at school and we're like, "Oh no," because I was like, "I don't really care. I'm not too nervous about getting COVID." Other than if I get COVID during the event, like that would be tragic, right? Like everyone's coming to hear me talk about funnels and stuff. And if I'm not there, I can't speak. Or are people can get on stage and get their pictures with me or all the different things. Give their awards on stage and it could have ruined the whole event for so many people who'd put it in life savings for some people to come and travel here and to be part of this thing. I got really, really nervous and so I started doing everything you can dream of to protect myself and my health. I was taking every pill and powder you can dream of. I had my natural path coming and doing I.V. drips throughout the day, so I'm working while I've got bags of stuff, hooked to all my veins and all the chaos to try to make sure that we could stay healthy for the event. We also normally fly commercial there, but I was like, "Anything I can do to minimize my exposure until the event happens the better." So we flew private out there and we got to FHL and we got their day earlier than I normally do, which was actually really nice. A chance to get to see everything and watch things get set up. You could tell there was something about year that was just different. The energy in the hallways. And you saw people was just, you could tell people missed being around each other and missed networking and all that kind of stuff. And so everything started building up towards that. And I remember the night before, so we did our big party at Hogwarts. We took the inner circle members and two comma cup winners and two comma club X-ers and all of our high-end coaching people to Hogwarts and we rented the whole thing out, which was crazy. So we got to be hanging out in Diagon Alley, and ride a Gringotts ride, and then get butter beer and just hang out and network. It was really a really cool special time for, I think everybody. But for me, I had to like leave a little early cause I was like, "I'm still not done with my slides," as Russell normally does. In fact, we brought our two twins. One of them was just like, "Dad, you're still not done with your slides" like this is crazy." I'm like, "I know I just- there's so many of them to do." Anyways, went back home that night and got everything ready. The next day was Funnel Hacking Live day. Those who haven't been to our event before, we don't start till like noon on day one, which gives us the morning to keep getting people registered and just gives me the morning to kind of prepare and make sure that I'm ready. It's scary when you start at nine. That means you have to be up by like six, preparing. Day one, we start at noon, which is really, really nice. And this day one was going to be interesting for a lot of reasons. Number one, it was the first time we had a virtual audience at home plus our normal people in the audience. And so there's kind of that dynamic that we had to kind of figure out at first, but also this year was our Click Funnel seven year birthday. And so I got up of very beginning and talked about entrepreneurship. Excuse me, I have a cough right now. I'm kind of recovering from, from Funnel Hacking Live, honestly. Anyway, and so I did my initial presentation and then I brought Todd out because we had something that we've been secretive and kept secret for the last, over a year now, which is, which is crazy that I kept a secret that long. You guys should be so proud of me. I'm not, I'm not very good at keeping secrets, but we announced that we are about to launch Click Funnels 2.0 and people went crazy. We kind of talked about it a little bit and I said, "You guys want to see a video of people who've actually seen Click Funnels 2.0?" and everyone went crazy as we watched this reveal video of just everybody watching it and freaking out. And it ended. And I was like, "Who here wants to see Click Funnels 2.0?" And they all went crazy and I was like, "Cool, tomorrow's our birthday. And tomorrow we're going to show you all inside everything." And it just like got quietly, just dead, quiet, awkwardly, quiet. I was like, "Oh crap, what do we, what do we do now?" And then I didn't know how to transition. That's when Todd is going to transition off stage and I was going to start the keynote presentation that I was going to give. It was just this weird thing. And I was like, "Okay, well, thanks, Todd." He kind of walks off. I totally messed that part up. And then I turned around and looked the audience and they were all just like, "You're really not going to show it to us right now?" I was like, "No, if I went to my first presentation," excuse me, which was one I was really excited for, it's called advanced funnel audibles. But because of the weird energy, I feel like the energy kind of dropped with my not giving them any info on 2.0 and do that next presentation. And it was the more advanced one. And I was so excited for that one, but I didn't feel like that one nailed it. I don't know when you're on stage. You can, you can feel like which one's like, "This crushed it," and which one's kind of you're like, "That didn't quite go perfect." And so I did the presentation. I think again, it was great, but it just didn't land. The energy wasn't what I wanted when I was sharing that. I wanted that to be my kickoff. So that was kind of one of those things where it's like, I think people understood what I was talking about. Blown away, but the energy just kind of wasn't... Anyway, this is me re-second guessing everything. I want to go back and redo day number one. But after that, then Anthony Trucks came and spoke on identity shifts and he was amazing. I've known him for quite a few years, but it's the first time I'd ever seen him speak in person and he just brought the level of energy and excitement that he brought was amazing. And just talking about his life and how many times he had these identity shifts in his life and how it affected everything and how to actually be able to take your identity and consciously change it, to be able to get the outcome that you're looking for in life. It was really, really cool. So Anthony spoke. After that Kaylin Poland came and spoke, which is exciting, because I wanted her to show how a lot of times people aren't in our industry, in our Click Funnels world, they think, "Oh, why sell physical products?" Or "I sell info products." Or they have a thing that they do. And I was trying to have Caitlin show that, no, you have a customer and you serve that customer. Right? And you do it through all means possible. You can sell them information, or physical products, or supplements, or coaching, or clothing, or whatever, your job is to serve those people. And that's the focal point. So she showed how they'd done that, Lady Boss, and how they've grown this huge company because of it. And that was really, really cool. After that, then we brought Stu McLaren on stage and we were able to give him a check for him and his wife's charity called Village Impact. And that's the group that I go to Kenya with every... Man, almost every year seems like. We're going in March, I believe, as long as it doesn't get canceled. But when we first launched Click Funnels, we set up where every time somebody builds a funnel, we donate a dollar towards the Village Impact and so this year's check was crazy. It's over $200,000, which was so cool and it's going to help so many amazing kids over in Africa. That was really fun. And then we also had a chance to launch a new site we'd built for Operation Underground Railroad called the Save a Child Challenge. And so we launched that at Funnel Hacking Live, which was really, really cool as well. And that was kind of everything before dinner. And then we fed everyone dinner there, because we wanted to keep people close around. And then that night we did workshops. Typically, if you've been to Funnel Hacking Live, in the past we do these round tables and everyone has a chance to be around the round tables, but because of COVID restrictions and stuff, we thought it'd be better to just do breakout rooms kind of. We had four breakout rooms. Jim Edwards went and talked about copywriting and he helped everybody actually build out their customer avatar, which is really cool because it's the foundation of all copy where most people never even do that. So he got them to actually build that out, which was really, really cool. Catherine Jones was back this year again, and she talked about funnels and building funnels and she did an amazing job as well. Rachel Miller came and talked about free traffic, which was really cool. And then Myron Golden talked about sales. And so those four people run these hour long workout workshop rooms. And while I was sitting there, I was supposed to be doing this other presentation that I was really excited for, but I was still kind of bummed about my my earlier presentation. I was like, "I don't want to give this. I just want to go home. I'm so tired. I want to go to bed. It's been such a long, stressful day," and all of a sudden people started filling back in the rooms and I'm like, "Oh man, I got to do this." And so I got on stage and I did my second presentation for the day, which was called Virtual Real Estate Secrets. And for whatever reason, I never know which ones are going to hit or not hit. But for whatever reason, the energy during that presentation nailed it. People were excited, they were on fire. They were just excited about the possibilities. What I was showing them was, I've talked about before on this podcast, but sometimes we talk about trying to build this huge empire. We're going to have tons of followers and fans and all these kind of things, but the reality is there's other ways to make money online too. And I talked about how in real estate you can buy a house and you can flip it. You can buy it and you can rehab it. You can buy it and you can put renters in it. There's all these things you do with real estate and I'm like, you can do the same things with virtual real estate, these little websites, these little funnels. And so I had like probably a dozen examples of little businesses that I've built that are just kind of running on autopilot, my little virtual real estate empire. And I kind of showed those things. And anyway, I think it was really cool because I think a lot of people, it opened their mind like, "Oh my gosh, I could do that. I could do that." And I started helping them just have ideas, of ways that they could get started easily without having to stress about, "What's my message going to be and who are my people," and all the things I think a lot of people get nervous about. So it's like, "Well, don't worry about that right now. Let's just make some small businesses. Make a business cash flows you a hundred bucks or 500 bucks or a thousand bucks." These are really easy to do when you understand the basics, so that was really fun one. And that wrapped up day number one, which was really cool. So anyway, I'm going to do a couple episodes, kind of talking about some of the core things that we did in this event. Throughout I'll also talk about the things we do during the event to help stimulate sales later in the event. Because you guys come to me, you want to learn marketing. So how do we use Funnel Hacking Live? How did we, did we use it to generate well over $10 million from the event? And so I'll talk about some of those things, but it all started on day number one. Day number one, the goal is to blow their minds, get them where like, "Man, if this is all I got this was still worth it." That's the first thing we want people thinking. And then also is helping them understand that there's a vision bigger than you. So you've ever noticed that Funnel Hacking Live day number one, we always have some kind of charity component where they're watching me give money to charity. And then also we're asking them to give money to charity because it helps train people on how does the room work if you're going to give somebody money, where do you go? Like where's the back of the room, where's the table? But also it shows that me and Todd, who are the ones who run this company, run the event like that. That we don't just say this stuff. We practice what we preach. We're donating money. We're giving money. In fact, you'll notice, we'll talk about this later, but on day four, whatever money people give to the Save a Child Challenge, we matched it. We're trying to show that like, "Hey, we also are doing these things too. I'm not asking you to anything that we're not willing to do as well." And so it all kind of starts with that day number one is blowing their minds, making them see that you're doing the same things you're asking them to do and just giving them a really good experience. And that's kind of how the very beginning of Funnel Hacking Live went this year, 2021. So those who were there, if you enjoyed it, please, take a picture of this podcast episode and tag me in it and let me know what your biggest favorite thing was from day number one, there's so many cool speakers, so many cool things. For me, my favorite thing I think was my last presentation, when I did the virtual real estate presentation, I can just feel the energy was perfect. And everyone was so excited. That and also the Initial Launch 2.0. I did the whole teasing thing and everyone's energy dropped. It was still cool to be able to finally talk about this thing that we've been talking about for so long. We were so excited to share with the world. So anyway, there's day number one at Funnel Hacking Live.

People want to get their lives back to normal, or at least a healthier new normal. Gareth Lewis, Portable Air Purifier Product Manager at Field Controls, LLC, shared how the right air purification system can help. Field Controls, a US-based manufacturer and specializer in air-treatment technologies and products and solutions for almost 100 years, offers solutions to commercial and residential markets. Lewis, a recent addition to Field Controls, said it was an interesting time to enter the world of air purification. “I took for granted before I joined (Field Controls) and never really thought about indoor air quality, but what COVID has done to us is highlighted the importance of indoor air quality,” Lewis said. And while there are plenty of guidelines from reputable players such as the CDC, EPA, and ASHRAE, making sense of all these regulations and best practices can get confusing. So, Lewis wanted to help boil these guidelines down to help people understand air cleaning technologies and what to look for to prepare better and get back to normal. Because COVID-19 transmits through aerosol particles, it is critical to address indoor air quality as the best line of defense against the virus. “When we're talking about the layers of air treatment controlling the source, increasing ventilation, and using air cleaners,” Lewis said are the tried-and-true methods people need to employ.And since it is not always possible to remove the source of the air contamination, a good ventilation strategy is the following best line of defense. “Bring in as much fresh air into the buildings and homes as possible through windows and doors and ventilation,” Lewis said. The ventilation system is a critical component because it does not always weather appropriate to open doors and windows.

People want to get their lives back to normal, or at least a healthier new normal. Gareth Lewis, Portable Air Purifier Product Manager at Field Controls, LLC, shared how the right air purification system can help. Field Controls, a US-based manufacturer and specializer in air-treatment technologies and products and solutions for almost 100 years, offers solutions to commercial and residential markets. Lewis, a recent addition to Field Controls, said it was an interesting time to enter the world of air purification. “I took for granted before I joined (Field Controls) and never really thought about indoor air quality, but what COVID has done to us is highlighted the importance of indoor air quality,” Lewis said. And while there are plenty of guidelines from reputable players such as the CDC, EPA, and ASHRAE, making sense of all these regulations and best practices can get confusing. So, Lewis wanted to help boil these guidelines down to help people understand air cleaning technologies and what to look for to prepare better and get back to normal. Because COVID-19 transmits through aerosol particles, it is critical to address indoor air quality as the best line of defense against the virus. “When we're talking about the layers of air treatment controlling the source, increasing ventilation, and using air cleaners,” Lewis said are the tried-and-true methods people need to employ.And since it is not always possible to remove the source of the air contamination, a good ventilation strategy is the following best line of defense. “Bring in as much fresh air into the buildings and homes as possible through windows and doors and ventilation,” Lewis said. The ventilation system is a critical component because it does not always weather appropriate to open doors and windows.

Approximately half of Australia's population is currently in a lockdown, and this may continue for another few months until vaccine target levels are reached. I wanted to discuss what impact this may have on the property market and the broader economy.Of course, there are wide ranging impactsThe impact of Covid lockdowns can be wide-ranging. Dealing with the challenges of home schooling, not seeing family, not enjoying your normal pastimes, business failures, job losses, mental health challenges and so on. Of course, we all have a tremendous amount of empathy for the various ways that lockdowns are negatively impacting people's lives. That said, the aim of this blog is to focus purely on economic impacts only.What we learnt from previous lockdownsThe lockdowns in Australia during 2020 and around the world taught us some valuable lessons, as there were some common themes, namely:§ Low-income earners tend to be impacted to a much greater extent. In fact, it is not uncommon for higher income earners to avoid any negative financial impacts from being in lockdown, because as they can work from home, they retain their employment and income.§ Because people cannot undertake their normal (non-lockdown) activities, we observe two economic trends. Firstly, people save more money (i.e. the savings rate spikes), which improves their financial position. Secondly, people tend to spend more on durable goods – although this trend will probably diminish at some point – how many new appliances do we really need!§ Whilst an increase in business failures hasn't yet been reflected in insolvency statistics, it stands to reason that each successive lockdown (Melbourne's onto its 6th) puts an increasing amount of pressure on some businesses, as their financial resources deplete. Anecdotally, unfortunately I have observed a greater number of business closures in the Melbourne CBD over the past couple of months.§ Overall economic demand does tend to bounce back strongly and quickly. At a macro level, demand for spending by higher income earners tends to more than compensate for lower levels of demand by income earners.But we don't have JobKeeper anymore?The federal government's Covid-19 Disaster Payment provides an income of $750 per week to those that have lost 20 hours or more of work during a lockdown. The highest JobKeeper payment during 2020 was $1,500 per fortnight, so this is on par.However, according to Deloitte Access Economics, only about 2 million Australian's were accessing this Disaster Payment in August 2021, compared to 6 million that accessed JobKeeper in March 2020. That means less money from government assistance is being pumped into the Australian economy. That said, the JobKeeper program was widely criticised for its untargeted nature e.g. some large businesses claimed JobKeeper and subsequently declared record profits and dividends (e.g. Harvey Norman). As such, perhaps this Disaster Payment package is more efficient and still just as effective. Regardless, the Australian federal government will rack up more than $1 trillion of debt from supporting the economy through Covid, so it isn't going to stop now. I expect the federal government will provide more support should it be needed.Apartment rental incomes will be under pressureRenting an apartment tends to be more affordable than renting a house. As such, apartments are tenanted by a higher proportion of lower income earners. Whilst the federal government's Disaster Payment package will hopefully avoid or minimise financial hardship, it is possible that some residential tenants will seek rent relief (in the form of a waiver of deferral) from landlords.Because Covid has adversely impacted lower income earners to a much greater extent, it is likely that apartment rental income growth will be relatively stagnant over the next one to two years.Vendors are likely to remain cautious about sellingAccording to the REA Group, property listings dropped by over 10% nationally in July, with Melbourne and Sydney experiencing much larger falls. One-on-one property inspections can still be conducted in Sydney, but not in Melbourne. Live auctions have been banned in both cities. As such, almost half of the auctions that were scheduled to occur over the past week in Melbourne were withdrawn.The fact is that vendor confidence is weak. Of course, most people are reluctant to begin a sales campaign in the middle of a lockdown, as sales activities are severly restricted. However, even when we emerge out of these lockdowns, most vendors worry about their sales campaign being interrupted by yet another lockdown.As such, I don't expect the property market (particularly supply of property listings) to normalise until the risk of lockdowns evaporates, which might not be until next year.Central banks and commodity pricesOne of the challenges with controlling the federal budget deficit will be the impact of the falling price of iron ore. Between the start of December 2020 and mid-May 2021, the price of iron ore rose by 80% from $US125 to $US215 per tonne. This boosted government revenue through mining royalties and company income tax receipts. However, iron ore prices have been falling since the start of August. It is now trading at $US160 per tonne. If this trend persists, it is not good news for the government budget.At the start of this month, the RBA announced that it would reduce its bond buying program from $5 billion per week to $4 billion in September, as it tappers off its quantitative easing (EQ). However, given the huge cost of lockdowns to states and the federal government, most commentators expect it will delay any tapering. Similarly, commentators expect the US Federal Reserve to postpone any planned tapering of its QE program due to rising delta cases in the US. It seems more central bank support might be needed.Interstate migration away from Melbourne and Sydney will almost certainly riseI shared this interstate migration chart a few weeks ago. It is noteworthy that interstate migration has been negative in NSW for quite some time. And Victorian interstate migration is trending downwards to the point that it is now negative (a net loss of 4,900 people in the March 2021 quarter compared to a net gain of 490 people in the March 2020 quarter).I think this trend will continue in that an increasing amount of people will migrate away from Melbourne and Sydney and move to Queensland. Perhaps Melbourne will fare the worst because its lockdowns have been more draconian and therefore likely to have had a more severe social and economic impact.It is important to note that negative interstate migration may reduce demand for property in Melbourne and Sydney at a macro level. However, it is unlikely to have a material impact in investment-grade locations. The reason why is that these locations tend to benefit from multifaceted demand. Therefore, even if one demand factor temporality subsides, it is very likely that overall demand will still exceed supply, thereby resulting in price appreciation.My conclusionI predict that the investment-grade property market will be largely unaffected by the prolonged lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney. Of course, the practicalities of selling means that transaction numbers will continue to be below trend, whilst restrictions are in place. But once restrictions are lifted and the risk of further lockdowns disappears, I believe demand for property will quickly return to normal. Supply (i.e. properties for sale) is not likely to recover until 2022.However, non-investment-grade locations that are predominantly occupied by lower income earners may not fair as well.Regarding the economic recovery, at a macroeconomic level, I think the economy will bounce back relatively quickly, like it did in 2020. However, unfortunately, some sectors will now take a lot longer to recover (i.e. years, not months) such as hospitality, retail (particularly in the CBD) and tourism.

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/D7CvDS1Iwb8   Let's talk about vaccines and the CoVid vaccines in particular.  Way too many Americans are rejecting CoVid vaccination, and we are already seeing the terrible impact of their vaccination hesitancy.  Cases are rising in states and regions where vaccination percentages are low, the hospitals are filling up again.  Their availabilities of ICU, ventilator, and extreme life-saving therapy that is ECMO, are again becoming inadequate given the numbers of those with severe CoVid.   So why do people resist vaccination?  The vaccines were developed too quickly with never before used technology.  There is no long-term safety data on the vaccines.  They could develop a severe side effects.  At best, the vaccines are only 95% effective.  Many, particularly younger Americans,  feel they are basically healthy and don't need vaccination.   Here are the facts about vaccines.  First…they do work and they are safe.  Before release for general use, each vaccine was subjected to 3 phases of testing for effectiveness and safety.  The mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer are 95% effective and very, very safe.   Now that we have billions of shots in arms around the world, we know that CoVid vaccines definitely work against all CoVid variants and save lives.  CoVid in general and the deadly, rapidly infectious delta variant is spreading like wildfire only in those areas where a majority aren't vaccinated.     The flip side of the coin:  those fully vaccinated rarely get CoVid or silently spread CoVid.  The vaccinated that do get it have extremely mild cases, and it is rare for the vaccinated to end up in the hospital let alone in the ICU, on a ventilator, or in a coffin.  I've studied the data, and the vaccines are extremely safe with rare, serious reactions to any of the vaccines.   Because CoVid and especially the Delta variant spreads silently, it is critical that everyone is vaccinated.  If you don't get the vaccine for yourself, get it for your family, for your neighbors, for your country.   https://www.islandpacket.com/news/coronavirus/article251460458.html   #CoVid #vaccines #variants #delta  

Not having lost enough television viewership and related advertising income last year, the NFL is Not having lost enough television viewership and related advertising income last year, the NFL is doubling down in its “Social Justice” messaging for the upcoming 2021-2022 season. There will be even more on-field signs and slogans, a variety of decals on the player's helmets, and a huge series of Public Service announcements in the stadiums. It has become publicly known the Senate Democrats are working to “slip” a total amnesty provision into the “infrastructure package,” which they hope to pass in the Senate through a 51-vote reconciliation process. If they are able to do it, approximately 10 million illegals currently inside the US borders would immediately be eligible for green cards and get onto a path for US citizenship. The critical questions are 1.) will the Senate Parliamentarian permit this, and 2.) if so, will Democrat Senators in “purple” states, especially like Arizona, New Hampshire, and West Virginia, vote for it knowing the majority of voters are opposed to it?While they understand we are living in an intolerant cultural environment where people who are white are not allowed to say the same things black people are, our American Mamas, Teri Netterville and Denise Arthur, wish everyone would bring more common sense to issues at times. Bottom line, this intolerance is getting old, but it hasn't run its course because this is what the extreme socialist-Marxist Democrats want right now.Louis Avallone talks about how Apple is drastically ramping up their cell phone production. Also, the US Customs and Border Protection Office has revealed ICE will start giving illegals cell phones “for tracking purposes”. (Just how well do you think that will work out?) We don't know if the two are connected; but this is NUTS! Did you want to pay for your own cell phones and for those of hundreds of illegals, too?There is a sinister ideology which had taken root inside our governments (Federal, State, and Local) because some of the people who have gotten into positions of power have quite sinister intentions, both in their past behaviors and in their political beliefs and goals. In other words, the Radicals of the past are now running the government! Stephen Parr cites a number of examples, including the San Francisco's DA, Chesa Boudin, and the convicted eco-terrorist and Biden nominee for Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning.Because COVID-19 is so bad in El Salvador, there is a new 90-day ban on people attending sporting events, concerts, rallies, museums, theaters and municipal festivals, even though the El Salvadorian President claims he has managed the COVID-19 illness better in his country than in nearby countries. So….why is the USA not checking for COVID-19 in illegals showing up at the border?Pit Bull is frustrated he is not seeing more support for the protests of the Cuban people. Cuban-Americans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are speaking out, but what about everyone else? What is Cuban-American Jeff Bezos doing? Are the Democrats so committed to turning the United States into a Communist country that they are willing to sacrifice the Cuban people at this point in time? Clearly this should not be “just a Miami, Florida issue”!

Dr. Catherine Athans is a psychiatrist and licensed family therapist. Because COVID-19 for all intents and purposes shut down our world for over a year, many kids missed out on several social events and the chance for emotional development. Dr. Athans gives tips for parents on how they can help their kids continue their emotional and social development, which Dr. Athans explains why that is so crucial in a child's life. She also shares the best way to talk and communicate with kids, why being a parent to your child never really ends, and so much more.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Katherine Eban is an investigative journalist and contributor to Vanity Fair. Her latest article is ”The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19's Origins.””You can't make a correction unless you know why something happened. So imagine—if this is a lab leak—the earth shattering consequences for virology. For the science community, for how research is done, for how research is regulated. Or if it is a zoonotic origin, we have to know how our human incursion into wild spaces could be unleashing these viruses. Because COVID-19 is one thing, but we're going to be looking at COVID-25 and COVID-34. We have to know what caused this.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @KatherineEban katherineeban.com Eban on Longform Eban on Longform Podcast 00:00 Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom (Ecco • 2019) 00:00 "The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19's Origins" (Vanity Fair • Jun 2021) 01:00 Nicholson Baker on Longform Podcast 01:00 "The Lab-Leak Hypothesis" (Nicholson Baker • New York Magazine • Jan 2021) 03:00 "The Plague Fighters: Stopping the Next Pandemic Before It Begins " (Evan Ratliff • Wired • Apr 2007) 12:00 @TheSeeker268 14:00 Eban's Vanity Fair archive 16:00 Eban's Twitter thread 26:00 Alina Chan on Twitter 32:00 "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19" (Peter Daszak and many others • The Lancet • Feb 2020) 34:00 "Origin of Covid — Following the Clues" (Nicholas Wade • Medium • May 2021) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Setting up a large scale car show, and we are talking large scale as in over 700,000 square feet of the NRG Center in Houston, can be a big undertaking.  Along with all of the new vehicle displays, the ride-n-drive setups, there are vendors that need to setup, along with some food and beverages.   Add to this, a classic car section, which most have a few, but in Houston, a few just won't do.The man in charge of finding some worthy classic vehicles, some cool hot rods, and even a few resto-mods, is Ben Miller.  This really sounds like a great job - just go find some hot rods.  But as Ben explains, it ain't that easy to find quality vehicles ... that have not been at the Houston Auto Show before.  Because COVID shortened things, this year, Ben didn't have to find 50, but even at that, he only had 6-months.  Ben explains some of what it takes to get 'this' job done.-----Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast provider for the next episode of In Wheel Time Car Talk six days a week, and check out our live broadcast every Saturday, 8a-11aCT simulcasting on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch and InWheelTime.com.In Wheel Time Car Talk can be heard on you mobile device from providers such as:Apple Podcasts,   Pandora Podcast, Amazon Music Podcast, Spotify,   Google Podcasts,     Stitcher,   iHeart Radio podcast,   TuneIn + Alexa,   Podcast Addict,   Castro,   Castbox and more on your mobile device.-----  ------  ------Want more In Wheel Time in real time? Follow InWheelTime.com for the latest updates!Twitter: https://twitter.com/InWheelTimeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/inwheeltime/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InWheelTime/YouTube:  https://www.YouTube.com/InWheelTimeTags: In Wheel Time automotive car talk show car talk Live car talk show 

Episode Notes In this episode, Margaret talks to Liza Kurtz about disaster studies and elite panic. The guest, Liza Kurtz, is a a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies the impact of disaster on society, specifically how class and other antecedent conditions make people vulnerable to disasters. She is @semihumanist on twitter, and you can email her at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com. The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. Transcript 1:07:41 SPEAKERS Margaret, Liza Kurtz Margaret   Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking with Liza Kurtz, who is a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies essentially the impact—well, the impact of disaster upon society. And we talk about a lot of stuff, we cover a lot of ground in this episode. But primarily, we're talking about the ways in which people do and don't respond to disaster. And basically, are trying to kind of bust the myth of that everyone runs around and, you know, murders each other or whatever. And also we get to talk about elite panic which is the idea that basically the people who are invested in the system are the ones who panic during times of extraordinary crisis. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another podcast on the network. Da daaaaa. Jingle Speaker 1 Kite Line is a weekly 30-minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us.  Jingle Speaker 2 Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words, a note passed hand-to-hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Elicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls.  Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org. Margaret   Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then also just kind of, like, what you do, like, what do—you know, why did I bring you on this show? Liza   Sure thing that sounds great. So my name is Lisa Kurtz. I am a PhD candidate at Arizona State University. I use the pronouns she and her. And my research really focuses on specifically heat and power outages in the southwest. That's what my dissertation will be about. But in general, I am grounded in disaster sociology as a discipline, looking at it from sort of a conflict theory lens, which is a fancy way of saying, I look at class struggle and how antecedent conditions of disaster make people vulnerable to what we perceive as these, like, natural events that cause great harm. Margaret   Okay. What does that mean? That last part.  Liza   Sure, yeah. That's a good question. So basically I think we have a tendency, and certainly there's a tendency in popular culture and in the media to perceive any kind of disaster as—the term you'll hear used in legal circles, and sometimes in the press, is an "act of God," right? Like something no one could have predicted that just happens, that's nobody's fault. And it causes great suffering, but that suffering often isn't really drilled down on to see why did this happen. And so what disaster sociology and disaster studies try to do really is pick that apart and really trouble the implication that these things are just natural and just happen. Because they don't. And so if you look at who suffers most from disasters, if you look at why disasters happen at all, really all they are these natural events make a lens that that focuses and amplifies what's already going on in society. So if you have inequality, you have injustice, disaster brings all of that to the fore. But there's a temptation to think of it as coming out of nowhere, when in reality, we create the conditions that make suffering happen during a disaster. So Katrina is a great example of this. You can say, "Oh, it was, you know, a hundred-year storm, nobody could have predicted a hurricane that large." And there's some element of truth to that, but there's more elements of truth to how we built the city of New Orleans reflects, like, the racial injustice of its history and the poverty that we've allowed to flourish there. And all of that can get hidden behind the idea that this storm just happened. Margaret   Yeah. It's interesting, because one of the things that I focus on when I pay attention to disasters is actually the almost—the inverse consideration as far as it goes, as far as class—not in terms of like, clearly, people who are oppressed in society along numerous axes are far more likely to suffer during disasters. But I guess I like, I put a lot of my energy into thinking about how people come together during disasters. And the main thing that I've been learning slowly and I kind of want to talk to you about is this idea that, like, everyone except the elite come together and, like, work on shit together during disasters. Is that— Liza   Oh, man. Margaret   Is that true? Is that, like—that's my conception, right. Liza   That is certainly. Yeah, that's pretty spot on in a lot of cases. Yeah. And you're right certainly that people who suffer disproportionately during disasters, the folks who are vulnerable, who take the hardest hit, whether that's health or money or property damage, that doesn't make them not incredible at self-organizing and incredible at building community and responding to those events. It just makes—means they take a disproportionate amount of damage. And yeah, you're super right in the sense that we see—so, to really talk about this I'm gonna have to backup, and maybe this isn't that interesting, but I hope it is. I'm not sure if you know anything about the history of disaster studies. Margaret   I do not. Liza   Okay, so a lot of disaster studies came out of World War Two, like, civil defense ideas. The idea that there might be air attacks or even a land invasion of the United States by Axis forces or, right afterward and during the Cold War by Russia. And so there was this—oh, yeah, of course. Like it all goes back to the Cold War if you look hard enough, right.  Margaret   Yeah.  Liza   So there was this enormous interest in what the civilian response would be if something like that happens, and how we can encourage regular civilians to take the stress off of military forces that might be forced to respond by becoming self-reliant. So that's where you see this, like, advertising in glossy magazines about, like, build your own fallout shelter kind of thing. All the stuff that you see in video games now, all that was super real during the Cold War, and before that it was it was air raid shelters during World War Two. And it was really to take the pressure off of military and humanitarian forces who might be forced to respond. The idea was, you didn't want to be part of the problem. And so there was this massive wartime militaristic interest in what civilian populations would do and how we could train them to be self-sufficient. And so part of that was a ton of interest in and research into—that was funded by the military and a lot of cases—into how people would behave if something went really, really wrong. Like, would they panic? Would there be mass chaos? Would they turn on each other? And the perception that still lingers to this day in the media, if you see any bad disaster movies, and they're pretty much all bad—although some of them are bad and fun and some are just bad. If it's got the Rock, I'm there and I don't care. Margaret   Yeah, no, that's just natural. Liza   Yeah, so the perception and the expectation was that civilian populations would panic. That if there was an air raid, or a bombing, or something went wrong, there would be this mass panic. And then, as you get researchers starting to look into this, what they find actually is that people are usually pretty good at self-organizing in response to an immediate crisis. And so even though the perception is still, in the media, that if anything goes wrong it will be immediately a Walking Dead kind of scenario, as one of my interviewees put itrecently—that's not really true. Especially not among, like, middle class and lower class communities that live side-by-side with each other all the time. And we'll go into elite panic a little bit more. So that's where there started to be the seed of dispelling the myth of disaster panic was then. And that research happened in the 70s and the 80s, and the late 60s a little bit. And that has since been borne out by most of the available data, that people are really good at self-rescuing, that the real first responder is your neighbor most of the time or a family member, and that folks are pretty good at making the best of terrible, terrible situations and making life easier for each other. Now, where you see that start to fall apart is in elite panic, which is when affluent communities or communities that tend to be racial enclaves—like all-white suburbs, and things like that—get that fear of the other bite, because their perception is that as soon as anything breaks bad, it's going to be a Walking Dead scenario and everyone is going to come for their stuff. And I don't know what goes on in their head. It seems like a very, like almost a wild west, like, take your wives and children kind of mentality. Yeah. Which is really, I mean, the more you unpack that and really think about it, the more fucked up it gets. Um, and so the elite panic can be super dangerous. Margaret   I mean, on some level, I might be coming for their stuff. Liza   Yeah, well, fair. Yeah, absolutely.  Margaret   Like, I might come for their stuff. I mean, you know, they have too much of it and they're not sharing. I mean, not to tie into their own fears. It's just, you know, the billionaires of this world like... Liza   No, that's real. I've never confirmed this. But there's anecdotal reports in the Balkan Wars of people who stockpiled supplies because they sort of saw things going poorly becoming extreme social pariahs and sometimes even the targets of violence because of their, their hoarding tendencies, stockpiling goods in advance and keeping other people from getting them. So apparently that was like a severe social crime at the time, although I've never confirmed that in the literature. I've just heard that anecdotally. And it's, it's easy to understand why, like, if you're taking it and not sharing, then I can certainly see something similar happening here. I mean, I often tell preppers—when people ask about preppers in my work, I tell them preppers are going to die alone in a bunker full of goods because it's great you have all that stuff, but there isn't much you can really do with it if you don't have the social connections to make social life happen. I think prepping in particular is a particular—a particularly elite and American form of the myth of individualism taken to the most dramatic extreme Margaret   Well it's interesting thoughbecause it—if it comes from this idea of us being asked to self-rescue, us being asked to be resilient, you know—I know maybe it's like I'm always, like, trying to, like, salvage what I can out of prepping because in my mind, yeah, like the the bunker mentality—which I talk shit on, and probably every single episode—because I basically find people who are, like, functionally know a lot about prepping but don't call themselves preppers for a lot of good reasons. The bunker mentality is obviously just going to get you killed, whether it's by disease or, you know, there's like—but, but it's interesting when this idea of like being resilient, being prepared, rather than being like "a prepper" maybe. I don't know. Liza   Yeah, absolutely. And I want to draw the distinction here between what I would probably call if I, in academic speak, like the practice of prepping, which is the knowledge and the goods and knowing how to do basic survival tasks if needed, and sort of the classic American dominant culture of prepping, which is that hyper-masculinized, hyper-muscular Christianity, like, it's just going to be me and my family and my guns and a bunker full of food kind of thing. So when I talk about prepping in a derogatory way, I definitely mean the culture and not the practice. Yeah, no, I think—I have a really complicated relationship with the idea of resilience because, on one hand, I think resilience can be used to recognize how incredible some communities are at self-organizing and taking care of themselves in the face not just a disaster but of tremendously difficult conditions. Like, it is truly astonishing what people can do to find ways to survive. And here especially we see that a lot. In Phoenix, air conditioning—which is where I am—air conditioning is really not a luxury like it is in many other places. It is 110%, a survival skill or a survival tool because it is not uncommon for summers to be 115 here, which is, if you can't cool off that can be extremely detrimental to health. And so the people who have to live without air conditioning, in my work, have a tremendously creative number of strategies. Now, should they have to use them? No, of course not. They should, they should be able to have access to air conditioning for equity and health reasons. But that doesn't make the things that they do any less creative or impressive in doing so. And what's interesting to me is that sometimes we talk about prepping and the failure of systems or natural hazards can sometimes invert the relationship of who is most—how would I put this—of who is, like, doing the best in the sense that in my work in Phoenix, people who live without air conditioning are far more prepared for blackouts. So they may be more at risk in the everyday scenario as opposed to having air conditioning, but if the city's grid failed, they already have the culture and practice of staying cool without access to air conditioning down in a way that somebody who like me, honestly, who can afford air conditioning and uses it all the time really doesn't. Margaret   Just as a tangent that I'm curious about, what do people do without AC in severe, like, in severe heat. Like what do you recommend to people in power outages in the southwest?  Liza   Oh, boy. Well, yeah, that's a complicated question. But we've been very fortunate here in Phoenix to never have a truly widespread power outage. And so generally when there are smaller scale outages here, it's possible to seek indoor cooled shelter in another part of the city. But my dissertation focuses on asking residents what they would do during a three day power outage where the entire metro area does not have power. And I think I definitely ruined some people's days asking them that because it's one of those things that's uncomfortable to consider, for sure. But people who don't have power really talk about very, very smart ways. And what's especially interesting is they tap into knowledge that was present prior to the city having electricity. So these really old practices of things like hanging wet blankets over doorways so that your humidifying the air that comes into your house for greater evapotranspiration is one of them. Fairly straightforward things that most of us might think of, like wearing lighter-colored clothing, or staying out of the sun. But then also some really amazing stuff like knowing, you know, knowing which structures in the town are adobe and were built prior to air conditioning and are designed to stay cool. So if you're in a modern house in Phoenix now when you don't have AC, the temperature inside the house will rise very quickly. But many adobe structures were built prior to air conditioning or even, like, swamp cooling which is another thing we use here which is basically a giant humidifier prior to those being accessible. And so adobe structures will stay cool significantly better than modern buildings. Margaret   Yeah, I like—then you also have the problem how dry it is because, yeah, the thing that immediately strikes me as evaporative cooling, like, I would be like, oh, can you like, you know, I don't know, build, like, water catchment on the roof that holds water on the roof so it evaporates instead of transferring heat or whatever. I don't know. But that's dependent on a very different ecosystem. And also just some bullshit that I made up right now. Liza   I mean, if you think about it, that's how all survival strategies started, right? Like, hey, I wonder if this works? Yeah, no, water is a huge, a huge cooling strategy here. And it's funny because I'm originally from Tennessee, and I literally until I moved here did not know it was possible to buy humidifiers. I'd never seen anything but dehumidifiers. And so when I got here I was like, why would you want to put water in your house? And then my first summer I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah, water is hugely important in everyone's cooling strategies here. And that's another issue with blackouts in particular, because certainly if you go and ask many people who are responsible for critical infrastructure systems, they will tell you that power outages will not cause water treatment and pressure issues. But if you look at the history of citywide blackouts, the United States, there's almost always somebody who is having to cope without household potable water at the time. And so it seems like these systems are not as resilient as we would like in terms of critical infrastructure. And here, if you don't have access to household water, a huge number of your cooling strategy is, like, you know, just slam dunking yourself in a cold bath if you need to—suddenly become less tenable. And that can be really, really a problem. Margaret   Yeah. Let's talk about—I kind of accidentally derailed you or intentionally derailed you while you're talking about elite panic. But I'm really interested in that, because I'm really interested in this idea—like, again, the the working understanding that I've had, just from my my layman's perspective or whatever, is that during disasters, overall, people like essentially self-organize—not in a utopian way inherently, but often in a way that people kind of miss when things go back to normal. But then when everything gets really fucked up seems like when the existing power—the previous power structures attempt to reassert themselves. That's like been my observational understanding of, like, talking to a lot of people involved in disaster relief and things like that. But it seems like that ties into elite panic, this idea that people who are actually invested in the previous power relations, and especially property relations, are maybe the ones who can't handle the idea of everyone suddenly taking care of each other and shit. Liza   Yeah, absolutely. I think that's spot on. And I think you really see this sort of that—well, you might almost call it like a pivot point, or an inflection point where things could turn one way or the other in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. And you really see that reflected in the practice of disaster capitalism. So I think sometimes we overlook—because it seems so inevitable—that disasters have poor outcomes, and they do for many people. Disasters can also be an opportunity to say, "Hey, business, as usual, is what got us to this outcome. How can we do things differently?" Because there's sort of a shock to the system, whether the system is you as a resident or the household or the town or the county or the state, like, they're really, they're a shock point. And so they provide an opportunity to stop and say, like, okay, business as usual—the everyday practice of how we run things—got us here? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And if you really start engaging with how does this not happen again, that means transforming those everyday practices that got you there. So I think you're spot on with that idea that elites and people on the top who have an interest in preserving the status quo see the inflection point and sort of grab it and pull as hard as they can in the other direction. And so it's not just that there's, I think, a desire to go back to the way things were and preserve the power structure and the property relationships and everything else of the place before the disaster happened. In a lot of cases, they're perceived as opportunities, which is extremely messed up and amoral, but it's true that really these things are seen as, here is a great opportunity to restructure things towards a more capitalist, a more stratified, a less just system. And one of the things that I think you can see right now with that is because COVID closed public school systems, which is a good thing, like, kids don't need to be spreading COVID. Like, I'm broadly supportive of the public health need to close school systems. It provided this vacuum for all these alternatives, and these think pieces to crop up, etc. And these companies to start pitching like, well, do we really need public schooling anyway?  Margaret   Oh, shit, uhuh.  Liza   Can this be replaced by a different system that's more private, that's more controlled by capital, that's less interested in the public good, that is more about profit. And that's a classic, classic example of what's called disaster capitalism, where something goes wrong and suddenly it becomes an opportunity for someone somewhere to restructure things so they can make more money. Margaret   Yeah, and that's, I mean, you know, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, all that shit. Like, with COVID now, everyone buys everything online. I buy everything online. I'm terrified of COVID and I work from home. So, you know—and then you're like, I don't know, just watching. society restructure itself to buy everything online. And online is kind of, it—I don't know whether it's naturally or it's designed that way by evil people. But, like, overall, the internet is so good at decentralizing things and yet in terms of, like, commerce, it seems like it's really good at centralizing. It's like really good at having the everything store. You know? Liza   Yeah. And I don't know enough about the architecture of the internet and economics therein to say, like, if that's by design, or just a function of the way it works. But yes, it does seem to be—seems to be so good at creating monopolies in that way. Margaret   When you're talking about adobe houses, you know, and how, okay, the old houses are actually built with adobe or whatever. You know, it just—it really strikes me about how completely arrogant the colonial and industrial system is, in that it's like, well, whatever works in New England is what should work in Arizona. And it's so baffling to me, you know, because it's like, well, there's so obviously, like, a steep pitched roof exists that way to shed snow, you know, and then people were like, "Oh, we'll just put these steep gables everywhere." And like— Liza   Right. Margaret   It's just... I mean, I say that as someone who lives in a a-frame somewhere where there's no snow—well, not no snow, but not much snow. But in my defense, I actually just built it that way because it's the cheapest and most structurally sound way for someone who doesn't know how to build a house to build a house is have fewer walls, more roof. I don't know, it just, it—it depresses me to think about.  Yeah, no.  This the centralizing urge. Go ahead. Oh, I just, I think you're so right. And I think it's, it's—maybe there is something to the idea that accelerated consolidationist capitalism makes everything sort of a bland universalism in much of the way that Amazon is a bland universalism. Because I do think one of the things that we've really lost that is super helpful in the practice of preparing for disaster is local knowledge. Just localization in general is such a huge thing. Whether it's knowing where in your landscape the water is, or knowing what kind of house does best without AC. And certainly here in Phoenix I have been known to just, like, scream a little bit in my car driving around because there is a massive fad for pulling out old, beautiful 50s Ranch homes and putting in—I've heard them referred to as "McModerns." So houses that take up the entire lot, that look, like you say, very much New England-y. They're often two storeys which is dumb in the desert, they have no green buffer around them at all to help cool anything, they're made of, like, the cheapest possible, like, wood and sheet rock and very little insulation, very large windows that face, you know, like east and west, often. And so you just look at these buildings that are literally the worst possible choice for this environment. And they are building them constantly and it really like it is tremendously painful to see in these beautiful neighborhoods that were originally orange groves. And so when people started building houses there, they would leave the orange trees around their houses, and so there was significant shade and food in your front yard, and then they will just rip them all out and replace them with these. And what really gets me—and this is like such a classic example of a thing people think they're doing for a good reason that is actually worse —s many of them have astroturf lawns, which I understand from the perspective of not wanting to use water or like your grass always being green. But you've replaced, like, not that I support suburban lawns, but you've replaced something that is at least a plant, even if it's a monoculture, with plastic. And sure it doesn't use water. But the thing that gets me the most is my colleagues study surface temperature, and astroturf is the worst thing you could put down for heat. Margaret   Yeah. Okay.  Liza   Like, it's worse—you might as well have paved your yard. Margaret   Yeah. Liza   And it's also carcinogenic. And so there's this, like, pseudo-greenwashing that's actually just absolutely the worst thing you could do for everyone involved, all these horrible McModerns that are the worst thing you could build for the desert. And we have—and I think it really all just comes from a desire for, I want to live in a place that looks like every other place. And we've come so far from, like, the localized knowledge of knowing adobe is better and xeriscaping is better and all of that. Margaret   Xeriscaping?. Liza   Oh, sorry, X-E-R-I. Xeriscaping is desert landscaping. So it's the practice of planting your yard in a way that is congruous with, like, the natural environment of the Sonoran Desert that we're in here. Margaret   Yeah, it's this arrogance that I almost can't handle. Because it's, like, if you build your life around, I assume that I will always have a gas line and a power line and, you know, I will always just have as much electricity as I could possibly want. You know, it's like, now that I live somewhere where I generate my own electricity—I mean, a solar panel generates the electricity for me. It, which isn't, you know, carbon neutral, either, you know. But I'm so aware of, like, how incredibly not necessary wasteful AC is, because you kind of need it in a lot of circumstances. It's not a waste. But it's not exactly this, like, low power device. You know? And, I don't know, just the things that we take for granted, it confuses me sometimes. Liza   For sure. And you shouldn't have said solar panel, because in my head it was just you biking furiously on like a bike generator to keep the computer on while we do is so you could have had me there. No, absolutely, I think—yeah, I mean, an AC is one of those things where, I don't know, it's almost like putting a band aid on a bullet wound here a little bit in the sense that I'm not going to argue that centralized air conditioning is the single most effective intervention for saving people from dying from heat, which is a huge problem here. About 500 people in the state died last year from heat-related causes last year, which is not an insignificant number. And actually, extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related hazard. So you know, when you worry about hurricanes or tornadoes or things like that, it's really heat that's the major killer of people. And so I would never say, like, don't have central AC for ecological reasons, because it is a huge and immediate public health intervention that saves lives. But also, it doesn't solve this fundamental problem which is, part of the reason we need AC so badly is we built the city in a really stupid sort of 70s-thinking kind of way, which is there's tons of uncovered pavement, and really tall buildings that, you know, like, the urban heat island here is very, very real, it doesn't cool off overnight. And so the need for AC is great, but the need to think beyond AC and think about how do we look into the future and actually reduce the need for this, like, immediate public health triage of just get in a cool environment so you don't die right away? Margaret   Well, okay, so the the need to fundamentally restructure huge parts of our society seems very apparent and increasingly apparent to more and more people, especially as, you know, climate change barrels down on everyone, even if you were willing to ignore all of the systemic oppression that people face. And I think sometimes—and I know I do this, and I wonder whether—you talk about how capitalists look at disaster as opportunity, and that's a problem. And I'm like, so do revolutionists, and so do people who want society to be fundamentally different. Because you have this, some level of like wiping the slate clean, and there's a certain amount of opportunity to restructure society. And it seems like very often capitalism is better at this than us. But there are also these, like, you know, like watching mutual aid networks pop up all over at least the United States last year in a way that like—and I wouldn't, you know, I don't want COVID to have happened, right? But when people look at that and say, well, we actually need to learn how to take care of each other and build these, like, networks by which to take care of each other. To me, that's the beauty of it. But then it's—now I wonder whether I'm doing the same kind of ambulance chasing that capitalists are. Do I let myself off the hook just because I think what I'm doing is good and what they're doing is bad, right? Like, they think the opposite. But I'm right. Liza   Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think it is—if it's ambulance chasing, you're only chasing the ambulance, to help stop the bleeding as opposed to charge the patient. So I think that there's a fundamental value difference there. And so yeah, no, you're you're absolutely correct in the sense that they're are opportunities, and there are opportunities, whether we want them to be or not, so we might as well seize them. But I think part of the problem is about how—not just in media, but even to each other-how we storytelling around disasters as, like—it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind. Like with COVID, it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind between so many people, particularly people of color and otherwise vulnerable folks have paid this horrible price for our inability to cope with an epidemic. And at the same time, this sort of—and that's, there's nothing good about that, that is massively negative. And at the same time, we are being presented with this opportunity that could allow us to build something better, like these mutual aid networks that you mentioned. But it feels–it's very hard to talk about, in a way that feels respectful and honorable—to say like, this is an opportunity for something better to be born out of the ashes of this enormous tragedy. And so I think it's easy for those conversations to get derailed, one because of how we talk about disasters as, you know, like always negative with the panic and everything like that—the mythology around disasters makes it hard. And then two, the difficulty of respectfully talking about this. But I would certainly argue that if we want especially—and I'll use COVID, as the example here—if we want to honor the people who died unjustly of COVID, there is no better way to do so, than taking this opportunity and seizing it to make a system and a world where that won't happen again. Margaret   Yeah, that's a—that's a good way to put it. And I wonder, you know, it's like, I mean, what we should be trying to do—and what people do try to do is just that the systems of power we're up against are rather good at what they do of maintaining their power—is do this anyway. You know, it's like, there's been mutual aid networks for—well, ever, obviously—just assigning a word to it in the 19th century, or whatever. But, you know, we need to restructure things anyway. And if you were to take Phoenix as an example, it's like—I mean, I kind of, I have to admit, I look at Phoenix as like this just grand arrogance in the desert, that, like, probably shouldn't be there. And I know that that's not fair to the actual individual people who live there, you know. And so I don't want to be like, get rid of Phoenix or whatever, right. But like—but instead it's like, well, probably the slow, hard work of restructuring needs to happen anyway. Like the slow, hard work of figuring out how to rebuild the city in such a way that it isn't just, like, waiting for disaster. I don't know. Liza   Oh, yeah. I think you've touched on something there that I always try and challenge people with when they talk about Phoenix as a grand experiment in inevitable failure—building I think at this point the fifth largest city in the United States—or the fifth largest metro area, actually—in the desert which is—I don't necessarily disagree that that is not an immediately intuitively good idea. But now that it's here, I like to think of Phoenix as the perfect testbed and sandbox because it's the hottest large metro area in the United States. And if we can turn this thing around, and we can make Phoenix in the next 30 years cooler and more livable and more just and more sustainable, than it can be done anywhere. We're the edge case, and so this is the perfect place to find those solutions, and then take the lessons learned and the things that worked and export them to less extreme environments where they might be useful. So in that sense, even a little victory in Phoenix might be a big victory in somewhere else. Margaret   Yeah. Okay. So, to go back to disaster studies, we've talked about how the mainstream, like, certainly the media conception of disaster is, you know, the Walking Dead scenario is the everyone running around, like, you know, everyone for themselves scenario. And—but, but disaster studies, it seems like even though it came from this, you know, kind of shitty background, it seems like—have the people who study disaster academically, have they kind of known this entire time, that's bullshit? And if so, why isn't that getting out? Like, why aren't more people aware of the fact that everything we know about how people respond to disaster is wrong? Liza   That is a great, great question. And I'm not sure I have, like, a perfect answer for you. But I can certainly offer some thoughts. So yes, you're right that disaster studies, even though it came out of this very militarized and military-funded background, really starting with a wonderful scholar named E. L. Quarantelli who was active in the 60s to the 90s really started questioning those views and pushing on this idea of panic and other things like that. And so, disaster studies in general as a field—not all of it, but for a long time—has been very justice-oriented in its approach. So if you've heard the words "social vulnerability," a lot of that is coming out of disaster studies. If you've heard the words, you know—or heard talking about the concept of resilience as applied from the top down being a way of almost victim blaming—which certainly it can be, you know. Like, why aren't you—it's a repackaging sometimes of the idea of like, why aren't you self reliant? Why are you making us help you? Kind of thing. All of that is really coming out of a disaster studies. The problem is, unfortunately, that you almost have two separate silos of disaster studies, because disaster scholars are not the people who respond to disaster. They're not the people preparing for it. They're not the people deciding what mitigates it. Those people are part of what I would broadly call sort of the emergency management class, at least here in the United States, they are. And many of them are emergency managers, but that also includes things like crisis communications and information officers, or Public Information Officers, and fire chiefs and firefighters, and EMS first responders, and in many cases public health officials as well. And that is a professional class that has existed for a long time—and this is slowly starting to change—that has really stayed rooted in that military idea. So it's not directly connected to the military, although sometimes it is. But it's a militarized service. It's very about hierarchy—so I was a firefighter, I was a volunteer firefighter in Tennessee for about two years. So you have a commanding officer, you know, it's structured like the military, basically. In a lot of cases it works very closely with law enforcement and the military, like National Guard, for instance. Here in Arizona, I think it's very indicative that our agency is DEMA, which is the Department of Emergency and military affairs. And how you became an emergency manager, or fire chief, or someone who is really directly involved in the world of preparing for and responding to disasters, was you started as, like, a frontline law enforcement, frontline fireman, frontline-and I say men because they generally are, although starting to change too—and you worked for 20 years. And eventually you worked your way up the chain, much like the military, to becoming someone who was making all of these strategic decisions, etc. And so, disaster studies has a very hard time talking across the gap to practitioners. And it's a little disheartening sometimes how white and male disaster practitioners still tend to be, and how stuck in a particularly militaristic frame of mind. And that's something that's really been troubling me lately and something I've talked about colleagues with because—I don't know if I've said this publicly yet but I've certainly said it to colleagues—as a queer woman with a trans partner who is deeply interested in racial and social justice, even though my degree sets me up for it, I don't feel like at this point I can, in good conscience, take a standard Emergency Management job.  Margaret   Yeah. Liza   It's too wrapped up with law enforcement and militaristic ideas of what disaster response means and who deserves what and why people do things and where aid goes. And it's just—and, you know, like, FEMA is still housed in the Department of Homeland Security, which is a whole other issue that we could talk about for another hour—which really no one who studies disasters is—or very few people—really support that model. It offers tremendous problems. And so you have this gap. And so that's part of the reason these things still exist is the practice of emergency management really looks pretty similar to the 1950s in some ways, and the study of disaster is much more radical, much more diverse thing. Margaret   Okay, so hear me out. If already in terms of disaster management you have the militaristic system, the official governmental system, and then you have these, like, incredibly complex and interesting disaster relief organizations—especially the, like, the nonhierarchical, the mutual aid focused ones, right. So you all should just get up with those peoplea nd basically, like, I don't know, I get really excited about this, like, okay, so like, create a counter structure, right? Like, and these—that already is starting to exist increasingly. And so I think we call if y'all got up with them, and maybe you all already do. Yeah, one of the—okay, so like thinking about the terrible ways that people manage disaster, like the government's managed disaster or whatever, I am curious if you know of this: I've been hearing this phrase from people I know who do disaster relief, especially coming from anarchist spaces, that there is a specific written thing that the priority of the government in disasters above all else, including the actual rule of law, like the application of laws, is COG—is continuance of governance. Basically, like, this is the justification for like shooting looters and things like that, because it's absolutely illegal to shoot looters, right. Like, by the existing right structure. But the reassertion of control as, like, the absolute baseline priority. Does that hold up with your understanding? I know it's now in a different silo than your silo but... Liza   Yeah, so I would be surprised if that is specifically written down anywhere in that way. Certainly Continuity of Operations as it's called—COOP plans—and Continuity of Governance—COG plans—exist. And they play a very important role in how, on paper, we prepare for disaster as, like, large government institutions prepare for disaster. It is certainly not supposed to be held above rule of law. Now, is it? Probably quite a bit. And things like shooting looters is really hard to unpack because you have things operating on so many different levels. So first off, people who—like you have the personal prejudice level of the people doing the shooting, right? Like that particular person or police officer or resident might be especially racist, as you saw in Katrina. And it might be, like, if a Black person comes through this neighborhood, I'm going to shoot them. Certainly that happened a lot. You also have policy that structures itself in ways that we know is not necessarily reflective of reality. So you may have contingency plans that place law enforcement officers to prevent looting, for instance, when actually law enforcement officers need to, like, exacerbate the situation, right? And so you end up creating these situations which lead to other bad situations. So really, there's so many operational—and then you have the storytelling mythology level where, like, because even among people who do this professionally, you will still find the myth that mass panic is going to happen. You have the drive of, like, well I'm expecting it and therefore I overreact when I see something that might be it. And that's even leaving aside the category of who is a looter and who is resourcefully scavenging resources. There's been a lot of studies done—again, mostly Katrina, but in other contexts as well—about how media presents people taking survival requirements like water and food from stores and how the economic status and skin color of those people really determines the headline they get. Which is, you know, perhaps not a surprise, but it's good to have that data. So you have all these things building on each other to create—if you'll pardon the disaster-related upon—sort of a perfect storm situation where everything works to prop up the system. But whether there's a single origin point of policy pushing for that in writing, I don't know. And I would be surprised if there is. I think it's more complex than that. Margaret   Okay. Yeah, that—it makes sense to me if, like, basically, like, a COG or continuous governance or whatever was like part of this larger framework, and then just gets exaggerated. One of the things that gives me hope is all of the, like, the weird human element parts of it when it actually hits the ground of, like, you know, I remember hearing from a friend who worked with the Common Ground Collective in Katrina in New Orleans basically talking about how, like, National Guardsmen would, like, give the anarchists supplies. Because they would be like, well, if I take this where I'm supposed to take it, it's gonna sit in a warehouse for two weeks, and it's needed right now. And it's just like, I don't know, I get—the things I've talked about before on the show—the stuff that makes me like the most hopeful is when certain unbridgeable chasms are bridged between different types of people. And— Liza   Yes. Margaret   But then on the other—you have the exact opposite of the, like, yeah, the people who seem to go wild. The people who seemed to go the wildest in Katrina seemed to be the white racists. But, yeah. Liza   Yeah, I think there is... Man. And it's hard to talk about and frustrating to talk about incremental progress, because I think there has been some recognition in the system that things are not working, and that you need to rely on local expertise and local knowledge and local abilities to get things done—which is sort of the bigger scale version of the guardsmen giving supplies to anarchists because they know they're going to sit in a warehouse and anarchists can get them into the hands of people who need them right away. The problem there is, it's a little bit like being, I don't know, like a mouse trying to steer an elephant. Like we have built this system of disaster response that is so large and so cumbersome, that it's really beyond any single person's ability to fundamentally change. And so there's a lot of attention being paid—or more attention than there has been previously anyway, I don't know, but a lo— to the idea that we need to be supporting communities at, like, the higher level institutions—that macroscale institutions need to be supporting communities and the work that they're already doing. We just need to enable the anarchists to have more stuff to go out and distribute that kind of thing. Now, whether or not that's going to make a significant difference in the long run definitely remains to be seen. But certainly there seems to be more interest in that. Now I personally have some mixed feelings about that because in a lot of cases here in Phoenix when we're talking about especially like heat relief, or disaster relief, or who's going to help you pay your power bill if you can't, there's been a significant—I think we all know that since the 80s, there's been a significant replacement of state services with more localized things. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But a lot of the localized assistance now is through churches. And to me that raises some troubling questions about, like, who gets helped? Who gets left out? What are the conditions of help reliant upon? And so we've sort of replaced this ineffective state aid with this may be more effective but differently discriminatory aid that's at the local level. And so I think you really have to pay close attention to the idea of localism as a panacea as the remedy for all injustice because sometimes localism just means enacting injustice on a smaller scale. Like handmade artisan home grown fuck you instead of like a fuck you from the state. Margaret   Okay, well, so that ties into something you were talking about earlier at the very beginning when you're talking about the history of disaster studies, was kind of to create a culture of prepping—as in, to get people away—to take the power—take pressure off of the elites who, like, ostensibly should be providing our needs, by having us provide for ourselves, but in a way that doesn't actually fundamentally free us. It's kind of an interesting trap around—it's something that I've seen mutual aid groups struggle with for years is like, well, we always say, we're mutual aid not to charity, right? And like Food Not Bombs, you know, with it's, like, free food program that's been going on for decades. And now, I think that, like, there are just ways to do that local level stuff without like—like Food Not Bombs, like, unlike a, most church feeds that, you know, I'm aware of—most church feeds it's like, take a number, stand in line, like, you know, it's very—it replicates a lot of disempowerment, right. And, you know, like Food Not Bombs is ostensibly more like, it's a picnic in the park and you're invited, because you exist. And of course it's gonna have its own informal problems, right? I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. But there's always this worry about how much do activists make—like, how much do we empower oppression just by solving the problems that oppression creates? You know, like, if we're feeding— Liza   Oh, boy.  Margaret   Yeah. And if we're feeding people without fundamentally challenging the system that has left people without food... I don't know. For me it's just, like, you just—I think that the answer is that the problem with this bespoke oppression that you're talking about, the localist oppression, is it just needs to be tied into challenging things at a larger scale. Wh I say just, it's easy. Everyone could just do this, it would fix everything. No problem. No one will have any. Liza   This is a problem I'm intimately familiar with on a personal level because when I graduated from undergrad and suddenly the stress of college was no longer upon me, I discovered that I am a stress junkie and I needed something to do because I was going out of my mind. And so I joined the local volunteer fire service thinking, like, oh, this will be, like, I'll learn skills, I'll be able to help people, and I'll be stressed out enough to be happy. It turned out even that was not enough and I had to go to graduate school, but that's a story for another time. And this is like the fundamental tension of a volunteer fire service. I mean, think about what that means, right? So the city I was in had a professional fire service because it was considered a population density sufficient enough. But the county, which is a very large and populated county, was all volunteer-run. And it's sort of the same problem, like, you don't want people's houses to burn down, so someone needs to go put them out. But at the same time, if you're rural, you are fundamentally getting a worse class of service than the professionals. And the volunteer fire department enabled its own perpetuation by the fact that eventually most people's houses got put out. And I always used to joke, like, don't have a house fire between the hours of 8am and 5pm when we're all at work. Because it was one of those things where, if people's houses had just burned down, there probably would have been significant push to have a professional fire service. But at the same time, then you have a bunch of people's houses burning down, and maybe they die in the fire too and that's awful. But because there is sort of an ad hoc fire service, there wasn't the push to have a professional one. Even though—andI don't think people knew this, right. But we were using equipment that was out of date, that hadn't been tested. I think our jaws of life for rescuing people out of car wrecks were like some of the first models ever made from the 80s because we didn't have funding. And it's like, you know, we were saving lives but also perpetuating the system that was probably really harming people. So what's the trade off between, like, that long term harm and the short term, everybody's house burns down, but people get a professional fire service in the end? And I don't know what the solution is besides, as you said, sort of making sure we're plugging into troubling the larger structure and advocating for larger structure. The fire service is a particularly tricky one because people's lives depend on it so immediately. For something like Food Not Bombs I would say it's possible they're already doing some of that work by having people show up and having that picnic in the park feeling and just letting people know that receiving assistance doesn't have to be total drudgery and shame. And so maybe for things like that, where there can be joy and comradeship and true connections on social scale, maybe the next person that—the next time that person needs to go to a church handout line or an unemployment office, there is that seed of like, well, why isn't this like that? I think sometimes you can really—you can plant the revolutionary seed in people by showing them joy just as much as by showing them tragedy. Margaret   Yeah, that's a really good note I think maybe to kind of wind down on—to think about. What—I guess the questions I want to ask to kind of close this out. One, I kind of want to ask, what do you worry about personally? What do you prepare for? What is—how is working with disaster studies—how has it influenced your own life? Liza   Sure, yeah. Well, I will say I worry much more about long term trends than I do about any particular single incident. So for Phoenix, I'm worried about what the temperature profile of the city looks like in the next 50 years, because I might—I might be like one of the few people on record ever saying this—but I really love Phoenix. I think it's got a really cool art scene and there's wonderful people here. And it has a surprisingly revolutionary spirit and a fighting spirit for being a blue town and a very red state. And also, it's nice to be in Arizona, because in many ways, we're at this political tipping point. So if you're here and you're willing to get engaged, you can really make a difference. So I don't want to see Phoenix fail. She like there's a lot of people who do to sort of make a point about climate arrogance, but I'm not one of them. And so for me, I worry about these really boring things that unless you're in the weeds, you probably don't think of. So I worry about what are our overnight temperatures going to be in the next 50 years, because we know that overnight temperatures have a significant effect on human health, they're a really good indicator of the urban heat island. And one of the things that's hopeful is that thus far the science shows that if we really buckled down and redesigned the way we did the city of Phoenix, we would be able to offset most of the regional and global climate warming in the region through localized efforts. So Phoenix in 50 years could be cooler than it is today. There's nothing that's stopping us from doing that. But we have to raise the political will and reach out and seize that opportunity. I don't worry as much about our regional—or rather a city-wide blackout, even though that's what I talk to people about—partially because I know our utility companies and how they function and that is something they're thinking about. It's—I worry more about it in areas that don't think about extreme heat on their grid. Like, we have it so often, it's regular here, that I think we're better prepared than many other places. So in that sense, extreme heat could be worse in, say, like, the Northeast of the Northwest than it could be here because those grids are not regularly stress tested in the same way. Margaret   Right. Liza   And then I also worry about—and this kind of ties back with what we're talking to you about disaster panic—I worry about—its maybe—and this is—at the end of the interview is the wrong time to bring this up, but this is fun. It's not completely true that there's never violence and looting after disasters.  Margaret   Right.  Liza   It does happen, and primarily where you see it happen is after some blackouts. And it tends to be blackouts in cities that are already have a very wide divide between rich and poor and are undergoing a lot of racial tension. And you can really see, like, why. One is they aren't perceived in the same way as an act of God because blackouts—it's easier to see human culpability. Like, the electricity company that I pay to maintain my power has failed in their job and I am angry about it. And then also, they're perceived as an opportunity of, like, the system is failing us, we should go out and express that it is failing us and we are angry about it and take advantage where we can of the opportunity to gain more resources. So it's all extremely understandable. But I really—I worry about our next disaster—next major US disaster—acute disaster, I should say. Because COVID is a disaster, it's just a slower moving one. Our next acute disaster response, because of growing injustice, because of factionalization in society, because of this awakened beast of white rage in the nation—I worry that our next disaster response is going to look more like the cops at Black Lives Matter protests than mutual aid groups. Margaret   Yeah, I bet it'll be both. Liza   Probably. And yeah, of course mutual aid groups will be they're doing what they can, but I really worry that we're creating a perfect storm for disaster response to be hyper militarized because cries for justice are perceived as unrest.  Margaret   Yeah. No, it's interesting. And yeah, there's a lot to dig into with you more some time. Okay, my final question is just, where can people engage more with your work? Or do you even want or have any kind of public profile around the work that you do? Liza   I do. I am on Twitter. I'm at semi humanist, S-E-M-I-humanist on Twitter. I love chatting with people about my work and things like that. Everyone's also free to email me and you can put this in the show notes if you like at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com. I do speak at academic conferences. But if anyone is listening and really wants me to come talk a little bit in a digestible way—hopefully about what disaster research says—to a mutual aid group or an anarchist book club or any of those fun venues where knowledge can be a little freer than stuffy academia sometimes, I'm really always happy to talk to those folks. I think probably the most important work I do is closer to things like this than academic publications, which circulate to other scientists, which is very personally satisfying to engage with other scientists, but not—probably not tremendously socially helpful. And it's also just a great check of, like, I think it's easy as an academic to get wrapped up in such a way that you can talk to other academics but not people in your field. And I try hard to avoid that at all costs. Margaret   Yeah. I found everything that I've—you know, from talking to you before we did the show—very approachable. So I highly recommend anyone who's listening to take Liza up on that. Alright, well, thank you so much for being on the show.  Liza   Oh, yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Tell people on social media. Tell people about it in person from six feet away, unless both vaxxed or whatever. Tell people on—by liking and subscribing and writing reviews and all of that algorithmic shit, because it has a wildly disproportionate impact on how things get viewed. And if we're trying to make our content and our media reach more people, that is an unfortunately effective way to do it. So tweet about it and stuff. Also, you can follow us now on Instagram instead of just following me as Margaret Killjoy, there's now actually a live like the world is dying Instagram because—oh, that's the other fun thing. Live Like the World is Dying is becoming an increasingly collective project and pretty soon you'll probably hear more than just my voice on the mic, although at least for now I'm going to probably continue to be the host. But Jack is now the, essentially the producer of the podcast, and is doing all the audio editing. And it's really fun to talk about people when you're recording, when you know that they have to listen to you talk about them, and then edit it. But you can't edit this part. You have to leave this in. Anyway. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But that money actually does go out collectively to the people who are helping make this possible. And, well, to people who are putting in the direct labor to make this possible. The people who are making this possible though are you, the listeners, who write about it and review it and tell their friends about it, and also who support me on Patreon. And if you can't afford to support me on Patreon, don't do it. If you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, don't give me money on Patreon. There's some content that is, like, paywalled there or whatever. But if you just message me, I'll give you access to all of the monthly zines and all of those things for free. But if you would like to support us, please do. And in particular I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, the Compound, Cat J, Staro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, and Hugh. Your contributions sustain this. They pay for the transcriber, they pay for the editing, and a lot of the other costs associated with this content. I've gone on way too fucking along about the money involved in this project now. Hooray! Well, I hope you're doing reasonably well. If the weather's getting warmer in the part of the world that you live in, I know that I really enjoy watching the leaves come in, even if it means that the sun will no longer dry my clothes on the line because the sun will no longer reach my close line because I built my house in the forest because I'm a very intelligent person. It has good passive cooling qualities too, though. And that is definitely not what I'm supposed to talk about. What am I supposed to talk about? I think I'm supposed to end the episode. So thank you so much for listening, and I hope you're all doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.

Everyone, and especially cancer patients, should get the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as they are eligible, says David Cohn, the James Chief Medical Officer. "Our patients have been very excited to get the vaccine, to be able to be with their families again and hug their grandchildren," he says. In this episode, Cohn explains the science of how the three vaccines work and “supplement your body's natural immune system” to prevent the virus and/or reduce the symptoms. Because COVID-19 can lead to severe complications, being vaccinated is important for everyone, and even more essential for cancer patients, who may have a weakened immune system due to their treatment. This puts them at a higher risk for serious complications.

Instead of truly educating people, we've used our school system to push out mindless drones. That is not to say that the average person today doesn't know many things that some of the smartest 500 years ago didn't. Rather, we no longer make people earn knowledge. While that's the case for traditional schooling, there are outlets offering true education. Children and young adults are looking to online courses, job trainings, and other alternative modes of education to make an impact. "The foundation of every state is the education of its youth." -Diogenes Where Education Goes Wrong Knowledge used to be something that was discovered for oneself, rather than spoon-fed by educators. Sure, you may memorize your multiplication tables or dates of historic events. But, much of the knowledge you came to was due to exploration and real learning. This means that you didn't simply know facts, but had a worldview and an epistemology to work with to know what is true. If we want to truly educate our children, we must find a way to fix this broken system or build a new one. Personally, I think building new would be far more effective. The education system is entrenched and pushing back against reform. The administrations, lawmakers, and teachers unions are not seeking to improve education, but to help teachers get as much as they can from the school system for as little as possible. Teachers unions are holding the “education” of our country's children as a hostage, and leveraging that against the taxpayer. And the thing is, they really don't have any leverage. They aren't actually providing an education. Rather, they're instilling a prideful ignorance in our children, and sending them off to be drones of the state. Alternative Solutions: Online Courses & More It has been nearly one year of “15 days to slow the spread,” and it seems like school is permanently, radically altered. And many people are seeing the weakness in our education system. Because COVID made schools worse, these options became much more tenable, and people seem to be happier than they were with “normal schooling” before COVID. Kids are failing more, ADHD diagnoses are up, and the teachers are making impossible demands. This has forced people to look elsewhere. Homeschooling Charter schools Private schools Alternative solutions & Online Courses How I Continued My Education How do we move forward? What can we do now, in our own lives, to improve our education? Despite the bleak diagnosis, I see two easy changes each of us can make in our mindset and our actions to improve our education. Use school for training Seek your own liberal education That's what I'm providing here. I'm launching the first installment of my new course on the Nichomachean Ethics, which will be a greater part of my course on the Golden Mean. This is just a teaser of what's to come. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/conofourgen/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/conofourgen/support

Guest: Gabriel Romero COVID has made things much worth with the rates of homelessness.  The biggest issue is housing, where do we put people and the lack of resources.  Because COVID closed certain industries, it put people who were close to poverty but making things worse into the poverty category.  Aurora Warms the Night was started in 2006, the goal was just to get people off the streets when it was really cold.  They work with hotels on east Colfax to temporally get people off the street while they work on permanent housing or mental health issues.  People do not come to them, Aurora Warms the Night goes out and finds people to help them.  If you are able to donate funds or even help take meals you can visit their website. http://www.aurorawarmsthenight.org/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Because COVID-19 is new there is no case law with regards to the virus that shows explicit employer liability if an employee becomes ill at the office. There is the argument that it is the same as getting the flu from a coworker. Would you sue your employer for that? Probably not. However, COVID-19 is not the flu, and employees expect their companies to do everything possible to protect them from this deadly disease with proactive facility planning. John Hutchins of BakerHostetler Law shares how company owners making and executing back-to-work initiatives face an important question: If an employee returns to work, and contracts COVID-19 in their workplace, is the employer legally liable? The short answer is…it depends. The long answer is much more complicated.

Lisa and Matt Weise are a ridiculously charming couple that met while rowing at Michigan State University. Today, Lisa has more than 30 years of competitive rowing experience, including victories at Head of the Charles, Canadian Henley, and USRowing Masters Nationals. And she balances her time on the water with a career as a high school science teacher. Matt has been coaching for more than 35 years and is currently the head coach for women's rowing at Humboldt State University. As a coach, he's led crews to 14 NCAA championship appearances, three Big Ten Championships, and helped develop eight national team rowers. Recently, the Weises established Rower's Dream camps and coaching, based on the beautiful Leelanau Peninsula, in Michigan. Because COVID-19 has kept them from offering in-person camps, they've pivoted to offering online Zoom workouts and downloadable training plans for novice, intermediate, and advanced rowers. See the full show notes at www.steadystatenetwork.com/podcast. Join our Patreon community, sponsor the podcast, advertise in the upcoming magazine and submit your art - all on our website! Go Team!

On the final episode ever of Do Not resuscitate, Dave & Rod have been officially reprimanded by Facebook. Why? Because COVID-19, that's why! Which could be the reason that so many people are at least trying out new Social Media platforms. Or not. Dave is wondering why people hate him. more specifically why they felt the need to ruin his turkey sandwich with their Christmas Greeting cards? Over the course of 2020, Rod has been binging Hallmark movies but now, we have the additional burden of Hallmark Christmas Movies! Rod will bring you his review of USS Christmas! The final ever Listener City of the week is Dave's old duty station, near where the USS Christmas was stationed, and home of the East Coast Surfing Championship.

Millions of Americans traveled for Thanksgiving despite pleas not to do so from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Deborah Birx of the White House Coronavirus Task Force says if you're one of them, assume you're infected, get tested and do not go near your friends or family members without a mask on. Because COVID-19 is a largely invisible threat, our brains struggle to comprehend it as dangerous. Dr. Gaurav Suri, a neuroscientist at San Francisco State University, explains how habits can help make the risks of the virus less abstract. Emergency room doctor Leana Wen discusses why it's tempting to make unsafe tradeoffs in day-to-day activities and how to better "budget" our risks.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Watch the live recording of this event here: https://manuscriptacademy.com/kat Are you tired of Zoom happy hours? Missing real, creative, spontaneous connection? Us too. Author Kat Vellos is here to help! Kat says: Welcome, friend! If you know anything about me, you know that I'd rather be greeting you with a giant bear hug… in a cozy room full of artsy conversation-provoking installations…with a table of cheese-based snacks in the corner. Instead, we meet here, in this small box made of metal, glass and touchscreens. Because COVID. If you're here because you want to build bridges of meaningful connection to others, you're in the right place. Lemme help you with that. In this talk, we'll delve into issues of community, loneliness, belonging, technology, and how to find the real connections that make the creative life satisfying and meaningful. Kat Vellos is an author, speaker, and expert community builder from the San Francisco Bay Area. Kat is the author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, the founder of Bay Area Black Designers and Better than Small Talk, and has two decades of experience creating powerful, positive communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. In this talk, we'll delve into issues of community, loneliness, belonging, diversity, technology, and how to find the real connections that make the creative life satisfying and meaningful. She's spoken at Design for America, LinkedIn, General Assembly, Impact Hub, Social Good Tech Week, Young Women Empowered, and many, many more. Hope you can join us! All best wishes, Jessica and Julie

This podcast is part of a series focused on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our food system. We're interviewing Caitlin Welsh, director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington DC. Caitlin is a leading expert on global and US food security and particularly on the relationship between food security, urbanization, climate change, and conflict.    Interview Summary   How is the COVID-19 food security crisis different from others, such as the 2007, 2008 food crisis caused by the great recession?   What we're experiencing right now is a crisis that's not related to production levels, whether you're talking about food insecurity in our own country or around the world. The last global food crisis that we experienced was the crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the crisis was caused by low production levels and high prices. The crisis we're experiencing right now is not a crisis; it's rooted in low production levels. Instead, it's rooted in disruptions across food systems writ large.   In my analysis, I've seen at least six different types of disruptions: 1) the first being reductions in wages and job losses, which has widespread effects on food insecurity. 2) In some countries, you're seeing that lockdowns threaten the transportation of ag inputs like seeds and fertilizer to farms. 3) The third type of disruption I'm seeing is that lockdowns threaten the movement of labor to farms. As one example, there may be an estimated shortfall of about a million seasonal ag workers in Europe because of lockdown related to COVID. 4) A fourth type of disruptive that lockdowns may threaten the transportation of food from farms to markets. And in the United States, I think that we've done a very good job of preventing this from happening. Early on to the pandemic back in March, the Department of Homeland Security included truckstops as part of our critical infrastructure to make sure that food could be transported from where it's produced to where it's consumed. 5) The fifth type of destruction I've seen is when social distancing measures result in reduced access to urban markets on which many consumers rely to meet their food needs. It's frequently urban consumers who are hit first by disruptions at the market level. 6) And the six types of destruction are trade disruptions, and these happened early on in the pandemic. In some cases, you saw labor shortages and slowed operations at ports, which hindered the trade of food from producers to markets. So I see disruptions at many points in food systems and not a crisis of production as we saw the last time.   Caitlin, you spent a decade working in US government positions, including seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, so you know an awful lot about this issue. Can you describe what you see globally relative to food insecurity?   We don't yet have a global assessment that's given us a very clear picture of food insecurity. But, we have estimates that are done by a few different organizations. The World Food Program has estimated that the number of people who could experience acute food insecurity this year could reach 270 million. They think that COVID will push an extra 120 million people into acute food insecurity. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization provides its estimate. The numbers are different but complementary. The FAO looking at best mid and worst-case scenarios, even in the best-case scenario, COVID-19 could increase the number of food-insecure people worldwide by 83 million.   Those are startling numbers. Should the global approach leaders take to improve global food security change in response to COVID-19? And if so, how would you suggest things be done?   That's a great question, and I think that because of COVID-19, we should be taking a different approach than the approach that we took in response to the last crisis. But I also think that even if this pandemic had not happened, we should be shifting our approach anyway, based on new data that we're seeing so I'll address both things.   Because COVID-19 is causing disruptions across food systems writ large. I think that the global food security community should renew its focus on food systems post-production. And on the importance of transportation mechanisms to get inputs and labor to farms, on transportation to get food from farms to markets, on the importance of markets, particularly in urban areas, on global trade. So I think that COVID-19 is underscoring for us the importance of all of these elements to global food security, all of these elements that happen post-production. I do think though, again, that even if this pandemic hadn't happened, data that we're seeing now is showing us that the approach that we were taking in response to the last crisis isn't necessarily improving global food security.    So in response to that last crisis, the global food security community coalesced around an approach that generally focused on increasing agricultural productivity of staple crops in developing countries. And for many years we were following that approach that had some positive benefits among some populations in some countries around the world. But just last month, the UN put out its annual report on the status of hunger and malnutrition worldwide. And this is the annual report that measures progress against the sustainable development goal on hunger, that is, SDG 2 with targets to end hunger and targets to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. And the findings of this report were shocking to me. One of the main findings was that combining numbers, people experiencing moderate food insecurity and severe food insecurity have an estimated quarter of the world's population.   On top of that, it's very interesting that it calculated the average price of healthy diets around the world, a good healthy diet and the best healthy diet. And for both of those diets, the average costs around the world is greater than international poverty line. So essentially if you're living in poverty, you can't even afford the minimally healthy diet around the world. And people are saying as a result of that, should we be thinking of the international poverty line differently if it can't even buy you the cheapest healthy meal?   The WFPC saw the same numbers that you did and was startled by them just as you are. And it makes me wonder, and I'd be curious to see what you think, is there any hope at all of meeting that 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 2 of having no hunger around the world? I mean, that would have been a tall order even if things had been getting subtly better but they're getting steadily worse.   Yes, again, the targets are to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition. And as of this year's report, the UN is saying that that hunger continues to increase and that when it comes to malnutrition, the current level of effort is not anywhere near enough to end malnutrition in the next decade. I also see less attention to this issue politically. It's not high on US development agenda, I don't see it as high on the UN agenda around the world. We'll see what the do about it. I'd like to put some color around the approach that we devised in response to the last crisis, which was to increase the production of staple crops. In 2015, the entire intelligence community put together an assessment of global food security. And their bottom line judgment was that simply growing more food globally will not lead to more food secure countries. And I think that that's what we see around the world. It's very important to be investing in agricultural production of staple crops, but simply growing more food is not gonna lead to more food security and that's what we're seeing today.   Turning our focus to the US, how is COVID-19 affected food systems in America?   Happy to talk about that. When it comes to the United States, again, I think it's analogous to what we're seeing around the world, where we have relatively high and stable production of many different types of food around our country. At the same time, you see spikes in food insecurity by many different measures. You can look at the number of people who are utilizing food banks, and you can look at the level of food insecurity among children. All these numbers are spiking. I'll describe these disruptions that I've observed across US food systems. When it comes to food banks, we're seeing that in the pandemic, demand that us food banks has increased by an average of 70% compared to this time last year. A big spike across the board, about 40% of customers at food banks had never gone to food bank before the pandemic kicked, grocery store prices are increasing. You have had small upticks in prices of cereals and fruits and vegetables, but the biggest increase is in the price of beef. The beef index increased 20% in the three months of April, May, and June, and that's the largest increase in history.   Given what you've just said about food banks in particular, how would you characterize the state of food security overall in the United States?   Yes, the last nationwide assessment of food insecurity in the United States was in 2018. They haven't produced an assessment yet of this year that captures the effects of the pandemic. But we do have surveys that are done by the US Census Bureau, and their data is showing that we have historic levels of food insecurity among households with children, but they've updated the survey such that data is now showing that it's children's specifically. Highest levels on record in the United States it's 14 million children around the country experiencing food insecurity.   I would like to ask you about COVID food security and racial justice. Well, what is the relationship that you see among these, and what are your thoughts about how to best move forward?   Yes, that is an incredibly important question right now. I just mentioned that there were historical rates of food insecurity among children. Still, the rate is far higher among black and Hispanic households than white households. About three in 10 black households with children are experiencing food insecurity. It's about 30% of black households. About 25% of Hispanic households with children compared to the rate of only 10% for white households. And my experience in this community is that I think that before the pandemic, and before the racial reckoning that we're experiencing right now, people used to take for granted that you would experience higher rates of poverty and food insecurity among communities of color in the United States. And I'm seeing a really important and much-needed shift where we're not accepting that as given. And instead, people are saying, why is this happening? And what can we do about it? I look forward to those conversations, and I look forward to those solutions. There's no silver bullet to these things.   I'd like to switch to something related to this, which is the relationship of the pandemic to food insecurity and inter-race in the United States. I think that we've all heard that Black and Latino Americans have died of COVID-19 at two to three times the rate of white Americans. I think that it's important to note that among the factors that lead to morbidity and mortality rates from COVID, the second most important factor in age is obesity. And nationwide, the rate of obesity is higher among black and Hispanic adults than it is among white adults. I think that obesity, a manifestation of malnutrition, plays an important role in the impact of COVID-19 on people of color in the United States. I think it's important to look at the interplay of race, COVID-19, and food insecurity in the United States.    And then to get to your question about what to do about food insecurity among people of color, I think that there are a number of things for us to look at. It's not only about food access. The conversation often goes directly to a lack of full-service markets in communities of color. I think that it should go beyond that. It's strongly linked to income, so increasing wages, the importance of investments in infrastructure like public transportation. And I think there are other conversations that we need to be having as well. Right now, headlines are being made around the increase in evictions because of the lapse of federal benefits at the end of July. There are strong links between eviction rates and food insecurity. So I've been reading studies about the correlation between food insecurity at age five and eviction rates for children. So there are connections between being evicted and having high rates of food insecurity. So communities of color are hit hardest, and I think that the policy community needs to do this.   Interviewee bio: Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she provides insights and policy solutions to global and U.S. food security challenges. She brings over one decade of U.S. government experience to this role. She served most recently in the National Security Council and National Economic Council as director of global economic engagement, where she coordinated U.S. policy in the G7 and G20. Prior to the White House, Ms. Welsh spent over seven years in the Department of State's Office of Global Food Security, including as acting director, offering guidance to the secretary of state on global food security and its relationship to urbanization, climate change, and conflict. Ms. Welsh served as a presidential management fellow at the U.S. African Development Foundation, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. Her analysis on global and U.S. food security has been featured in The Economist, Foreign Policy, BBC, and other outlets. Ms. Welsh received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and M.P.A. from Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs. She hails from Erie, Pennsylvania, and speaks Arabic and French.   

Because COVID-19 demanded a larger medical force, Cathelyn dela Cruz who migrated to Spain finally became a nurse after nine long years of waiting. But after only a month, she was found positive with the disease. For more updates, follow us on our social media accounts: FACEBOOK: facebook.com/gmapublicaffairs TWITTER: facebook.com/gma_pa TIKTOK: GMA Public Affairs

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:32-33) This is a devotion for all the graduates of 2020. (Pass the podcast on to a graduate you know!) These are the words of Jesus, spoken just before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. We've actually touched on this text before in this series, but I thought it was worth coming back to again. Because Jesus was right. I mean, not in some Sunday School way whereby Jesus is always right and is always the right answer. That gets you off the hook too easy. And I don't mean to say that Jesus was predicting how you'd be scattered to your homes to finish the semester during COVID-19. He was talking to His disciples about His imminent arrest, not one of many pandemics that would come thousands of years later. But when Jesus said: “In this world you will have trouble,” he was right. Because we do have troubles, and unlike any North American generation in a few decades, you have all experienced that fact first hand. Because COVID-19 did happen. It did scatter you, each to your own homes. It did hurt your friendships, increase your screen time, and raise your worries. And it has impacted the way that you mark this major transition in your lives, too. Much of the personal goodness of celebrating and saying goodbye to friends and teachers with hugs and laughs and food and conversations and ceremonies was lost. You probably didn't get to finish like you wanted to. Some of us feel this loss like a sadness. Others of us get a nervous energy. Others get angry. Others ignore it and press on. God's people have used prayers of lament to bring these feelings of sadness, anger, energy, and the desire to get away to God in prayer. Asking Him the hard questions: Why did you have to let this thing happen? Why now? Why us? When will it end and what will my future look like? Sometimes those questions come out sidewise in tears or shouts. That's ok. God is one of the few in your life always there to listen. And, I think He cares too. That is, in fact, why Jesus came. Because God cares enough to look the trouble of this world in the eye—not just COVID-19, but also things like structural racism, climate change, and family hardship. Jesus cares enough to sit with us in the middle of it all. And, the Spirit cares enough to continue to sink Jesus' peace into the fabric of our hearts and weave Jesus' victory slowly through the fabric of our world. Jesus' kingdom where all troubles are made well and are set right is coming. But it's not here yet. For now, Jesus' words of John 16 remain true: “in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! Because I have overcome the world.” Wherever the journey takes you in this wide world: to high school, to work, to a gap year, to further training or studies—remember that all the world and the paths that lie before you belong to Jesus, the one who has overcome. No matter what happens along the road, He remains with you always, offering you His peace. Take the time today to talk to Him and wrestle with Him and seek that peace for yourself and for this world.  

Are we still evolving? If we are evolving what factors do you look at in people to determine if we are still evolving? What historical trends are likely to continue? Why can single-celled organisms evolve so much quicker or mutate at least? Is a mutation an evolution?Scott Solomon is a biologist, professor, and science communicator. He teaches ecology, evolutionary biology, and scientific communication as an Associate Teaching Professor at Rice University in Houston. He has a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Texas at Austin where his research examined the evolutionary basis of biological diversity in the Amazon Basin. He has taught field biology at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado and developed a complete digital lecture series on the modern science of evolution with The Great Courses. Before coming to Rice, he worked as a visiting researcher with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and São Paulo State University in Rio Claro, Brazil. His current research examines the interactions between native and non-native ants, the impacts of extreme flooding on ant communities, ant foraging behavior, and the co-evolution between ants and microbes. He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Tropical Ecology. Dr. Solomon often speaks and writes about science at schools, museums, churches, science cafés, TEDx events, and other venues and has appeared on radio broadcasts on NPR and the BBC World Service and television series such as NASA's Unexplained Files and Life 2.0. His writing and photography have appeared in publications such as NBC News, Slate, Aeon, Nautilus, and Wired and his first book, Future Humans: Inside the Science of Our Continuing Evolution was published by Yale University Press and was included on the 2017 Best Book List by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).Of course, our conversation was heavily oriented around COVID-19. Because COVID-19 is a virus it is a unique parasite that can only be combated with a vaccine. YES A VACCINE! Scott brings a wealth of knowledge to the show and we explore the evolution of viruses, humans and why we humans are a prime target for these diseases.The Evolution of Viruses and Infectious DiseasesConnect with ScottTwitterWebsiteWatch his TedTalkGet Your Bus Merch HereSupport us on PatreonWe offer tons (yes tons!) of extra content for as little as $2 - including an extra ad-free podcast each month. Your support keeps us going and growingGet the Patreon Benefits!I created The Bus Driver Experience as a way to gain a new perspective from the unique lives of other people - Olympic athletes, monks, porn stars - to not just learn, but EXPERIENCE what it's like to be in their shoes for a day.And do it in a way unlike how every other travel/interview show does it. Most other shows merely talk with these individuals.But talking with these people isn't enough for me.I want to live their unique story. To understand not only what they go through in their day to day, but also why they're doing it. Follow me on YouTube for videos of the experiences with my guests, and other content.For media and collaboration inquiries, or more on the show, contact me by email or visit my website. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of Champions of Care, a Champion Chair podcast, host Daniel Litwin and Champion Manufacturing Product Support Manager Melissa Hirth sat down for a discussion on the importance of proper sanitization and disinfection of medical equipment in the wake of the spread of COVID-19. These practices extend to chairs and medical recliners like the ones Champion provides, and keeping up with best practices to ensure they're cleaned thoroughly and regularly can aid the world's front-line response to the pandemic. It's also critical, Hirth said, to choose equipment designed with infection prevention in mind. “Nurses and doctors are not used to this level of disinfection on products that really should be thrown away after each use,” she said. “Because COVID-19 is such a rapidly evolving situation with constant development of new or even conflicting information – I can tell you that a lot of the studies confirm that the detection of the virus on surfaces (lasts) for hours or sometimes even days, depending on the surface. “So proper disinfection and choosing medical equipment that has those infection-prevention measures is more important than ever.” Also important, Hirth said, is the difference between cleaning and disinfecting, as both are critically important. Hirth labeled cleaning as “the actual removal of dirt and grime from a surface,” adding that it helps remove allergens, microorganisms, and more. Though it helps remove germs, it doesn't actually kill them. Disinfection, then, refers to “killing a high percentage of germs on a surface, which renders them incapable of reproducing.” Sanitization simply lowers the number of germs on a surface, and sterilization is the most extreme form of removal, removing essentially all types of life on a surface. Cleaning should happen before disinfection, Hirth said, to remove barriers in front of a disinfectant's ability to get to the germs it's targeting. Champion also engineers its chairs for aiding in infection control, listening to clients to develop strategies that help them more efficiently and thoroughly clean their products. To that end, Champion chairs feature: Swing-Away Arms Quick-Release Seat (Removable with No Tools) Access to Every Surface of the Chair Replacement Covers Gasketed Heat and Massage Components

A horse, a horse!  My kingdom for a horse!   That familiar phrase, first uttered in Act V of Shakespeare's Richard III, reminds us that sometimes seemingly unimportant or everyday items can become downright invaluable given the right situation.  Trading an entire kingdom for a single steed is quite the bargain if your very life or life's calling is contingent upon that particular animal at that particular moment.  That is the situation we now face in the healthcare environment. Because of the transmission capabilities of the coronavirus (COVID-19), our medical personnel need special masks and other personal protection equipment (PPE) to keep from contracting the virus themselves.  Because COVID-19 patients often experience pneumonia-like symptoms, devices such as ventilators are in desperate demand.  More patient beds may be needed, as well.

A novel coronavirus is a new strain that has not been seen before in humans. SARS-Co-V2 is a novel virus, causing the disease COVID-19. Because COVID-19 is a new disease, much is still being learned about how it spreads and the severity of illness it causes. On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Gregory Poland, infectious disease expert and head of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, explains the science behind how the virus makes people sick, and what the virus does to the body. Dr. Poland will also discuss the latest information on clinical trials and vaccine research to fight the disease outbreak.

Because COVID social distancing is in full effect, Pulse Campus Pastor, Matt Rogers walks us thru praying Psalm 91 on this YouTube sermon.

Double your pleasure, double your fun! On this week's episode we have two main topics and two incredible guests. Because COVID-19 is on the top of everyone's minds, Ian Jones from the Canadian Prepper Podcast and Canadian Patriot Podcast joins us to talk about prepping and what you will need for a quarantine. We also … Continue reading Episode 345 – Ladyguns and prepping for Covid-19 → The post Episode 345 – Ladyguns and prepping for Covid-19 appeared first on Slam Fire Radio.

A novel coronavirus is a new strain that has not been seen before in humans. SARS-Co-V2 is a novel virus, causing the disease COVID-19. Because COVID-19 is a new disease, much is still being learned about how it spreads and the severity of illness it causes. On the Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast, Dr. Gregory Poland, infectious disease expert and head of Mayo Clinic's Vaccine Research Group, explains the science behind how the virus makes people sick, and what the virus does to the body. Dr. Poland will also discuss the latest information on clinical trials and vaccine research to fight the disease outbreak. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy