We will have exchanged presents during December 2020, but we will also have been either locked down and prevented from meeting with loved ones. I have compassion for all of you who have been affected by the loss of family members during December too. Unfortunately you will remember this event every single year for the rest of your lives.
Our human drama on this planet is driven by our thoughts of the past and the future.
Image by Wordswag - words by Michael de Groot
In the U.K. we’re about to be told that other areas across England will be going in the highest Tier (4) of lockdown from Boxing Day, 26 December, 2020. Why is the virus spreading so fast? Okay, so we have a ‘mutant’ variant of the virus, which is causing it to spread faster. But, what we are forgetting, the only reason it is spreading faster is that the population is too close to each other, we’re not taking the rules seriously enough, in fact folks have forgotten the rules, forgotten which Tier they are in and crossing Tiers as they please. Many stories circulating of people going to other counties to drink in Pubs that are in a lower Tier. The virus can only spread when we are too close to each other and that’s been the main issue with the U.K. ever since we came out of lockdown 1.0.
The possible other reason is kids. See the image below that unfortunately confirms a rise in positive cases in kids.
And that’s why I published my latest Chalkboard Thoughts episode below.
#ItGetsLighterFromHere from Twitter
It Gets Lighter From Here is an initiative by Culture Central, a collective voice for arts & culture in the West Midlands, U.K. Please see below the explanation by Culture Central for the initiative.
21 December is the shortest day of the year. It is also the last Monday before Christmas, the start of a festive season that is likely to be seriously overshadowed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
On the night of the 21st — the Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year — we want artists and cultural institutions across the West Midlands to come together to provide multiple moments of happiness and hope under the banner: It Gets Lighter From Here.
This is why over 35 organisations are realising a number of digital micro commissions, each no more than sixty seconds long, which will be released across various social media platforms creating a region-wide celebration of hope, optimism and possibility for the future, and of the value in creativity and the arts.
The project aims to involve a huge cross-section of artists and art forms — from theatre and dance, to spoken word and music — from the most internationally renowned to the most recently emerged.
Content will be shared via the hashtag #ItGetsLighterFromHere, reaching substantial audiences and networks from across the participating organisations, artists, region and beyond.
Following the event on 21 December, the collection of work shared across social media platforms may be assembled into an online collection that will be available for sharing into 2021.
I was inspired to create my own short production based on the above initiative, I wasn’t commissioned to contribute, but I thought I would anyway.
Image by Wordswag - words by
It was the week before Christmas and the U.K. Government delivered a major U-Turn on national television telling millions of people to stay at home with a new Tier 4, which in effect means a total lockdown. Basically the same as in March 2020, but this time the country has been carved up, meaning only people in London and the Southeast of England are affected.
It was during hearing this news briefing, that the the four stages of competence or the ‘Competence Hierarchy’ came to mind. It occurred to me that the U.K. Government are still in stage 1. Watch my Chalkboard thoughts video below to see what I mean.
Well back in March 2020, nobody ever thought we would be celebrating Christmas like this. Everyone thought when we come out of lockdown, things will be back to normal, then the 2nd wave started on the continent and we were in total denial, it wouldn’t happen to us! Then the 2nd wave also started in the U.K. and 2nd lockdown came along after the Tier system didn’t work.
First it was mass testing, then it was the home test (which never happened), then came the local lockdown, track and trace, eat out to help out (super spreading events), schools back (super spreading event), universities back (super spreading event), travel abroad, don’t travel abroad, foreigners don’t have to isolate (super spreading event) foreigners don’t have to isolate, face masks don’t work (super spreading event).
It has been a total shambles by the UK government and other governments alike. You can’t blame them in some respect, they’ve never had to deal with this before, equally though they cut back on so many government services in previous years, that a pandemic project was closed down.
One of the few existential dilemmas the UK has faced over the last decade is Brexit. Somewhat paradoxically, in prioritising Brexit, government ministers dealt another blow to the UK’s preparedness for a threat whose consequences would be deadly. Training for key workers to manage a pandemic was stalled to make space for contingency plans around no-deal Brexit, while the UK missed opportunities for EU-level purchasing of PPE, and parliamentary enquiries into preparedness for infectious disease were delayed and eventually halted due to the 2019 election.
[embed]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/01/uk-global-leader-pandemics-coronavirus-covid-19-crisis-britain[/embed]
So it’s even more appropriate for this Christmas video produced and released by Politics JOE summing up precisely how our UK Government senior members of parliament have totally f…ed up the handling of the current pandemic inside the whole of the U.K.
[embed]https://youtu.be/xjG_VB-la7o[/embed]
I also wanted to produce this video made up from clips of statements made by UK advisors on the impact of face masks, which is another area which the U.K. government has got completely wrong.
[embed]https://youtu.be/ORpFJhyz_-4[/embed]
If only…
Image by Wordswag
As we were coming out of an imposed 2nd lockdown here in the U.K., the government had the foresight to announce that we would have relaxed rules between 23rd and 27th December to celebrate Christmas with family, allowing us to travel and mix with 3 other households. The guidance can be found here, please study it carefully. Since then infection rates, which had been going down have steadily been going up, so much so that many areas in the Southeast of England have had to go into Tier 3. You can learn about your own area restrictions, by going here and entering your post code.
These relaxed few days over Christmas are called ‘bubbles’and nobody in the press or so far in comedy programs has renamed these ‘bubbles’ as Christmas ‘baubles’, which would be a natural thing to do of course?
Thanks to my dear wife Clair, she came up with this other term and we rolled around the kitchen in fits of laughter!
Image by Wordswag
I’ve written often about ‘Fear & Doubt’. Those two words came to me, when I was listening to an audible book during 2019, titled, ‘The Art of Happiness’ by The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. For me it’s in this place, the place of ‘Fear & Doubt’ where all suffering in our conditioned human minds starts. If we were only able to master this mental feat then we would be saved from those demons (see picture above) that roam around in our minds.
Image by Wordswag
The U.K. is on the verge of leaving the EU without any kind of trade deal, it’ called WTO Rules, or World Trade Organisation Rules. Nice considering we were all told that by Boris Johnson the deal was ‘oven ready’. Some of you will remember Theresa May who frequently used the phrase ‘Brexit means Brexit’. But actually that’s not what it means at all. Brexit means something different for many people, for some it’s their job they will lose, for others, their business turnover will suffer, for others it means holidays will not be as convenient. I’m Dutchman and have been in the UK for over 40+ years, still have my Dutch Passport and yes I applied and received approval to stay in the UK indefinitely and I’ve never been a big fan of Brussels, however I do believe the whole Brexit matter has been unbelievably badly dealt with. So what does Brexit mean for you?
Image by Wordswag
I’ve been observing people’s enthusiasm for the vaccine, celebrating Margaret Keenan and William Shakespeare (real name) for being the first people in the world to receive the Pfizer/BionTech vaccine. As a consequence there’s this massive optimism of being able to get back to normal, whatever that might look like, whilst many nations including us in the UK, are still witnessing very high number of infections and only last night (13th March), I heard about Germany closing down, basically for Christmas and the New Year to keep infections in check. Germany was held up as a model nation for having controlled the virus, but unfortunately they also have succumbed to this dreadful pandemic.
We all have a story!
We all have the same story!
People, things, places, spaces and times may vary
We all have the same story
The story started on a different date
And we’ve met different people and yet
We all have the same story
It’s why we are all human, we’re all the same
We all have the same story
We’re born, we meet our Mum, our Dad, our siblings
Our neighbours, our teacher and our bosses
We all have the same story
We’re loved, we’re hated, we love and we hate
We all have the same story
We suffer through fear and doubt just like everyone else
We all have the same story
We have moments of joy at certain times of our lives, but they are usually short-lived
We all have the same story
We seek wealth and happiness at almost every turn of the day
We all have the same story
We rarely stay in the moment as our minds are filled with wishes
We all have the same story
We use substances to dull our minds and get highs that are always short-lived
We all have the same story
We seek fame and fortune, through our practice of some work
We all have the same story
We get to know that our work is eventually worthless as we prepare to leave this earth
We all have the same story
Our bodies break down, regardless of our efforts
We all have the same story
We crossover to wherever, based on whatever we believe
We all have the same story
It’s a sobering thought this
Knowing that we ALL have the same story
SEOUL — DEC. 9, 2020 11:23 AM
Originally published by the Los Angeles Times, link below.
Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow.
It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment in which he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in southwestern South Korea, where diners contracted the coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who became infected after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.
The results of the study, for which Lee and other epidemiologists enlisted the help of an engineer who specializes in aerodynamics, were published last week in the Journal of Korean Medical Science. The conclusions raised concerns that the widely accepted standard of six feet of social distance may not be far enough to keep people safe.
The study — adding to a growing body of evidence on airborne transmission of the virus — highlighted how South Korea’s meticulous and often invasive contact tracing regime has enabled researchers to closely track how the virus moves through populations.
“In this outbreak, the distances between infector and infected persons were … farther than the generally accepted 2 meter [6.6-foot] droplet transmission range,” the study’s authors wrote. “The guidelines on quarantine and epidemiological investigation must be updated to reflect these factors for control and prevention of COVID-19.”
KJ Seung, an infectious disease expert and chief of strategy and policy for the nonprofit Partners in Health’s Massachusetts COVID response, said the study was a reminder of the risk of indoor transmission as many nations hunker down for the winter. The official definition of a “close contact” — 15 minutes, within six feet — isn’t foolproof.
In his work on Massachusetts’ contact tracing program, he said, business owners and school administrators have fixated on the “close contact” standard, thinking just 14 minutes of exposure, or spending hours in the same room at a distance farther than six feet, is safe.
“There’s a real misconception about this in the public,” said Seung, who was not involved in the South Korea study. “They’re thinking, if I’m not a close contact, I will magically be protected.”
Seung said the study pointed to the need for contact tracers around the world to widen the net in looking for people who had potentially been infected and to alert people at lower risk that they may have been exposed.
Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who studies the transmission of viruses in the air, said the five-minute window in which the student, identified in the study as “A,” was infected was notable because the droplet was large enough to carry a viral load, but small enough to travel 20 feet through the air.
“‘A’ had to get a large dose in just five minutes, provided by larger aerosols probably about 50 microns,” she said. “Large aerosols or small droplets overlapping in that gray area can transmit disease further than one or two meters [3.3 to 6.6 feet] if you have strong airflow.”
The South Korean study began with a mystery. When a high school senior in Jeonju tested positive for the virus on June 17, epidemiologists were stumped because the city hadn’t had a coronavirus case in two months. North Jeolla province, where Jeonju is located, hadn’t had one for a month. The girl hadn’t traveled out of the region in recent weeks and had largely gone from home to school and back.
Contact tracers turned to the country’s Epidemic Investigation Support System, a digital platform introduced in South Korea amid the pandemic that allows investigators to access cellphone location information and credit card data of infected individuals in as little as 10 minutes.
Cellphone GPS data revealed that the student had briefly overlapped with another known coronavirus patient from a different city and province altogether, a door-to-door saleswoman who had visited Jeonju. Their connection was a first-floor restaurant on the afternoon of June 12 — for just five minutes.
Authorities in the city of Daejeon, where the door-to-door saleswoman was visiting from, said the woman did not tell contact tracers she’d visited Jeonju, about an hour’s drive away, where her company held a meeting with 80 people on the sixth floor of the building with the restaurant.
Lee, a professor at the Jeonbuk National University Medical School who has also been helping local authorities carry out epidemiological investigations, went to the restaurant and was surprised by how far the two had been sitting. CCTV recordings showed the two never spoke, or touched any surfaces in common — door handles, cups or cutlery. From the sway of a light fixture, he could tell the air conditioning unit in the ceiling was on at the time.
Lee and his team re-created the conditions in the restaurant — researchers sat at tables as stand-ins — and measured the airflow. The high school student and a third diner who was infected had been sitting directly along the flow of air from an air conditioner; other diners who had their back to the airflow were not infected. Through genome sequencing, the team confirmed the three patients’ virus genomic types matched.
“Incredibly, despite sitting a far distance away, the airflow came down the wall and created a valley of wind. People who were along that line were infected,” Lee said. “We concluded this was a droplet transmission, and beyond” 6.6 feet.
The pattern of infection in the restaurant showed it was transmission through small droplets or larger aerosols either landing on the face or being breathed in, said Marr, the Virginia Tech professor who was not involved in the study. The measured air velocity in the restaurant, which did not have windows or a ventilation system, was about 3.3 feet per second, the equivalent of a blowing fan.
“Eating indoors at a restaurant is one of the riskiest things you can do in a pandemic,” she said. “Even if there is distancing, as this shows and other studies show, the distancing is not enough.”
The study was published at a time when South Korea, like many other countries, is on edge amid a new wave of coronavirus infections, with daily case rates hovering around 600 in recent days. Seoul, the capital, this week began requiring restaurants to close by 9 p.m., limiting coffee shops to takeout only and forcing clubs and karaoke bars to shut down.
The research echoed the findings of a July study out of Guangzhou, China, which looked at infections among three families who dined at a restaurant along the flow of air conditioning at tables that were three feet apart, overlapping for about an hour. Ten of the diners tested positive for the coronavirus. Contact tracers in South Korea similarly mapped out a large outbreak at a Starbucks in Paju in August, when 27 people were infected by a woman sitting under a second-floor ceiling air conditioning unit.
Seung, of Partners in Health, said by retracing infection routes epidemiological investigators in South Korea had helped researchers worldwide better understand the coronavirus’ spread.
“I showed it to my team doing contact tracing in Massachusetts, and their jaws are dropping,” Seung said. “We know how hard it is to do something like that — it’s impressive.”
[embed]https://www.latimes.com/people/victoria-kim[/embed]
Victoria Kim is the Seoul correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. She previously covered state and federal courts, worked on investigative projects and reported on Southern California’s Korean community.
Republished by Michael de Groot.
This is a true statement;
More people have mobile phones than toilets!
This is is quite incredible and I discovered this statement from a toilet roll wrapper, which I was undoing whilst being in there myself. Evidence below!
And they continue;
Think about that. You’re probably sitting on a toilet now, you lucky thing you! We’re keen to make sure everyone in the world is just as lucky, which is why we donate 50% of our profits to help build toilets for those in need. Kapow!
[embed]https://blog.whogivesacrap.org/home/goodnews/our-donation-philosophy[/embed]
That’s right, $5.85 million Aussie dollars. No need to get out your calculators — that’s over $4 million in the US, or £3.2 million. If you’ve been keeping track at home, this donation is five times greater than last year’s and it more than doubles our total donations to date (now over $8.3 million AUD). It’s incredible! And it’s all thanks to you. Without your support, we’d never be able to reach this milestone. So well done, you!
We know the first few months of 2020 were a wild time for the toilet paper business, but we’ve actually been setting ourselves up for a donation of this size since we started the business.
Our co-founder and CEO, Simon, famously had the idea for Who Gives A Crap in the bathroom, but that’s not the beginning of our story.
During his time at university, Simon worked with a variety of NGOs in developing countries. While there were heaps of organisations doing incredible work, there was a consistent problem — a lack of sustainable funding. As a result, their scalability was limited and a lot of time was wasted trying to source funding.
Simon decided to use his understanding of economics (he’s a finance dude) to help organisations get the money they need. He thought it would make the most sense to use the purchase of everyday objects as ways for people to give back. This idea needed a scalable model that made sure impact increased as profits grew.
That’s exactly why we donate 50% of our profits. Who Gives A Crap is built on the idea that we all can make the world a better place (cheesy, we know) by helping people make little choices that give back. We’ve always wanted to be sure that our success as a business was directly tied to our impact on the world. In fact, it’s our business model! And luckily, it’s all working out. More people are wiping with us than ever before, and together we’re doing amazing things.
These guys are serious about giving back and thanks to my wife Clair who found them. I am happy for a number of very important reasons, now don’t laugh!
Now if you would like to use the BEST toilet paper in the world knowing that you will not only be looking after your own toilet needs and ensure you never RUN out, but you will also be providing potentially millions of people around the world with toilet facilities who don’t have it right now, with every wipe you make!
ORDER YOUR PAPER WIPES AND RECEIVE £5 (INC. OTHER CURRENCIES) DISCOUNT:
https://www.talkable.com/x/aGvzMs
Now Who Gives A Crap? Well I do for sure!
Following, from a distance, the behaviour of THE most powerful man on the planet, Donald Trump, made me think of how an 8 year old would behave.
The trouble is he’s an adult, supposedly, but actually does behave like an 8 year old.
Just incredible to witness.
The UK government announced the lockdown tiers (tears) for England on Thursday 26 November 2020.
The difference being this time the tiers are tougher and the rule stricter, which in effect means that the majority of us in England only, like 55 million out of 67 million people, are still in a partial or even a full lockdown.
[embed]https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-restriction-tiers-what-you-need-to-know[/embed]
Apart from the Christmas let up for 5 days, 23 December until 27 December, with the potential for massive virus spreading, the duration of the new tougher tiers is unknown. Considering that furlough pay for employees will continue until the end of March, it’s very likely that these new tiers will stay in place until then. We might be hopeful that the vaccine will save us, but my guess is it won’t as yet. First it has to be approved, yes as of today it hasn’t yet been approved, I bet some hurdles will need to be overcome there.
Secondly, it will be given to the most vulnerable citizens in society and we will have to evaluate how they react to it, could they get unnecessarily ill, it could delay things even more. Thirdly not everyone will want to be inoculated, at least 30% won’t and that includes me!
Inevitably we will get imposed rules by companies and maybe government to suggest that unless you have the vaccine your life will potentially be limited. No problem, I’m happy to live as a monk!
[embed]https://twitter.com/stayingaliveuk/status/1331658454365302786?s=21[/embed]
Throughout this pandemic I’ve predicted the way things would unfold and I’ve pretty much been right every single time. The main reason for this is the trend. People believe that when good news is delivered like the vaccine or numbers falling that we can get back to normal. The fact is the vaccine isn’t even being rolled out as yet, for god sake it hasn’t even been approved for roll-out!
The level of infections is 4 to 5 times higher compared to what we experienced in the UK in March and April. How can you possibly believe that this means we could relax rules? The trend also has been that infections spread first in the younger population and then spreads into the older population, the most vulnerable etc. So think about it, as students from universities, who have been seriously contagious, are being told to go home for Christmas and mix with their friends and relatives at home, the spread will start all over, leading to another spike in January and February, even before the vaccine is able to be rolled out.
[embed]https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-restriction-tiers-what-you-need-to-know[/embed]
“The Trend is your Friend. The trend is your friend” is one of the best known sayings in stock market trading, although its message is incomplete. The full version should be, “The trend is your friend, until the end when it bends.”
https://education.howthemarketworks.com/the-trend-is-your-friend
My prediction has always been that we’re on a 3–5 year journey with the Pandemic and an even longer journey with the recession, which will be a 7–9 year journey. Society needs to be totally transformed to a new way of learning and working. We will definitely do more things online, which means learning and working will change forever. This means a massive impact on the way that high streets work too. We have been overstepped for many decades. Our parents and their parents never needed so much stuff in their lives as we do today.
It means more retailers, brands and shops will go bust and be removed from the high street. The biggest winner in the high street has been the internet and the biggest shop in the world is called Amazon. That’s where most people have turned to buy their stuff. Home delivery has exploded. The UK has always lead the way with online shopping and now it is likely to have a further exponential increase.
My advice is stay calm and carry on by being remote from other people. Become comfortable with you closest loved ones and your own company, because you will be with yourself and them for a very long time to come.
Stay well and be safe.
How are you dealing with this Pandemic? I read a line on LinkedIn by someone who’s suffered with mental health in the past. He suggested that during these weird times we must avoid asking how are you and instead ask, how are you feeling? Personally, my answer would be; ‘It’s different that’s for sure’, and avoid answering the ‘feeling’ bit altogether and this might be the same for most?
Now that Winter is nearly upon us in the Western Hemisphere, we’re retreating more into our caves, don’t you think? Human nature as it is, is always wishing for better times, good news, miracle cures and to get back to the good (or bad) old days, but of course it never turns out that way. Usually there are potholes in the road, diversions on the route and inevitably many many mistakes by government officials along the way. Above all it will never go back to how it was, society has changed forever and beyond recognition. Then we have the; ‘To vaccine or Not to vaccine — what a massive question!’ — so many believing it will work, when they haven’t even published the data properly. After all, commercial companies need their stock value to go up during the pandemic, so of course they will make an announcement that will guarantee that, even the rest of the stock market responded favourably. Call me cynical, yes of course I am. Early on in the Pandemic I kept a daily Journal on Medium, (to help my own mental wellbeing), which I then changed to weekly and then I stopped it altogether a few weeks ago, it was exhausting to do in the end but at least I have something to look back at in years to come. 🥴
As a storyteller, I’m always thinking of better ways to tell stories for our customers. In the past couple of years, we’ve experimented more frequently with a tiny bit of 2D-Animation within our Whiteboard Animations, for example giving characters a little bit of movement in their faces, blinking eyes for example, making them come to life more. It has worked, our customers have been genuinely pleased with the results. Of course it takes more time to produce and time is money, unfortunately. Is business currently kind to you and your teams, well I hope it is? I bet it has been tough, it certainly has been a struggle in our studio, not many projects flowing in during the past 8 months and my small business qualifies for exactly zero handouts from the government. That’s why I’m reaching out really. Whiteboard Animations could be a great vehicle for delivering training, education and explainers. Explaining how things have to change for the future or how business has to be done differently, whether it is to educate customers and colleagues. It could be to get a mental health message out. If you can think of any opportunities at all, either in your organisation or you spot something elsewhere please do keep us in mind. So much appreciated.
Did you know that we did cartoons? We created this one, showing Boris Johnson (The UK PM) on a mountain of toilet rolls, at the time that rumours spread about something called ‘lockdown’. We thought people got over hoarding and panic buying after (UK) lockdown 1.0, but exactly the same happened during lockdown 2.0. I don’t get it, why toilet rolls? Anyway, these cartoons can be animated too if needed, if you click on the image it will play on YouTube. A 20-seconds cartoon can be even more effective compared to a longer 90 or 120 seconds animation and of course much cheaper too.
I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a showreel to demonstrate a few of our productions. Seems fairly basic I know!. Anyway we’ve done one now and you can watch it in all it’s glory below, just click on the play button. Feel free to share it widely, every bit of promotion helps during these dark days.
This article was an email (which I sent to 50+ customers and prospects) and ended up much longer than I had intended, so apologies for that. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, let’s do so, just connect and feel free to look me up on Twitter, follow us on YouTube and maybe have a read on Medium, my blogging platform of choice.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far, I know there are a lot of distractions around and I don’t know about you, I’ve been inundated with emails about Covid PPE. Anyway, stay focussed, stay well, stay realistic and above all stay safe please.
I sincerely appreciated your past business or past interest and maybe one day we can either repeat or create some business together. Always happy to Zoom — link below to schedule one.
Best, M ツ
Michael de Groot
Chief Storyteller
Staying Alive UK - Zoom with me
The following text contained within has been copied in it’s entirety from:
https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/rna-vaccines
RNA based vaccines, which are relatively quick and inexpensive to make and may be safer to use could herald more rapid control over the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. This policy briefing summarises the essentials.
Policy briefing
Vaccination is one of the major success stories of modern medicine, greatly reducing the incidence of infectious diseases such as measles, and eradicating others, such as smallpox. Conventional vaccine approaches have not been as effective against rapidly evolving pathogens like influenza or emerging disease threats such as the Ebola or Zika viruses. RNA based vaccines could have an impact in these areas due to their shorter manufacturing times and greater effectiveness. Beyond infectious diseases, RNA vaccines have potential as novel therapeutic options for major diseases such as cancer.
Summary
Unlike a normal vaccine, RNA vaccines work by introducing an mRNA sequence (the molecule which tells cells what to build) which is coded for a disease specific antigen, once produced within the body, the antigen is recognised by the immune system, preparing it to fight the real thing
RNA vaccines are faster and cheaper to produce than traditional vaccines, and a RNA based vaccine is also safer for the patient, as they are not produced using infectious elements
Production of RNA vaccines is laboratory based, and the process could be standardised and scaled, allowing quick responses to large outbreaks and epidemics
Most current research is into RNA vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer, for which there are several early-stage clinical trials, there is also some early research into the potential of RNA vaccines for allergies
There is still a lot of work to be done before mRNA vaccines can become standard treatments, in the meantime, we need a better understanding of their potential side effects, and more evidence of their long term efficacy
What are RNA vaccines and how do they work?
Conventional vaccines usually contain inactivated disease-causing organisms or proteins made by the pathogen (antigens), which work by mimicking the infectious agent. They stimulate the body’s immune response, so it is primed to respond more rapidly and effectively if exposed to the infectious agent in the future.
RNA vaccines use a different approach that takes advantage of the process that cells use to make proteins: cells use DNA as the template to make messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules, which are then translated to build proteins. An RNA vaccine consists of an mRNA strand that codes for a disease-specific antigen. Once the mRNA strand in the vaccine is inside the body’s cells, the cells use the genetic information to produce the antigen. This antigen is then displayed on the cell surface, where it is recognised by the immune system.
How are RNA vaccines produced and administered?
A major advantage of RNA vaccines is that RNA can be produced in the laboratory from a DNA template using readily available materials, less expensively and faster than conventional vaccine production, which can require the use of chicken eggs or other mammalian cells.
RNA vaccines can be delivered using a number of methods: via needle-syringe injections or needle-free into the skin; via injection into the blood, muscle, lymph node or directly into organs; or via a nasal spray. The optimal route for vaccine delivery is not yet known. The exact manufacturing and delivery process of RNA vaccines can vary depending on the type.
Types of RNA vaccine
Non-replicating mRNA
The simplest type of RNA vaccine, an mRNA strand is packaged and delivered to the body, where it is taken up by the body’s cells to make the antigen.
In vivo self-replicating mRNA
The pathogen-mRNA strand is packaged with additional RNA strands that ensure it will be copied once the vaccine is inside a cell. This means that greater quantities of the antigen are made from a smaller amount of vaccine, helping to ensure a more robust immune response.
In vitro dendritic cell non-replicating mRNA vaccine
Dendritic cells are immune cells that can present antigens on their cell surface to other types of immune cells to help stimulate an immune response. These cells are extracted from the patient’s blood, transfected with the RNA vaccine, then given back to the patient to stimulate an immune reaction.
Benefits
Benefits of mRNA vaccines over conventional approaches are1:
Safety: RNA vaccines are not made with pathogen particles or inactivated pathogen, so are non-infectious. RNA does not integrate itself into the host genome and the RNA strand in the vaccine is degraded once the protein is made.
Efficacy: early clinical trial results indicate that these vaccines generate a reliable immune response and are well-tolerated by healthy individuals, with few side effects.
Production: vaccines can be produced more rapidly in the laboratory in a process that can be standardised, which improves responsiveness to emerging outbreaks.
Important challenges
The methods to make mRNA vaccines can be very effective. However, there are technical challenges to overcome to ensure these vaccines work appropriately:
Unintended effects: the mRNA strand in the vaccine may elicit an unintended immune reaction. To minimise this the mRNA vaccine sequences are designed to mimic those produced by mammalian cells.
Delivery: delivering the vaccine effectively to cells is challenging since free RNA in the body is quickly broken down. To help achieve delivery, the RNA strand is incorporated into a larger molecule to help stabilise it and/or packaged into particles or liposomes.
Storage: many RNA vaccines, like conventional vaccines, need to be frozen or refrigerated. Work is ongoing to reliably produce vaccines that can be stored outside the cold chain, since these will be much more suitable for use in countries with limited or no refrigeration facilities.
How could RNA vaccines be used for human health?
The most active areas of research into RNA vaccines are infectious diseases and cancer where there is research ongoing as well as early-stage clinical trials. Work into the use of RNA vaccines to treat allergy is still at the early research stage2.
Infectious diseases
Researchers using conventional approaches have struggled to develop effective vaccines against a number of pathogens, particularly viruses, that cause both acute (Influenza, Ebola, Zika) and chronic (HIV-1, herpes simplex virus) infection. RNA vaccines are being explored as a way to more rapidly and cheaply produce vaccines for these diseases, particularly in response to emerging outbreaks. Clinical trials have been carried out or are ongoing on mRNA vaccines for influenza, cytomegalovirus, HIV-1, rabies and Zika virus.
Case study: A recent study3 explored the use of programmable self-replicating RNA vaccines, delivered in a nanoparticle, for a range of infectious diseases including Ebola virus, H1N1 Influenza and Toxoplasma gondii, which were effective in mice. These vaccines can be manufactured in approximately one week and made against a range of diseases, demonstrating potential terms of swift response to disease outbreaks.
Cancer vaccines
Cancer vaccines are a form of immunotherapy, where the vaccine triggers the immune system into targeting the cancer. Both dendritic cell vaccines and personalised cancer vaccines, where the RNA sequence in the vaccine is designed to code for cancer-specific antigens, are being explored. Over 50 clinical trials are listed on clinicaltrials.gov for RNA vaccines in a number of cancers, including blood cancers, melanoma, glioblastoma (brain cancer) and prostate cancer.
Case study: Researchers sequenced the genomes of tumours from patients with melanoma. They made RNAs coding for mutant proteins, specific to the patients’ cancers, that could generate an immune response and made these into patient-specific vaccines. Eight out of thirteen people vaccinated stayed tumour free up to two years later.
RNA vaccines – who’s involved?
There are a number of companies and initiatives with an interest in RNA vaccines including the Merit Consortium, which is a European initiative to develop cancer vaccines, while UniVax is a research collaboration to develop a universal influenza vaccine. Companies such as Moderna Therapeutics, CureVac and BioNTech, are involved in phase I trials of RNA vaccines in cancer and infectious disease. These companies are also exploring the broader use of RNA therapeutics for diseases where important proteins are missing or defective and mRNA treatments could be used to express a functional copy of the protein.
Harnessing RNA vaccines for health – what are the challenges and key considerations?
Research and clinical trials: further research is needed to address technical hurdles such as vaccine stability and delivery. It is not yet certain which production method(s) are currently the best. Clinical trial data is limited – more long-term studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of RNA vaccines.
Production: vaccine production is currently small scale and it is not clear if current methods are capable of epidemic-level vaccine production.
Resources: the personalised approach for cancer vaccines is time and resource intensive and work is needed to determine if this approach is cost-effective.
Safety: better understanding of vaccine adverse effects is needed – these can include inflammation or autoimmune reactions.
Pardi N, Hogan MJ, Porter FW, et al. mRNA vaccines – a new era in vaccinology. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018; 17(4): 261–279.
Weiss R, Scheiblhofer S, Thalhamer, J. Generation and Evaluation of Prophylactic mRNA Vaccines Against Allergy. Methods Mol Biol. 2017; 1499: 123–139.
Chahal JS, Kahn OF, Cooper CL, et al. Dendrimer-RNA nanoparticles generate protective immunity against lethal Ebola, H1N1 influenza, and Toxoplasma gondii challenges with a single dose. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2016; 113(29): E4133–42.
Sahin U, Derhovanessian E, Miller M, et al. Personalized RNA mutanome vaccines mobilize poly-specific therapeutic immunity against cancer. Nature. 2017; 547(7662): 222–226.
https://www.phgfoundation.org/documents/rna-vaccines-an-introduction-briefing-note.pdf
Things are moving fast, before me even being able to publish this article, another vaccine company Moderna came out with their announcement about their vaccine and how it’s 95% effective! Well this is the new arms race, that’s for sure.
[embed]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54949799[/embed]
Happy lockdown were ever you are in the world, because I’m sure there will be at least one in operation somewhere in the world for the next 3–5 years.
Success!
How are you dealing with this Pandemic? I read a line on LinkedIn by someone who’s suffered with mental health in the past. He suggested that during these weird times we must avoid asking how are you and instead ask, how are you feeling? Personally, my answer would be; ‘It’s different that’s for sure’, and avoid answering the ‘feeling’ bit altogether and this might be the same for most?
Now that Winter is nearly upon us in the Western Hemisphere, we’re retreating more into our caves, don’t you think? Human nature as it is, is always wishing for better times, good news, miracle cures and to get back to the good (or bad) old days, but of course it never turns out that way. Usually there are potholes in the road, diversions on the route and inevitably many many mistakes by government officials along the way. Above all it will never go back to how it was, society has changed forever and beyond recognition. Then we have the; ‘To vaccine or Not to vaccine — what a massive question!’ — so many believing it will work, when they haven’t even published the data properly. After all, commercial companies need their stock value to go up during the pandemic, so of course they will make an announcement that will guarantee that, even the rest of the stock market responded favourably. Call me cynical, yes of course I am. Early on in the Pandemic I kept a daily Journal on Medium, (to help my own mental wellbeing), which I then changed to weekly and then I stopped it altogether a few weeks ago, it was exhausting to do in the end but at least I have something to look back at in years to come. 🥴
As a storyteller, I’m always thinking of better ways to tell stories for our customers. In the past couple of years, we’ve experimented more frequently with a tiny bit of 2D-Animation within our Whiteboard Animations, for example giving characters a little bit of movement in their faces, blinking eyes for example, making them come to life more. It has worked, our customers have been genuinely pleased with the results. Of course it takes more time to produce and time is money, unfortunately. Is business currently kind to you and your teams, well I hope it is? I bet it has been tough, it certainly has been a struggle in our studio, not many projects flowing in during the past 8 months and my small business qualifies for exactly zero handouts from the government. That’s why I’m reaching out really. Whiteboard Animations could be a great vehicle for delivering training, education and explainers. Explaining how things have to change for the future or how business has to be done differently, whether it is to educate customers and colleagues. It could be to get a mental health message out. If you can think of any opportunities at all, either in your organisation or you spot something elsewhere please do keep us in mind. So much appreciated.
Did you know that we did cartoons? We created this one, showing Boris Johnson (The UK PM) on a mountain of toilet rolls, at the time that rumours spread about something called ‘lockdown’. We thought people got over hoarding and panic buying after (UK) lockdown 1.0, but exactly the same happened during lockdown 2.0. I don’t get it, why toilet rolls? Anyway, these cartoons can be animated too if needed, if you click on the image it will play on YouTube. A 20-seconds cartoon can be even more effective compared to a longer 90 or 120 seconds animation and of course much cheaper too.
[embed]https://youtu.be/3SUPgZcLjC4[/embed]
I’m slightly embarrassed to say that I didn’t have a showreel to demonstrate a few of our productions. Seems fairly basic I know!. Anyway we’ve done one now and you can watch it in all it’s glory below, just click on the play button. Feel free to share it widely, every bit of promotion helps during these dark days.
[embed]https://youtu.be/VhjUTy-CLyE[/embed]
This email ended up much longer than I had intended, so apologies for that. If we’re not already connected on LinkedIn, let’s do so, just click the icon below and feel free to explore the other icons to connect on Twitter, follow us on YouTube and maybe have a read on Medium, my blogging platform of choice.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far, I know there are a lot of distractions around and I don’t know about you, I’ve been inundated with emails about Covid PPE. Anyway, stay focussed, stay well, stay realistic and above all stay safe please.
I sincerely appreciated your past business or past interest and maybe one day we can either repeat or create some business together. Always happy to Zoom — link below to schedule one.
Best, M ツ
Michael de Groot
Chief Storyteller at Staying Alive UK
Zoom with me
Is it really true? Well if you listen to his narcissistic psychopathic comments, then no, it’s not happening. He’s throwing everything and the kitchen sink at his final fake news rhetoric, which has been the biggest con in US history and the American people fell for it and nearly did again this time round.
[embed]https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1325118992785223682?s=21[/embed]
Where as Joe Biden told his supporters to be patient, wait for the vote counting to be conclusive, that he was confident but wanted to get certainty and then that certainty arrived on Saturday evening when the news networks called it after the results in Pennsylvania. Okay so the counting hasn’t completed 100% and after all there will be a recount in Georgia because the margin is within 0.5%. Plus on top of that there will be legal wrangling to be completed too.
This time though Trump is wasting his time, he’d better save his money for 2021 when as an ex-president he will be taken to court for many other law breaking deeds throughout his life and maybe even throughout his presidency who knows. More stories will follow from previous staffers on how bad things had been. We already knew this, but the American people were blind. I’m using ‘were’ because many have seen the light now and thankfully they did. Not only have they save America, they have saved the world too.
And here are the speeches by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.
[embed]https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1325247969780621317?s=21[/embed]
The eyes of the world are upon America and the American people and our eyes will be on them for the next 4 years. Did they call it right, will things really change? Will Trump really be out of the picture?
Let’s hope so ‘folks’, Joe’s favourite word!
The last 4 years have been long very long, that psychopath Trump will be gone, gone, gone and hopefully in jail very soon. Confirmation bias is such a big issue for 50% of America at the moment. Trump has been very successful in spreading lies this way. He tells a lie and then his followers will search for the evidence and confirm it for him.
Why Trump has been a gift to America and the rest of the world?
Because we now totally and utterly appreciate what kind of leader we don’t need in this world. We will also recognise more of the wrong leaders in the world, after all, Trump modelled himself on other leaders that went before him and we do know that there are many little Trumps walking the earth, in charge of countries and organisations. Hopefully they will be exposed and removed soon.
Here’s Barack Obama’s blogpost congratulating Joe.
[embed]https://medium.com/@BarackObama/my-statement-congratulating-president-elect-joe-biden-and-vice-president-elect-kamala-harris-82c253659801[/embed]
Here’s the transcript of Kamala Harris’s speech.
[embed]https://medium.com/@BarackObama/my-statement-congratulating-president-elect-joe-biden-and-vice-president-elect-kamala-harris-82c253659801[/embed]
Good luck America, Joe, Kamala and the whole team they decide to appoint into their new administration. You all deserve this SO much. We look forward to you leading the world again and showing us how to lead with ‘character’.
May the healing begin…
Saturday 31st October, Halloween 2020.
The Grim Reaper himself made an appearance on TV, to ruin people’s outlook for Christmas.
[embed]https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1322611182470127621?s=20[/embed]
Uk Government ministers have been defending the England Tier system and have been in denial for weeks that cases would run out of control across the country.
Yet again leaving it too late to take decisive action, meaning that England has to go on another lockdown, supposedly this time for just 4 weeks. I don’t believe for a second that 4 weeks will solve things. I predicted months ago that households will not be allowed to mix over Christmas and this is now 100% on track.
Human nature means that we’re always more optimistic about the future compared to how things truly will work out. This is an excellent and very detailed article about ‘Confirmation Bias’ in the main.
Chris Anderson of TED.com interviews Larry Brilliant, actually very early on during the Pandemic in April 2020.
And here is his 2006 Ted Talk.
When will the pandemic be over?
Consider the following scenario: a highly infectious, sometimes deadly respiratory virus infects humans for the first time. It spreads rapidly worldwide, and the WHO declares a pandemic. The death toll starts to rise and everyone is asking the same question: when will the pandemic end? Alex Rosenthal details the three main strategies governments can use to contain and end a pandemic in the Ted Animation below.
This Pandemic is a 3–5 year journey at least for the U.K. and the developed western world. Asia have culture already well established with fighting viruses, after all they had to contend with SARS-1 and have been used to wearing masks for decades. They also decided to close borders. The U.K. totally ignored this but and continue to believe that we have to keep the borders open for economic reasons.
The fact is that by keeping the borders open for so long means you are damaging the economy not helping it.
The U.K. Tory (Conservative) government are nearly as mad as the current US administration just a smudge away from being as insane as Trump and his fellow crooks.
Vaccines are not the panacea that everyone hopes for. 60% of the population are not prepared to inject their bodies with poisons. Any-bodies are something different providing they’ve been extensively tested on already very sick patients in hospital.
We have to become more realistic in our outlook instead of optimistic, which we are currently.
Plan for a long journey ahead with many false promises, many failures, more fake news etc.
Just be realistic!
[embed]https://coronavirus.medium.com/whats-a-superspreader-event-really-e60957342929[/embed]
The above article is fascinating, whilst the media is hysterical about Donald Trump’s ‘superspreader’ event, is there really such a thing?
First of all got this newsletter from my pension provider.
Last week began with President Trump being helicoptered back to the White House, after his discharge from hospital on Monday. After contracting COVID-19, the president spent just a few days in hospital before returning to work — attracting criticism for potentially doing so while still contagious. It’s hard to say what the impact has been, or will be, on the election result, but as the week ended there were signs that Joe Biden was pulling ahead.
Many observers are now predicting that Biden is a firm favourite to win the White House. FiveThirtyEight, a poll aggregator, put his chances at more than 86%. The probability of a ‘clean sweep’ (in which Democrats win both houses of Congress) has also increased — with some putting the likelihood at more than 60%.
Stock markets aren’t too downbeat about the prospect of a Biden victory, despite his promise to increase taxes. That’s partly because he’s also committed to a meatier set of coronavirus relief measures than the incumbent, suggests Mark Dowding of BlueBay Asset Management, co-manager of the St. James’s Place Strategic Income fund.
“Ordinarily, the threat of a Democratic ‘blue wave’ might weigh on risk appetite, but we don’t feel this is evident in 2020. When Trump was elected in 2016, it is estimated that the implied policy shift relative to Obama lifted stocks by approximately 10% thanks to the promise of lower taxes. Consequently, the threat of higher taxes under Biden might usually be extrapolated to suggest a 10% reversal; however, in the shorter to intermediate term, the fear of higher taxes to come is being offset by the promise of higher government spending in the year ahead.”
The stalemate in Washington surrounding the next set of economic stimulus measures has been a drag on markets recently. Despite both parties agreeing on the need for further measures, and despite pressure from leading figures such as the chair of the Federal Reserve, a deal hasn’t been agreed. Last week saw ups and downs in US stock markets as hopes of a deal rose and fell.
Meanwhile, in the UK, figures were released last week showing that the economy grew less than expected in August. GDP only increased 2.1% from July, which led to fears that the economic recovery is slowing down. “The government must stand ready to help firms navigate a difficult winter,” urged Suren Thiru, Head of Economics at the British Chambers of Commerce.
Rishi Sunak is now in a tricky position. The chancellor had begun the week with a pledge to “balance the books” during his speech to Conservative Party members, stressing the need to control national debt and spending. However, on Friday he announced a new local furlough scheme for workers in pubs, restaurants and other venues that are likely to face closure in the future.
Press reports suggested that last week’s Brexit trade talks have focused onto what seems to be the final sticking point: fisheries. Negotiators are trying to find a compromise ahead of a summit in Brussels this week, but although there is renewed faith that a deal is possible, it’s not done yet. It’s no secret that the political turmoil since the referendum result has made investors cautious about the UK. But, when viewed with a long-term investment horizon, it’s important to look beyond the headlines and focus on the fundamentals.
“I look at a lot of these headwinds for the UK and believe that a lot of them have the potential to abate over the next 12–18 months,” suggested Nick Kirrage from Schroders, manager of the St. James’s Place Managed Growth fund.
He adds: “People could perhaps look at some of these [UK] businesses, and the market itself, and ask if there is actually anything particularly structurally broken about the UK market, about business generation, about GDP growth, that means that it can’t do a bit better than it has? And I don’t see those impediments. So, I actually think that there’s a very, very low expectation bar built into the UK at the moment. And low expectations, and low valuations, we like.”
Finally, China’s markets reopened last week after a holiday. The country’s currency, the renminbi, rose against the dollar, and its CSI 300 Idex of stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen closed higher on Friday. The country has managed to control the spread of COVID-19 quite well and has also enjoyed a better economic recovery than most. In the rest of the world, the picture is still mixed.
Two recent papers have highlighted some common risks facing pensions savers. The first, from the Financial Conduct Authority, reported that retirees are drawing more from their pension pots earlier on. Four in ten people who made regular withdrawals from their pension last year took more than 8%, it says1.
The second, by Aegon, finds that half of UK retirees surveyed had stopped working earlier than expected, whether due to job losses, poor health or other reasons2. Missing out on just a few years of saving, and being forced to draw down from a pension pot too early, or at too high a rate, raises the risk of running out of retirement income later in life.
“The way to retire early is to spend significantly less than you earn, save as much as you can and invest that money. Over 20 years you can create that financial independence — you’ve taught yourself to live off half your income, so you’ll need less in retirement,” says Rob Gardner, Director of Investments at St. James’s Place.
People saving for retirement will have been heartened to learn last week’s news about pension tax relief. HMRC has ruled out a review into the relief, which cost the Exchequer £38 billion in 2018/193, and has for a long time been seen as a cost-saving target for the government.
Savers can take some comfort from the news, says Claire Trott, Head of Pensions Strategy at St. James’s Place, adding: “However, changes are not something that we can rule out entirely due to the debts the government will need to repay in the future, and the large cost of tax relief.”
The value of an investment with St. James’s Place will be directly linked to the performance of the funds you select and the value can therefore go down as well as up. You may get back less than you invested.
The levels and bases of taxation, and reliefs from taxation, can change at any time. The value of any tax relief depends on individual circumstances.
1 Financial Conduct Authority retirement income market data 2019/20, September 2020 (collected from all regulated firms providing pension and retirement income products)
2 Aegon Retirement Readiness Survey 2020, June 2020 (1000 UK adults surveyed)
3 HM Treasury, Quarterly National Accounts, April 2020
Secondly, we’re now all into Covid19 tiers, except of course the super rich, this is just for us poor people, to herd us all like sheep, as we’ve not been able to do it ourselves!
Nothing to report today. 🥴
This is genius, except they missed one other person off the sign and that’s Rishi Sunak, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer!
[embed]https://twitter.com/Ben_Jonno/status/1316367127398559745?s=20[/embed]
And the UK is more divided then ever!
[embed]https://twitter.com/OverMyFedBody/status/1316402229600047104?s=20[/embed]
Big news of the day certainly is not London and half of the UK population now in Tier 2 lockdown, the big news is a 5-minute Covid19 test. This would be the game changer we’ve all been hoping for. Is this operation moonshot Boris?
[embed]https://coronavirus.medium.com/whats-a-superspreader-event-really-e60957342929[/embed]
In other news, I wasn't feeling so well today. Nothing serious just a bit off.
The presidential race is hotting up!
[embed]https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1317152215031840773?s=20[/embed]
Oh dear Cambridge Analytica and that creepy CEO Alexander Nix have a lot to answer for. Like putting the craziest President ever in the White House!
[embed]https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1317277847195652100?s=20[/embed]
Michael out…
ps. This is the last week in the series. I have a week off next week and I’ve probably come to the end now of this. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with everything.