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Modern-day Prophets Who Predicted the Pandemic: We Ignored Them
By Shlomo Maital
Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of the Holy Temple, by Rembrandt
On Wednesday evening, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, we Jews mark the anniversary of the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem 2,606 years ago, in 586 BCE. We sit on low benches and read the book of Lamentations — “How you sit, alone, great city, a great nation, now bereaved, like a widow”.
The prophet Jeremiah warned King Hezekiah – and foresaw the disaster. Hezekiah ignored him, then imprisoned him. Hezekiah paid a heavy price. Some scholars say Jeremiah wrote the Book of Lamentations.
Today, when we refer to prophecies of doom, we call them ‘jeremiads’, lower case ‘j’.
Fast forward from 586 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and took the people of Israel into exile, to Babylon — to 2020, and the pandemic.
We were warned. And by more than one “Jeremiah”. Here is the proof:
* Bill Gates, TED talk, 2015: If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war,” Gates said. “Not missiles, but microbes.” Gates noted that many countries worked for years to reduce the risk of nuclear war, and needed to give similar attention to a massive mobilization against a killer virus. “We’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic,” he said, echoing warnings in recent years from infectious disease doctors. “We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”
Vaclav Smil, “Global Catastrophes and Trends” (book), Sept. 2012: “Consequently, the likelihood of another influenza pandemic during the next 50 years is virtually 100 percent”
Preparing for the Next Pandemic, By Michael T. Osterholm, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005: “This is a critical point in our history. Time is running out to prepare for the next pandemic. We must act now with decisiveness and purpose.” And in “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs”, he warned, the US is not properly prepared for a pandemic.
Robert G. Webster, “Flu Hunter: Unlocking the secrets of a virus”: “Nature will again challenge mankind with an equivalent of the 1918 influence virus. We need to be prepared.”
In 2018, the US intelligence community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment team warned that “a novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat”.
In the 2019 threat assessment: “We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic …that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources and increase calls on the US for support.” [The Trump administration, without explanation, postponed the DNI’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment which warns that the U.S. remains unprepared for a global pandemic. The office of the DNI was scheduled to deliver the Assessment to the House Intelligence Committee on February 12].
US AID Director Jeremy Konyndyk, Politico, 2017: “At some point a highly fatal, highly contagious virus will emerge, like the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which infected one-third of the world’s population and killed between 50 and 100 million people”. He added that President Trump is unprepared for such a pandemic.
US National Security Council, Dr. Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparedness: in 2018: “The threat of pandemic flu is the number one health security concern. Are we ready to respond? I fear the answer is no”. (John Bolton disbanded the NSC team).
2006: Massachusetts Flu Pandemic Preparedness Plan: public health officials predicted as many as 2 million people could become ill. [4.25 million people have so far been ill with the coronavirus in the US and the numbers mount].
Stephen Soderberg’s movie Contagion, released in 2011, is about a fictional virus called MEV-1, which became a global pandemic after a bat spread it to a pig, who spread it to a person…. The fictional virus had a 72-hour incubation period and high fatality rate.
Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague described an epidemic in Algeria….
Nobody listened to Jeremiah, who warned against allying with Egypt, against powerful Babylon. And nobody listened to the modern-day prophets either. Indeed, fake news/conspiracy mongers blame Bill Gates for the pandemic (along with George Soros), even though the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has donated, by some reports, over $350 million to COVID-19 mitigation and innovation.
Why did we not heed Jeremiah? And for 2,606 years, why have we consistently turned a deaf ear to wise experts who warned of impending disaster and urged us to prepare?
Jeremiah too paid a price, sent into exile in Egypt. It would appropriate if modern-day naysayers too were sent into exile ….. at least metaphorically.
The Race to a COVID-19 Vaccine: Q&A
By Shlomo Maital
Where do we stand in the quest for a safe effective COVID-19 vaccine?
More than 2.2 million persons worldwide have contracted the virus and of those, 154,783 have died. That is a 6.8% death rate. But wait – there are far far more cases worldwide than those we know about. Deaths are certain; cases are a guess. If we use a 1% to 1.5% death rate, we can guess that between 10 million and 15 million persons worldwide have contracted the illness. Only an effective vaccine will put a clear end to this crisis, in which COVID-19 is already the #1 cause of death in the US.
This Q&A is based on an informative survey published in a reputable website, livescience.com, by staff writer By Nicoletta Lanese, two days ago: (Warning: this blog is long, 1895 words…sorry).
* https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-timeline.html
When will a vaccine be ready?
“Here’s why it probably can’t be developed any sooner than 12 to 18 months.
“More than 60 candidate vaccines are now in development, worldwide, and several have entered early clinical trials in human volunteers, according to the Some groups aim to provoke an immune response in vaccinated people by introducing a weakened or dead SARS-CoV-2 virus, or pieces of the virus, into their bodies. The vaccines for measles, influenza, hepatitis B and the vaccinia virus, which causes smallpox, use these approaches, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Although tried-and-tested, using this approach to develop these conventional vaccines was labor-intensive, requiring scientists to isolate, culture and modify live viruses in the lab.
That initial process of just creating a vaccine can take 3 to 6 months, “if you have a good animal model to test your product,” Raul Andino-Pavlovsky, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California, San Francisco, told Live Science. “
Are there short cuts? How fast is the US working on a vaccine?
“The first COVID-19 vaccine to enter clinical trials in the United States, for example, uses a genetic molecule called mRNA as its base. Scientists generate the mRNA in the lab and, rather than directly injecting SARS-CoV-2 into patients, instead introduce this mRNA. By design, the vaccine should prompt human cells to build proteins found on the virus’ surface and thus trigger a protective immune response against the coronavirus. Other groups aim to use related genetic material, including RNA and DNA, to build similar vaccines that would interfere with an earlier step in the protein construction process. But there’s one big hurdle for mRNA vaccines. We can’t be sure they will work. As of yet, no vaccine built from a germs’ genetic material has ever earned approval, Bert Jacobs, a professor of virology at Arizona State University and member of the ASU Biodesign Institute’s Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy, told Live Science. Despite the technology having existed for almost 30 years, RNA and DNA vaccines have not yet matched the protective power of existing vaccines, National Geographic reported.
In this high-stakes competition, is there also collaboration?
“Assuming these unconventional COVID-19 vaccines pass initial safety tests, “will there be efficacy?” Jacobs said. “The animal models suggest it, but we’ll have to wait and see.” “Because of the emergency here, people are going to try many different solutions in parallel,” Andino-Pavlovsky said. The key to trialing many vaccine candidates at once will be to share data openly between research groups, in order to identify promising products as soon as possible, he said.
Could a COVID-19 vaccine be potentially dangerous and do damage?
For sure.
“Designing a vaccine that grants immunity and causes minimal side effects is no simple task. A coronavirus vaccine, in particular, poses its own unique challenges. Although scientists did create candidate vaccines for the coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, these did not exit clinical trials or enter public use, partly because of lack of resources, Live Science previously reported. “One of the things you have to be careful of when you’re dealing with a coronavirus is the possibility of enhancement,” Fauci said in an interview with the journal JAMA on April 8. Some vaccines cause a dangerous phenomenon known as antibody dependent enhancement (AED), which paradoxically leaves the body more vulnerable to severe illness after inoculation. Candidate vaccines for dengue virus, for example, have generated low levels of antibodies that guide the virus to vulnerable cells, rather than destroying the pathogen on sight, Stat News reported. Coronavirus vaccines for animal diseases and the human illness SARS triggered similar effects in animals, so there’s some concern that a candidate vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 might do the same, according to an opinion piece published March 16 in the journal Nature. Scientists should watch for signs of AED in all upcoming COVID-19 vaccine trials, Fauci said. Determining whether enhancement is occurring could happen during initial animal studies, but “it is still unclear how we will look for AED,” Jacobs said.
Are there specific dangers in developing a COVID-19 vaccine?
A successful coronavirus vaccine will snuff the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by reducing the number of new people infected, Andino-Pavlovsky said. COVID-19 infections typically take hold in so-called mucosal tissues that line the upper respiratory tract, and to effectively prevent viral spread, “you need to have immunity at the site of infection, in the nose, in the upper respiratory tract,” he said. These initial hotspots of infection are easily permeated by infectious pathogens. A specialized fleet of immune cells, separate from those that patrol tissues throughout the body, are responsible for protecting these vulnerable tissues. The immune cells that protect mucosal tissue are generated by cells called lymphocytes that remain nearby, according to the textbook “Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease” (Garland Science, 2001).
“It’s like your local police department,” Andino-Pavlovsky told Live Science. But not all vaccines prompt a strong response from the mucosal immune system, he said. The seasonal influenza vaccine, for example, does not reliably trigger a mucosal immune response in all patients, which partly explains why some people still catch the respiratory disease after being vaccinated, he said.
“Even if a COVID-19 vaccine can jumpstart the necessary immune response, researchers aren’t sure how long that immunity might last, Jacobs added. While research suggests that the coronavirus doesn’t mutate quickly, “we have seasonal coronaviruses that come, year in [and] year out, and they don’t change much year to year,” he said. Despite hardly changing form, the four coronaviruses that cause the common cold keep infecting people — so why haven’t we built up immunity?
Could the COVID-19 virus pose special problems?
“Perhaps, there’s something odd about the virus itself, specifically in its antigens, viral proteins that can be recognized by the immune system, and that causes immunity to wear off. Alternatively, coronaviruses may somehow fiddle with the immune system itself, and that could explain the drop-off in immunity over time, Andino-Pavlovsky said. To ensure a vaccine can grant long-term immunity against SARS-CoV-2, scientists will have to address these questions. In the short term, they’ll have to design experiments to challenge the immune system after vaccination and test its resilience through time, Jacobs said. In a mouse model, such studies could take “at least a couple of months,” he said. Scientists cannot conduct an equivalent experiment in humans, but can instead compare natural infection rates in vaccinated people to those of unvaccinated people in a long-term study. “When you have the luxury, you look at this for five years, 10 years to see what happens,” Andino-Pavlovsky added.
How will they ensure that a COVID-19 vaccine is safe?
“Unlike an antiviral treatment for COVID-19 that can be given to patients already infected with the virus, a vaccine must be tested in diverse populations of healthy people. “Because you give it to healthy people, there’s an enormous pressure to make sure it’s absolutely safe,” Andino-Pavlovsky said. What’s more, the vaccine must work well for people of many ages, including the elderly, whose weakened immune systems place them at heightened risk of serious COVID-19 infection. “Initially, safety studies will be done in small numbers of people,” likely fewer than 100, Jacobs said. A vaccine may be approved based on these small studies, which can take place over a few months, and then continually monitored as larger populations become vaccinated, he added. “That’s just my guess.”
[Note: The high and growing death toll from COVID-19 may justify some speed-up and short-cuts].
So what are the various stages that a vaccine must undergo, before it can be mass produced?
“Any potential vaccine will need to pass a safety trial, known as a Phase 1 trial, which also helps determine the needed dose. The next step is a larger trial in 100 to 300 people, called a Phase 2, which looks for some biological activity, but can’t say for sure if the drug is effective. If a vaccine candidate prompts a promising immune response in Phase 2 clinical trials, after passing safety tests in Phase 1, it’s possible that the FDA could approve such a vaccine for emergency use “before the 18-month period that I said,” Fauci said in the JAMA interview. “If you get neutralizing antibodies,” which latch onto specific structures on the virus and neutralize it, “I think you can keep moving forward on it,” Jacobs said. Normally, a vaccine would then enter Phase 3 clinical trials, which include hundreds to thousands of people.
“So adding up these steps, each of which will likely take 3 to 6 months, it’s very unlikely we would be able to find a vaccine that is safe and effective in less than 12 months — even if many of these steps could be done in parallel.
Can it be mass-produced? How?
“Then comes the issue of manufacturing billions and billions of doses of a new vaccine whose ingredients we don’t yet know. Bill Gates has said that the Gates Foundation will fund the construction of factories for seven coronavirus vaccine candidates, equipping the sites to produce a wide variety of vaccine types, Business Insider reported.
[Neanderthal Conservative groups have attacked Gates, making false and inflammatory claims about him].
“Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying, ‘OK, which vaccine works?’ and then building the factory,” Gates said. Even if a fairly promising vaccine surfaces by 2021, and can be mass-produced, the search won’t end there. “Especially with trying to get something out this quickly, we may not get the best vaccine out there right away,” Jacobs said. Ideally, an initial vaccine will grant immunity for at least one to two years, but should that immunity wane, a longer lasting vaccine may have to be deployed. Historically, so-called live attenuated vaccines that contain a weakened virus tend to perform most reliably over extended periods of time, Andino-Pavlovsky said.
“That may be what we need in the long run,” he said. And research into coronavirus immunity should continue, regardless, “not only for COVID-19, but for the next coronavirus that comes.
Make It Smaller, Cheaper, Better:
Democratizing Ultrasound
By Shlomo Maital
Take a useful product. Make it smaller, cheaper. MUCH smaller and cheaper. In doing so you make it accessible to those in poorer countries.
A lot of world-changing innovation works that way. Take for instance Butterfly (New York Times, front page, April 18 2019). “Hope in the palm of a hand”. Butterfly Network is a Connecticut company that makes a hand-held ultrasound scanner called the Butterfly iQ. It is about the size of an electric shaver. It is battery-powered, and is based not on piezoelectric crystals (used in nearly all ultrasound devices) but instead on microchips, far more durable. Butterly iQ won’t break if dropped. The target market: doctors and nurses who can afford a $2,000 device that “fits in a coat pocket and is as portable as a stethoscope”.
The NYT article, by Donald McNeil Jr. and Esther Ruth Mbabazi, shows how this device has vast potential in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where conventional X-ray machines are miles and miles away and are often inaccessible. The article shows how Dr. Michael Cherniak counselled Rodgers Ssekawoko Muhumuza, a Ugandan clinical officer he was training, in using the device, to diagnose early-stage pneumonia in a six-year-old. Rodgers prescribed antibiotics, and Dr. Cherniak approved.
I was privileged to work with GE Ultrasound, in Haifa Israel, which began as an Israeli startup acquired by GE. The entrepreneurs initially developed a PC-based ultrasound device, cheaper and smaller by far than the existing device. They did this based on faith, that PC computing power would ultimately be sufficient – and it was. The key was image-processing software, that sharpened the ultrasound image a lot, developed by a genius software engineer. Next, the development team converted the device to work on a laptop. And now, in the US, Butterfly has slimmed it all down to the size of a mobile phone.
Innovation is often not just about new inventions, but about making existing inventions accessible to those with low income, and low accessibility to urban medical care and devices. Almost by definition, things that are smaller are often also cheaper, and of course easier to transport.
Kudos to Butterfly and founder Jonathan Rothberg. He pursued the goal initially, because one of his daughters had kidney cysts that required regular ultrasound scans. One of his backers was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “Two-thirds of the world gets no imaging at all,” Rothberg noted. “When you put something on a chip, the price goes down and you democratize it.”
Effective Altruism: If Only We ALL Practiced It
By Shlomo Maital
Altruism is defined as a philosophy of doing good for others. It is an admirable change-the-world framework for living. But is it enough? Philosopher Peter Singer (in a superb TED talk – you can look it up) proposes effective altruism – which applies evidence, logic and reason to find the most effective and efficient ways to help others. Yes, do good – and do it in the most powerful impactful way, by carefully planning what and how you do.
Singer’s example: a seeing eye dog costs $40,000 to train, and to teach the blind person how to make best use of it. Highly worthy. But millions in poor countries are blind, due to trachoma and cataracts – both of which are curable and fixable. You could bring sight to perhaps 200 blind people with the resources used to train one guide dog. Altruism is providing seeing eye dogs. Effective altruism is weighing the best use of those resources.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have given billions to medical charities. Gates’ Foundation has saved an estimated 5 million lives – and enriched the lives of millions more – by rigidly applying effective altruism to their resources and projects, focusing on illnesses that are widespread, afflict the poor, and that can be cured or mitigated. Like malaria.
What if millions of people worldwide would embrace altruism? And then, what if we could supply a very simple straightforward set of guidelines, about how to be efficient in our altruistic behavior? Our time, resources and energy are limited. How can we do the most good with them? And even before asking those questions – how can the notion of ‘effective altruism’ be ‘sold’ to the masses?
Today everything is becoming ‘evidence-based’. Perhaps doing good for others, too, should be more evidence-based. When we combine the powerful emotion of giving, and the impactful logic of rational decision-making, the result can be immensely beneficial to humanity.
8 Billionaires = 3.6 Billion Poor
By Shlomo Maital
Oxfam is a British-based philanthropic organization that provides support for the poor world-wide. It is politically identified with the Left. From time to time Oxfam generates reports showing the extreme inequality of world wealth distribution. The latest report claims that only 8 billionaires, the richest people in the world, hold wealth equal to the entire holdings of wealth of the poorest 3.6 billion people, or half the world’s population.
Not long ago, this annual report claimed that 62 billionaires = half the world’s population. So the rich have grown richer, the poor have grown poorer. Indeed, half the world has little or no wealth at all, per capita. Oxfam uses Forbes Billionaire List data, and publishes its report to coincide with the Davos World Economic Forum, where the world’s makers and shakers meet.
Here are the eight super-billionaires.
1.Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, led the list with a net worth of $75 billion. He is scheduled to speak at the forum in Davos this year. 2. Amancio Ortega Gaona, the Spanish founder of the fashion company Inditex, best known for its oldest and biggest brand, Zara, has a net worth of $67 billion. 3. Warren E. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, $60.8 billion. 4. Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican telecommunications magnate, $50 billion. 5. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, $45.2 billion. 6. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s creator, $44.6 billion. 7. Lawrence J. Ellison, the founder of Oracle, $43.6 billion. 8. Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and founder of the media and financial-data giant Bloomberg L.L.P., $40 billion.
What can we learn from the Oxfam report, even if it is partly inaccurate?
* None involve inherited wealth. All did it on mainly their own. * Gates and Buffett are committed to giving away all their wealth and their foundations are well on the way to doing this. * Bloomberg became a highly effective mayor of New York, and was close to running for President. * A majority built wealth in the world of high-tech. * Some have created a lot of jobs: Zara, a retailer, and even Amazon, which is now hiring.
With a billionaire now President of the United States, it is time to ponder these questions: Is it healthy for society that individuals can accumulate vast fortunes? Do they use tax avoidance to build wealth, and is their philanthropy to some degree part of tax avoidance? Should there be a strong inheritance tax, so the playing field is levelled at least once a generation?
How to be an Evangelist:
From Guy Kawasaki
By Shlomo Maital
Guy Kawasaki is the legendary marketing guru for the Macintosh computer. Apple hired him, even though he was in the jewellery business at the time, had a psychology degree from Stanford, and knew next to nothing about personal computers.
Why did Apple hire him? Because – he believed. He felt that MS-DOS, and Microsoft in general, were “crimes against humanity”. He felt that “Bill Gates brought darkness to the world.” He set out “to right a wrong”. He was in his words – an evangelist.
The Greek roots of the word evangelist mean “one who brings or proclaims good news”. The word has come to mean someone who preaches the Christian gospels.
Kawasaki became a VC (garage.com), and how is Chief Evangelist for Canva, a startup whose mission is to democratize design. In the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, Kawasaki sets out the rules for becoming an evangelist. Here they are:
- Schmooz. Build social connections. It’s easier to evangelize people you know.
- Get out of your cubicle. Network. Talk to people.
- Ask questions. Initiate a conversation, then – shut up and listen.
- Follow up. Make sure that you follow up on a meeting, within a day.
- E-mail effectively: Optimize your subject lines, and shorten your text. Always respond quickly.
- Make it easy to get in touch.
- Do favors. If you do things for others, they are more receptive to listen to you.
- Public speaking: An evangelist must master the art of public speaking. Kawasaki says it took him 20 years to master the art and get comfortable.
- Deliver quality content. 80% of the battle is having something worthwhile, interesting, perhaps novel, certainly meaningful, to say. It is NOT just about how you say it, but what you say.
- Omit the sales pitch. If people think you are pitching, you’re dead. Don’t.
- Customize. Use the first few minutes to directly address the audience, show them you’ve done your homework, know who they are and what they seek.
- Focus on entertaining. If people are entertained, they are more receptive to the information you bring.
- Tell stories. Make it personal. Tell stories about yourself and others, that support your message.
- Circulate in the audience beforehand. Make contact with them, especially with those in the front rows.
- Control what you can. Try to speak at the beginning of an event; choose a small room, if you can. A packed room is better than a half-empty one.
- Practice. You need to give a speech 20 times to get good at it.
Rules for Social Media:
- Offer value. Share good stuff – of four kinds: information, analysis, assistance, entertainment.
- Be interesting.
- Take chances. Don’t be afraid to take strong stands, express feelings.
- Keep it brief.
- Be a mensch.
- Add drama.
- Tempt with headlines. How to… top 10, etc.
- Use hashtags.
- Stay active: 3-20 different posts a day.
“Evangelism is not about self-promotion. It’s aobut sharing the best of what you, your team and your organization produce with others who can benefit. “
If You Thought Washington Is Dysfunctional – Wait ‘til You Read Gates!
By Shlomo Maital
I prefer to write blogs about books I’ve read. And it’s super-easy today to acquire any book – it takes 30 seconds to download an Amazon e-book. But today I want to write about a book I haven’t yet read, but will soon – based on a review. Because the content is so terribly disturbing. America is still the leader of the Free World – and it is rudderless, incompetent, cynical, according to the consummate insider Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary.
Gates’ book is called Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. Gates served for many years in the CIA, headed the CIA for two years, then was Defense Secretary under both Bush and Obama (December 18, 2006 – July 1, 2011). In reviewing his book, national security expert Thomas E. Ricks calls it “probably one of the best Washington memoirs ever.” Ricks doubts Gates can ever again hold a Federal govt. job, or even want to.
Here are a few juicy tidbits: “VP Joe Biden is a ‘comical motormouth’…who “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”. Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel: “hell on wheels…a whirling dervish with attention-deficit disorder”. Tom Donilon (Obama’s 2nd national security advisor): “suspicious and distrustful of the uniformed military leadership”; Congress: “truly ugly”…parochial, self-interested, rude and bullying. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader: “small-time hack who phones Gates to lobby for Defense Dept. funding for research on irritable bowel syndrome”. (didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, Gates says). Senator Nancy Pelosi, “said she wasn’t interested” when Gates tried to state the facts on the ground in Iraq. Senator Patty Murray, Washington, “read from prepared notes…no one had bothered to remove the Boeing letterhead from her talking points”. On Afghanistan and Obama: “the president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand (Afghan Pres.) Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his.” The Obama White House: “still stuck in campaign mode a year into the presidency”.
And this is just a start.
I guess most of us knew or suspected all this. But it is still disturbing to read it. No wonder “cold-blooded killers” (Gates’ description) like Russia’s Putin and Syria’s Assad are eating Obama for lunch daily.
TIMnovate 