Tension Builds Over Drug To Treat COVID-19 – caribbeannationalweekly.com

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MIAMI, Florida With coronavirus (COVID-19) cases increasingdramatically in the United Statessome 435,000 cases as of Thursdaythe nation now has the most cases globally and is desperate for a drug to effectively treat the virus.

Unlike other forms of coronavirus, like the common cold and influenza, there is yet no proven medication to treat COVID-19. The possibility of a vaccine to treat the virus is at least a year away, according to most scientists best estimates.

In recent weeks, there have been claims, including from President Donald Trump and members of his administration, that a drug, hydroxychloroquine, normally used to treat malaria and lupus, is effective in treating COVID-19.

Two weeks ago, Trump at one of his coronavirus task-force press conferences, optimistically said the drug has potential as a drug to treat COVID-19. However, at the same press conference the top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, while agreeing that the drug could have a positive effect with COVID-19 patients, cautioned that it needed to be tested before it can be generally prescribed for coronavirus.

Last Sunday at another coronavirus task-force press conference, President Trump again touted the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 although testing of the drug hasnt been completed.

What do I know, Im not a doctor, Trump said Sunday. But I have common sense. In promoting the use of the drug, the president has often stated, What have you got to lose?

One of the Trump administrations strongest backersof the drug is Trade Adviser Peter Navarro, who according to reports that surfaced after Sundays press conference, clashed with Dr. Fauci over the use of the drug. Dr. Fauci continuesto be concerned about recommending the drug based only on unscientific, or as he puts it anecdotalevidence.

Navarro, on the other hand, despite not having formal medical training, claimed in a CNN interview on Monday that reports of studies on the drugs use, which he had collected, were enough to recommend the drug widely.

The American Medical Associations president, Dr. Patrice Harris, also said she wouldnt prescribe the drug for coronavirus patients, because the risks of severe side effects were great and too significant to downplay without large studies showing the drug is safe and effective for such use.

Nonetheless, some doctors are actually prescribing Hydroxychloroquine to patients with COVID-19. Research studies are now beginning to test if the drugs truly help COVID-19 patients, and the Food and Drug Administration has allowed the medication as an option for doctors to consider for patients who cannot get into one of these studies.

Dr. Harris and other doctors claim the drug has serious side effects, especially affecting the heart rhythm, and still want more testing conducted before its clear that the drug works against the virus and where the side effects are concerned.

Cubas Interferon Alpha 2B

Meanwhile, a drug developed in Cuba has been proving to have positive results in treating COVID-19 patients. The drug, Interferon Alpha 2B, is among 22 drugs developed in Cuba since 1986 by its Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) and used as a treatment for HIV-AIDS, hepatitis B and C, herpes zoster or shingles, dengue and different types of cancers.

It is also highly recommended by medical specialists for its ability to fight the COVID-19 virus. During the onset of the virus in Wuhan province, the Chinese authorities found it exceptional in destroying the virus from thousands of its citizens who contracted the disease at the earliest stages.

Since the success of this antiviral drug has become public knowledge, Cuba has been flooded with requests from across the globe, including, Africa, Europe, Latin, and South America and Caribbean nations.

Evidence tuberculosis vaccine BCG prevents COVID-19 infection

Recently reports surfaced that the BCG vaccine given to counter tuberculosis (TB) may provide protection against COVID-19 and significantly reduce death rates in countries, including most Caribbean countries,with high levels of this vaccination.

A study of 178 countries conducted by an Irish medical consultant in conjunction with epidemiologists at the University of Texas indicated countries with BCG vaccination programs have far fewer coronavirus cases by a factor 10, compared to countries without such programs.

The BCG vaccine is still widely used in developing countries, where scientists have found, along with preventing TB, it alsoprevents infant deaths from a variety of causes, and sharply reduces the incidence of respiratory infections like the coronavirus.

Most Caribbean-Americans residing in South Florida bearthe scars of the BCG vaccine on their upper arms, as the vaccine was and still is mandatory for attending public schools in the Caribbean.

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Tension Builds Over Drug To Treat COVID-19 - caribbeannationalweekly.com

One in four Britons ‘think the coronavirus was probably created in a lab’ – Yahoo Sports

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One in four Britons think the coronavirus was probably created in a lab, research suggests.

Scientists from Kings College London asked more than 2,000 people what they believed to be true about the somewhat mysterious strain.

A quarter (25%) of those surveyed thought the coronavirus is probably man-made, a conspiracy theory circulating the internet.

Early research suggests the infection is mild in four out of five cases, however, it can trigger a respiratory disease called COVID-19.

A member of staff gives directions at a coronavirus testing centre for NHS staff at an IKEA in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. (Getty Images)

The Kings scientists surveyed 2,250 people aged between 18 and 75.

Of the participants who thought the coronavirus was probably created in a lab, 12% admitted to meeting up with friends during the UKs lockdown.

This is more than double the 5% of participants who socialised with loved ones, but were convinced of the strains natural origin.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world

Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area

Explained: Symptoms, latest advice and how it compares to the flu

Boris Johnson has enforced draconian measures that only allow Britons to leave their home for very limited purposes, like exercising or shopping for essentials.

The prime minister, who is in intensive care with coronavirus complications, has repeatedly stressed people are not to socialise with those outside of their home.

Nearly a quarter (24%) of the Kings participants who believed the coronavirus was probably manufactured thought too much of a fuss is being made about the pandemic.

This is compared to one in 10 (10%) of those who believed the strain is natural.

Emerging at the end of last year, only the relatively small number of people worldwide who have encountered the virus are thought to have immunity against it.

The race is on to develop a vaccine that will enable herd immunity, allowing the public to safely go back to their normal routine.

The survey participants who thought a jab will be available within three months were nearly four times as likely to have met up with friends during the lockdown than those of the opinion a vaccine will take longer.

Numerous pharmaceutical companies around the world are working to develop a jab, however, scientists have been upfront one will not be ready for this outbreak.

A vaccine may become available, however, if the infection turns out to be seasonal.

People have generally got the message about how serious the threat from the virus is and the importance of the measures being required of them, said study author Professor Bobby Duffy.

But at a time when the government is warning it may bring in more severe restrictions if enough people dont follow the rules, this research shows there is a significant minority who are unclear on what some of them are, as well as many who still misjudge the scale of the threat from coronavirus or believe false claims about it.

And this matters how we see current realities and the future is often related to how we strictly we follow the guidelines and our attitudes to the lockdown measures.

A man wears a mask outside a closed electrical-goods shop in the centre of Munich. (Getty Images)

Story continues

The coronavirus is thought to have emerged at a seafood and live animal market in the Chinese city Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, at the end of 2019.

The market is said to have sold a range of dead and alive animals, including bats, donkeys, poultry and hedgehogs.

Most of those who initially became unwell at the start of the outbreak worked at, or visited, the Wuhan market.

This has led scientists to believe the new coronavirus jumped from an animal into a human while the two were in close contact.

The coronavirus is one of seven strains of a class of viruses that are known to infect humans.

Another strain is severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which killed 774 people during its 2002/3 outbreak.

Sars is thought to have started in bats and jumped into humans via masked palm civets.

Research suggests the new coronavirus shares more than 96% of its DNA with a strain detected in horseshoe bats and may have reached humans via pangolins.

Despite the evidence, conspiracy theories have arisen suggesting the strain could have been engineered.

To debunk this, scientists from Scripps Research in San Diego analysed the DNA of the virus and others like it.

They specifically looked at proteins on the surface of the viruses that allow them to enter human cells.

Results suggested the coronavirus evolved to target a receptor on human cells called ACE2.

This targeting is so effective, the scientists concluded it was the result of natural selection and not genetic engineering.

The coronavirus genetic backbone is also distinct from other pathogens. The scientists argued if one were to manufacture a disease, they would work off a backbone that is known to cause ill health.

By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that [the new strain] originated through natural processes, said study author Dr Kristian Andersen.

A woman wears a mask while walking dogs in Palma, Spain. (Getty Images)

Since the coronavirus outbreak was identified, more than 1.5 million cases have been confirmed worldwide,according to Johns Hopkins University.

Of these cases, over 339,700 are known to have recovered.

Globally, the death toll has exceeded 89,900.

The coronavirus mainly spreads face-to-face via infected droplets expelled in a cough and sneeze.

There is also evidenceit may be transmitted in faecesandcan survive on surfaces.

Although most cases are mild, pneumonia can come about if the coronavirus spreads to the air sacs in the lungs.

This causes them to become inflamed and filled with fluid or pus.

The lungs then struggle to draw in air, resulting in reduced oxygen in the bloodstream and a build-up of carbon dioxide.

The coronavirus has no set treatment, with most patients naturally fighting off the infection.

Those requiring hospitalisation are given supportive care, like ventilation, while their immune system gets to work.

Officials urge people ward off the coronavirus bywashing their hands regularlyand maintainingsocial distancing.

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One in four Britons 'think the coronavirus was probably created in a lab' - Yahoo Sports

Fear of global plagues and greed for money are as old as mankind – SowetanLIVE

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Most of us have been taught to understand the word "historian" to refer to a specialist who writes about the past.

One of the greatest - if not the greatest - historians alive today is a 44-year-old man by the name of Yuval Harari, currently lecturing at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Five years ago, Harari changed the meaning of "history" by publishing a book about the future - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

The title of this prophetic book is pregnant with meaning. It combines two beings - earthly and divine - to produce an omnipotent hybrid called "Domo Deus".

In palaeontology, the prefix "homo" refers to creatures that evolved into the human family. In classical Latin, "Deus" meant "god". Thus, Harari's book envisions a future where man can appropriate the powers of "god", and therefore become a human-god or "Homo Deus".

In the first chapter, Harari writes about the "anti-death" scientific research under way at the well-known American company Google.

In 2009, one of the leading anti-death researchers at Google, Bill Maris, fervently believed it would be possible, through genetic engineering, for a human being to live until he is 500 years old.

That idea rests on a fundamental transformation of the meaning of "death" that has taken place in the mind of man - from the understanding of death as a mysterious occurrence preordained by a deity to death understood as, according to Harari, "a technical problem that we can and should solve".

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Fear of global plagues and greed for money are as old as mankind - SowetanLIVE

[Commentary] In the post-COVID world, health security must be a matter of national security – Mongabay-India

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The Chinese New Year is a time to visit families and ancestral lands. It began with the Little Year (January 17 to 24), followed by the main Spring Festival (January 25 to February 4), and ended with the Lantern Festival (February 5 to 8).

As people were getting ready to travel in December 2019, pneumonia cases started showing up in hospitals across the Hubei Province of central China, especially in Wuhan, Chinas ninth most populous city with about 11 million people about the size of Bengaluru. Both Bengaluru and Wuhan are also denoted as Beta level cities by the Globalization and World Research Cities Network (GaWC), a think tank that charts the relationships of world cities to globalization. Both are cities that link moderate economic regions to the world economy.

But let us go back in time to when people were possibly making their New Year travel bookings, a new virus was jumping from bats into humans either directly or through an intermediate animal host. Its spread in the human population timed perfectly with the New Year travel season, which spread it, first in China and then elsewhere.

Going back further to March 2019, researchers in Wuhan and Beijing, who were studying viruses in batswrotealmost prophetically in the journalViruses:it is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.

And even before that in 2018, researchers had discovered two novel coronaviruses from bats in eastern China that looked very similar to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus that emerged in China in December 2002 and then disappeared by mid-2003, leaving about 8000 people infected and 774 dead.

Coronaviruses belong to a family of viruses that infect animals and humans, are distinguished by their crown-like (corona) appearance under a microscope, and cause a flu-like disease. Besides SARS-CoV, the family included the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus and at least four other viruses endemic in the human population.

The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), later renamed SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) due to its genetic similarity with the SARS virus, was established as the cause of a new disease called coronavirus infectious disease 2019, or COVID-19.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.As ofApril 7 2020, there are over 1.4 million confirmed cases and 80,000 deaths attributed to it in 184 countries. The pandemic is still growing in USA, Europe and other parts of the world, leaving the global economy, markets and supply chains in disarray.

The year 2020 is the Chinese Year of the Rat. It will be long remembered as the Year of the Bat.

As of April 8, 2020, India is early on the COVID-19 curve with about 4643 confirmed casesand 149 deaths; a 21-day nationwide lockdown is in place till April 14. There are no clear estimates on the scale of the impending outbreak, but all models point to tens of lakhs to crores of infections in India. Simulations on lockdown suggest repeats at national, state and regional levels. These would have to balance public health needs against the economic and humanitarian crisis, which has left so many without food, shelter and security.

A KPMG Indiareport Potential Impact of COVID-19 on the Indian Economy, says COVID-19 is unique in that it is a supply, demand and market shock. It further adds that the outbreak has disrupted manufacturing supply chains and sharply curtailed energy and commodity demand. China is Indias second-largest trading partner, with total trade pegged at $92.68 Bn, which includes $74.72 Bn in imports and $17.95 Bn in exports. This amounts to 13.7% of Indias total imports and 5.1% of its exports.

Also read: It is not COVID-19 alone, but also the environment and the economy

Though COVID-19 is a significant challenge, it also presents an opportunity. How must India prepare itself for the post-COVID world? My central argument is that India must start addressing health security as a matter of national security. It must build local capacity to reduce its dependence on imports and supply chains. It must also invest in public health preparedness and health research.

With the disruption in China, the most vulnerable sectors for India are electronics and pharmaceuticals, both of which impact our critical healthcare sector. India imported over 70% of its bulk drugs and their active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), amounting to $2.4 Bn, from China in 2018-19. Though this problem was highlighted by the National Security Advisor in November 2014, the continued dependence on China is worrisome, especially with a looming health crisis. In February this year, the government put together a list of 38 drug raw materials that it wantslocally produced, including fermentation process-based ingredients for antibiotics, vitamins and hormone drugs. It would also be important to address bottlenecks such as environmental clearances and tax concessions for the local industry.

India must also increase its allocation to healthcare and focus on public health. The FY 20-21 budget allocation for health is Rs. 69,000 crores, a public spending of 1.6% of GDP, even after the National Health Policy 2017 called for an increase to 2.5% of GDP. According to WHO, India ranks 184 out of 191 countries on its public spending on healthcare as a percent of GDP. Contrast this to Indias military spending pegged at Rs. 471,378 crores, almost seven times its health budget.

TheAyushman BharatPM Jan Arogya Yojana(AB-PMJAY) scheme to provide free healthcare to 10 crores families (50 crore people) is a promising addition, but disappointments include drastic cuts to the health insurance scheme (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana) and no increase for communicable diseases. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), which includes many health schemes, also received marginally less than last year.

India is projected to be a hotspot for zoonotic, vector-borne and drug-resistant infections. With over 1.3 Bn people, 536 Mn livestock and 851 Mn poultry, it has the worlds highest density of each, and is thus a ripe ecosystem for pathogen exchange. There are 117 species of bats in India, but what viral secrets they hold remain unknown. A recent study by the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru to start addressing this remains mired in controversy.

Our lessons from COVID-19 should be to strengthen the public health infrastructure, invest in One Health science to understand the animal-human disease interface and modernize our approach to R&D. An independent National Centre for Pathogen Research, with a broad mandate for inter-disciplinary work from pathogen discovery to characterization and product development is needed for India. This may work in close partnership with organizations such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which have developed core expertise in outbreak investigation and diagnostics.

The 2002 SARS outbreak is estimated to have caused global economic losses of $40 Bn. For COVID-19, the UNs trade and development agency UNCTAD puts notional losses at $1 Trillion. There are an estimated 631,000 to 827,000 yet-to-be-discovered viruses in animal reservoirs with zoonotic potential. The Global Virome Project aims to expand virus discovery to reduce their future impact on human populations, but their biggest challenge is the cost estimated to be $1.2 Bn.

Would this not be a sensible investment to make in the post-COVID world?

[Shahid Jameel, Ph.D., was Head, Virology Group at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi. He is now CEO of the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance].

Related: [Interview] Taking One Health approach to tackle zoonoses crucial for India

Banner image:A typically crowded marketplace in India before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Photo from Unsplash.

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[Commentary] In the post-COVID world, health security must be a matter of national security - Mongabay-India

Why Americans of All Ages Are Embracing Communal Living – Time

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Everyone Needs Someone Else

WHY Americans OF ALL AGES are coming together in intentional communities

By Jeffrey Kluger

Theres not a lot to do in Syracuse, N.Y. when youre living alone and a winter storm system dumps 3 feet of snow on the city. Theres no going outside, but theres no staying inside at least not for too long if you want to remain sane. A dinner with friends would be nice; so would a yoga class or a shared movie and a good long talk. And when thats all done, it would also be nice to have just a little bit of that wintertime solitude, watching the snow fall, all alone, from the privacy of your own home.

At one place in Syracuse, all of that happens on those long snow-filled nights. That place is Commonspace, a co-housing community on the fourth and fifth floors of a restored 19th-century office building. The community is made up of 25 mini-apartments, fully equipped with their own kitchenettes and baths, with access to a larger, shared chefs kitchen, library nook, game room, coffee lounge and media room. The 27 residents (couples are welcome) live together but only sort of in private apartments that are, once you step outside your door, un-private too. And theyre part of a growing trend in an increasingly lonely country: intentional communities.

In cities and towns across the U.S., individuals and families are coming to the conclusion that while the commune experiment of the 1960s was overwhelmed by problems, the idea of living in close but not too close cooperation with other people has a lot of appeal. An intentional community is a very different beast from the more familiar planned communities, which can be big, unwieldy things hundreds or thousands of families living on small parcels across hundreds of acres of land. While there may be some common facilities a swimming pool or golf course or community lake the communities are really just villages writ large or cities writ small, easy places to be anonymous.

Intentional communities, by contrast, are intimate: a couple dozen apartments or single-family homes, built around central squares or common spaces. And theyre operated in ways intended to keep the community connected with weekly dinners at a community center or other common area, shared babysitting services, shared gardens or games or even vacations. If you dont want to participate, fine; no one will come pester you to play a pick-up game you dont want to play or join a committee you dont want to join. But when you need the community because a spouse is away or a baby is sick or youre just plain lonely and would like some companionship its there for you.

Its that business of relieving loneliness thats key to the popularity of intentional communities. Human beings may not always get along, but the fact is, we cant get enough of one another. There are currently 7.6 billion of us in the world but we inhabit only about 10% of the planets land, and roughly 50% of us live on just 1% of that land.

We evolved to depend on our social connections, says Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General. Over thousands of years, this got baked into our nervous systems so much so that if we are feeling socially disconnected, that places us in a physiologic stress state.

According to a study by AARP, over 40% of American adults suffer from loneliness, a condition that, Murthy warns, is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and more. Worse, loneliness is a condition that makes no demographic distinctions; it affects millennials just starting their careers, widowed boomers just ending theirs, empty-nesters, new divorcees, first year college students a thousand miles away from family and high school friends. Social media, which ostensibly draws people closer, in fact may be atomizing us further, creating virtual connections that have little of the benefits of actual connections.

A gusher of studies since the early 1990s have established the health dividends of social ties. Among people with cardiovascular disease, those with more social connections have a 2.4 times lower risk of mortality within an established period than those with poor social ties. Social connections lower the risk of cancer, speed recovery among people who do contract the disease, and reduce the risk of hypertension and other cardiovascular illnesses. Even wound-healing improves with social connections. Multiple studies suggest that part of this may come from the psychological boostincluding the sense of responsibilitythat meaningful relationships provide. When friends and family members are counting on you to be around, you make better health choices, even if theyre unconscious. Other studies have shown that similar brain structures control both physical pain and social painand that pain relief, through analgesics in the first case and relationships in the second, operate similarly as well. Being socially connected doesnt simply make you healthier, it just plain feels good.

Intentional communities are about creating attachment, the feeling that someone has your back, says Harvard University psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a decades-old survey of the health of a population of Harvard graduates and their descendants. We often ask people in studies, Who would you call in the middle of the night if you were really sick or scared? Intentional communities can help you have an answer to that question.

Its not easy to come by a firm count of how many intentional communities are out there. Only about 160 of them have been built from the ground up with co-housing in mind, but the regularly updated Fellowship for Intentional Community lists 1,539 communities in all 50 states that have also used existing housing stock to establish co-housing arrangements.

There are urban communities like Commonspace in most major cities. There is Milagro in Tucson, Ariz., 28 single-family homes on 43 desert acres built around a central green space with a shared community center and other facilities. There is Village Hearth Co-Housing, a similar set-up in Durham, N.C., but one intended for singles, couples and families in the LGBTQ community. There are other communities for seniors or artists or veterans; there are even rural communities for people who want the independence of owning their own homes but the collective experience of farming the same land.

For each of the communities, the relative compactness of the population is what creates the feeling of togetherness. You cant possibly know three hundred people, says Troy Evans, real estate developer and the co-founder of Syracuses Commonspace. But you can know fifty. What we try to do in Commonspace is create a neighborhood in a building.

To all appearance, theyve succeeded at that. The communitys 25 apartments rent for an average of $850 per month, which is admittedly pricey for a tiny, 200 sq. ft. space, though services like thrice-weekly cleaning of all of the common spaces and the costs of activities like the weekly farm-to-table dinners are included. And the social benefits which are impossible to measure in dollars and cents are included too.

We set everything up with a town square feel so when you come out of your door theres not a long, dark hallway like in most apartment buildings, says Evans. Town squares, of course, can be noisy not to the liking of even some people who choose to live semi-communally. Thats why one of the floors has fewer apartments built a quiet lounge where locally roasted coffee is always on offer.

The mini-apartments are cleverly laid out, with a platform bed built atop storage cabinets and floor-to-ceiling windows that create an open feel. The bathroom is complete though it has a shower without a tub and the kitchenette is limited only by the fact that is has two electric burners instead of a full stove, because local regulations forbid open flame in such small quarters. The apartments are all equipped with TVs and high-speed Internet, and a Slack channel allows residents to stay in touch without having to remember 26 other email addresses.

Still, its the 6,000 shared square feet, not the 200 private ones that really defines the Commonspace experience, providing what Evans describes as a lot of collision space, which is something people who would otherwise be living alone often crave. What weve found is demand from people who were landing in Syracuse for the first time and not knowing anyone, he says. Weve got people from eight different countries and seven different states. Its a really cool, diverse group.

That diversity is not only cultural but temperamental. Rose Bear Dont Walk, a 23-year old Native American studying environment and forestry at the State University of New York, Syracuse, moved in to Commonspace over the summer and soon grew friendly with another resident who works in computer coding. His mind operates arithmetically, hers works more emotively, and they took to talking about their different ways of approaching the world.

Hes always building something or talking about building something or listening to podcasts, she says. One day, when she was weaving decorative strands out of plant fibers, she decided to make him a bracelet. It was just this way that our worlds connected, she says. He is very logical and mathematical and was very excited about this little tiny rope bracelet that I was bringing home.

Meaningful as those kinds of connections can be, Commonspace residents dont always have a lot of time to make them. Millennials can be transitory characteristic of most people early in their careers and the average length of tenancy is just eight months.

Things are very different at other intentional communities, like Milagro in Tucson. There, the buy-in is typically for life. The 28 homes in the landscaped desert space are sometimes available for rent, but are typically owned by their residents and have sold for anywhere from $175,000 to $430,000, depending on the market. The investment in house and land means an equal investment in the life of the community.

Brian Stark, a married father of two, has lived in Milagro since 2003, two years after the community opened, and considers himself a lifer. For him the appeal is not so much the community-wide dinner in the dining room every Saturday, or the happy hours or the stargazing sessions or the shared holiday parties. Its the easy, collegial pace of the place, unavoidable when neighbors all know one another.

You almost have to assume that someone may stop to chat with you when youre coming or going, he says. It took some getting used to but when were in a hurry for school or a meeting, weve learned to explain our rush and connect another time.

Even more important are the benefits that accrue to any communitys most vulnerable members: babies and seniors. For families with very young children, we do baby care trades, Stark says. And having a supportive community to help as you grow older is also a wonderful alternative to assisted care living.

Intentional communities are not without stressors. Stark recalls the decade of committee meetings that went into the simple business of deciding whether there should be path lights in the community important for safety, but murder on the deserts spectacular nighttime sky. Even when the community agreed that lights were a good idea, there was continued wrangling over cost, wattage and more. A similar struggle ensued when it came time to have all 28 homes painted, as residents debated color schemes for the homes stucco, trim and side boards.

Still, the long meetings and compromises are a small price for those suited to intentional communities. Thats true of diverse, cross-generational communities like Milagro, and it can be even more so when residents come together with a particular shared need for a particular kind of solidarity as in the LGBTQ or aging Boomer communities.

Shortly after the opening of Village Hearth, the North Carolina LGBTQ community, one of the founders explained to a local reporter that she was tired of hearing about this or that intentional community that has a nice lesbian couple or a nice gay couple. She and her wife didnt want to be a curiosity in even the friendliest surroundings, so they founded a community in which nothing would be remarkable about them at all.

There is little science so far that explicitly addresses the medical benefits of co-housing arrangements, but the benefits of the human connections the communities provide are being powerfully established. In one recent meta-analysis of 148 studies gathered from around the world, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, compared subjects reported state of loneliness with their overall life expectancy. The total sample size was more than 300,000 people and produced sobering results: Adults who are socially isolated, she found, have a 50% greater risk of dying from any cause within a given time frame than people who are more connected.

In a follow-up study in which she used census data to assemble an even larger sample group of 3.4 million, the results were a bit less stark, but no less conclusive, with social isolation and loneliness leading to a 30% increase in risk of mortality on average. Of course, being alone is not the same as being lonely, Holt-Lunstad stresses. Many people enjoy their solitude, and other people can feel lonely even in a group. The key is the subjective experience. If that experience is bad, thats when health can be affected.

More often than not, social media falls into the category of bad rather than good experiences. Even without being trolled or cyberbullied, people can suffer merely as a result of having replaced real relationships with virtual ones. Murthy does not believe social media is all bad, provided its often used as what he calls a way station rather than a destination, helping to establish real-life connections.

Using social media as a way station might mean that if Im traveling to a different city, in advance of the trip I look on Facebook or LinkedIn to see if I have any friends there, he says. Then I reach out to them and we get together.

The exact mechanisms that make loneliness so physically damaging are not easy to tease out, but chemical markers in the bloodstream, like cortisol, a stress hormone, or c-reactive proteins, indicators of inflammation, are considered worrisome signs. They indicate a weakened immune system and metabolic disruption, says Waldinger. This is when you start to see signs of illness like rising lipid levels and blood pressure.

Residents of intentional communities also see another kind of benefit to health and happiness in co-housing: as a way of alleviating transitions that can be both stressful isolating. Stark, the Milagro resident, recalls that when his older daughter, Maia, was born 12 years ago, the Milagro community was still new. Unbidden, the neighbors pitched in to help the family, cleaning their house, making them meals, even doing their laundry so that he and his wife could have the luxury of doing what few parents can do: focus their attention exclusively on their new baby. Since then, the Stark family has returned the favor, making food for people recovering from surgery and offering to make a pickup at an airport.

Everyone at some point needs someone else, Stark says. Intentional communities, in their quiet way, are helping to make sure that powerful human need gets met.

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Why Americans of All Ages Are Embracing Communal Living - Time

W&M community conversation turns to living, working adaptation amidst COVID-19 – William & Mary News

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by Jennifer L. Williams | April 9, 2020

Now that the William & Mary community has seen that COVID-19 will affect many things this spring semester, adapting to living and working in the world it has created is next that was the takeaway from the universitys latest community conversation.

Ive described it as were all learning to ride a bicycle in a hurricane, said Peter Atwater '83, founder of Financial Insyghts and adjunct professor of economics, as he described the multiple roles students, faculty and staff have taken on with their many responsibilities at home.

W&M President Katherine A. Rowe led the virtual talk that was broadcast from the Presidents House on April 8 as part of a weekly series featuring different guests and discussion topics on Wednesdays at noon through May 13. She encouraged community members to continue to send questions to leadership as a way to guide future sessions.

Our focus now is on decisions about how we adapt, Rowe said. In the short term how we adapt, and in the longer term, in a way that sustains what we value most about this institution and about our community. So the big question that all of us are grappling with is how to make decisions about the best ways to adapt when our uncertainty is so high and very little seems to be in our own control.

So thats the question that is our focus for today. What happens to how both individuals and communities think when uncertainty is high and control is low?

Marjorie Thomas, dean of students; Eva Wong, director of international students, scholars & programs and Atwater were guests for the discussion.

Rowe summed up from many of their comments that looking out for each other, and giving ones self and others a break, particularly over the next couple of weeks, will be important.

Thomas said she has found solace in reaching out to others, in being more intentional and intimate in her time with other people.

Remember, we are still very much connected, that we still belong, Wong said. And try to find those connections one way or another.

Originally posted here:

W&M community conversation turns to living, working adaptation amidst COVID-19 - William & Mary News

Lessons From Mutual Aid During the Coronavirus Crisis – Stanford Social Innovation Review

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(Illustration by iStock/sv_sunny)

Amid a disaster like COVID-19, the culprits of some of the worst abuses of power are the very systems and structures that we often turn to for leadership. The abuses can be committed with calculated awareness, such as when US Senators privately sold off millions in stocks while publicly downplaying the threat of the virus. Other times, institutional aid efforts unintentionally create ripple effects that disproportionally and severely affect vulnerable communities. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, shelter-in-place policies and the curtailment of public services have devastated families with precarious employment and people without homes.

Whether harm differs by being intentional or structural, it is the same in one critical way: Top-down, centrally managed systems of power can end up creating havoc due to the lack of their understanding of local communities.

In my role as research director with Accountability Counsel, a nonprofit organization that protects communities' human and environmental rights around the globe, and in previous positions, I have witnessed numerous failures of top-down responses to crises. While coordinating international assistance into northern Syria at the Syrian-Turkish border for several years, I observed millions of dollars wasted on ineffective programming, and countless millions more spent on projects that led to increased violence, instability, and suffering for thousands of people. Compounding the problem, a lack of local knowledge and context prevented project designers from seeing the effects of their actions, and even the most destabilizing projects were continually renewed and expanded over time.

Our team at Accountability Counsel has seen the same dynamic play out in Myanmar, where top-down conservation efforts in response to a deforestation crisis have instead paved the way for further environmental exploitation, violated human rights, and threatened the fragile peace in a conflict zone. Without appropriate care and due diligenceand without proper consultation with impacted communitiesit is remarkably easy for a project designed to help people or the environment to instead result in untold harm.

That's just a couple of examples among many. Studies of disasters in New York, Argentina, and other locations have identified myriad ways that relief by outsiders canundermine the recovery it is intended to produce.

In the context of our current global crisis, community-led responses to COVID-19 have a clear advantage over those coming from distant centralized bastions of power, which, intentionally or not, often reflect and reinforce existing inequities.

Community organizations here in the San Francisco Bay Area, such as theArab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), have provided invaluable support to vulnerable families who have been overlooked by official state responses, while tying their relief efforts to broader campaigns of mutual aid, collectivity, and solidarity. AROC explicitly uses its community support work to highlight the importance of health care as a right, anti-racism, climate change activism, and mutual solidarity for women, workers, migrants, incarcerated populations, people with disabilities, and the homeless. Accountability CounselsGood Ally policy aims to support civil society initiatives like AROC's. For example, our research team repurposed a community surveying tool to send SMS and voice messages to farmers across Haiti to help AROC identify vulnerable families in San Francisco.

It is important to remember that the vulnerabilities of these communities existed before the crisis cast them in such stark relief. With COVID-19 sharpening our awareness, we have an opportunity and responsibility to improve our social systems to better support society's most vulnerable not just during this crisis, but after it passes.

Many pathways toward a better world are being laid bare by the altruistic mutual aid efforts arising in cities around the globe. These locally designed and collaboratively built acts of solidaritywhich view the vulnerable as participants in their survival rather than passive consumers of assistanceinform a model of community resilience and collective empowerment with implications far beyond their immediate impact. They reject responses to the pandemic that value political hegemony and expediency over the well-being of the homeless, victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities and many other marginalized members of society.

The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the globe, and it is likely that things will never return to the way they once were.While we fight to mitigate the damage the crisis has wrought, we should learn lessons from the mutual solidarity and community resilience that it has unveiled. It will ensure the world that comes after the crisis is a better one for all.

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Lessons From Mutual Aid During the Coronavirus Crisis - Stanford Social Innovation Review

Guest column: In times of certainty, rely on all your communities – The Advocate

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On Sunday Dec. 31, 2017, I stood before the people of the Star Hill Church and delivered my final sermon as their pastor. For 23 years of Sundays and Wednesdays, we had assumed our respective positions in a mutual search for meaning, purpose and wisdom.

A dear friend recently sent a text message asking what I would say to those precious people today. Ive dwelled on her question ever since and many other questions, too.

What do I say in the midst of such disruption and uncertainty? What words can calm hearts, minds and spirits that have been bombarded with alarm after heightened alarm? What would I say to bring some sense of stability to this cauldron of disequilibrium? What are the spiritual truths that can be applied to the COVID-19 world? What can I suggest people do when I dont know what to do?

These thoughts rode a carousel in my mind. Around and around they went until, in a moment similar to moments in the many weeks of my 23 years, my thoughts landed on an ancient episode.

Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the Kingdom of Judah. He was zealous in his beliefs and has been generally well spoken of in the historical records. But there was an instance when the king found himself facing a challenge beyond any he had faced in his lifetime. He was under attack. Not only under attack, but facing a confederacy of surrounding nations, all aligned and ready to pounce at any moment. What do you do when you dont know what to do?

Yes, it is here in the book of 2 Chronicles that I would invite peoples to join me in mining for nuggets that can not only sustain us but steel our resolve in the face of this great challenge.

I would point out that Jehoshaphat was alarmed. So we begin with a license to acknowledge the sense of dread, fear and concern that seems to come and go within all of us. COVID-19 is a daunting adversary and we should feel alarm. Far from something being wrong with us, or the need to put forth some false bravado, we can name this thing inside of us without shame. And we can see that Jehoshaphats alarm was not paralyzing.

I would call peoples attention to Jehosaphats response to the military conflict. He chose to understand and react based on his spiritual beliefs. I would ask my anxious parishioners if they are informed by the whims of the national and local news, or by orthodoxy? Are they opening themselves to whatever bias or agenda is behind their chosen network? Or are they allowing their belief system to filter what is coming at them? Viewing our circumstances through the perspective of faith doesnt make them magically disappear or instantly get better. What it does is arm us with a framework with which to understand.

And one last thing. I would point out that Jehosaphat invited others in his community to join him in responding to his predicament. Adults, children and the older members of the community all came together in the face of adversity. They were, after all, in it together.

Just as we are all in this together. Now is not the time for heroic individualism. Withdrawal and isolation are actually part of the attack, not part of the answer. Our village, tribe, congregation, parish, neighborhood, family, friends and colleagues are all part of our arsenal in moments like these. We can create new ways of connecting, try video chats in addition to phone calls, and stand across the street as we engage neighbors. But above all else, we can be intentional in sustaining these relationships.

What should we do when we dont know what to do? Embrace these relationships. Make the most of them. Treasure them.

Raymond A. Jetson heads the Baton Rouge nonprofit MetroMorphosis.

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What is the psycholgy of disaster management? – Medical News Today

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In times of turmoil, in which large populations are affected by factors mostly outside of their control, community-wide efforts of keeping the situation in check can take a long-lasting emotional and psychological toll. In this Special Feature, we look at the psychological aspects of disaster management.

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the new coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic, countries around the globe have been working hard at containing the viruss spread at a local level.

Lockdown measures in various countries have included closing down public buildings and institutions from restaurants to gyms to museums and asking people to remain at home and minimize or even wholly relinquish social contact with people outside their household.

Although such measures have helped slow down the spread of the new coronavirus, an increasing sense of isolation and anxiety stemming from the situation have been taking their toll on the mental health of populations around the world.

Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.

As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly sweeps across the world, it is inducing a considerable degree of fear, worry, and concern in the population at large, WHO officials have noted.

In this Special Feature, we will be looking at the psychology of disaster management and offering an overview of the impact of disaster management techniques on the mental and emotional health of populations affected by disaster. We also look at strategies that research has suggested could help mitigate this impact.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), disaster management can be defined as the organization and management of resources and responsibilities for dealing with all humanitarian aspects of emergencies, in particular preparedness, response and recovery in order to lessen the impact of disasters.

Preparedness refers to policies and resources that different countries and organizations put in place in case of a disaster.

Response refers to the actions they take to address the impact of a disaster once it does occur.

Finally, recovery refers to the process of healing that takes place after the event. This involves long-term programs, which go beyond the provision of immediate relief, as per the IFRC.

All of these aspects of disaster management should include provisions for safeguarding physical health, access to primary care and resources, and economic support.

But there is one more issue that plans for preparedness, response, and recovery must take into account: the psychological impact of disasters.

It comes as a given that disasters whether of natural origins, such as earthquakes and floods, created by humans, such as wars, or due to a pandemic will have a profound psychological impact on communities globally.

A systematic review published in Psychological Medicine in 2008 looked at different types of disasters that occurred over almost 3 decades from 1980 to 2008. The review suggested that many people experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The evidence suggests that the burden of PTSD among populations exposed to disasters is substantial, the authors of the review conclude.

A study published in 2015 in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, indicates that the prevalence of mental health problems among people from communities affected by disasters is two to three times higher than in the general population.

Another systematic review, published in 2017 in Health Psychology Open, may explain why disasters take such a huge emotional and mental health toll on communities, despite the presence of contingency plans in countries around the world.

This review concludes that, based on existing documentation, a significant number of countries lack appropriate preparedness in terms of preventing or responding to the mental health issues that may arise following a disaster.

While most research shows that disaster mental health consequences and disorders have been taken into consideration in many countries, the review warns that the available studies about disaster mental health preparedness are few, and the number of the documents related to mental health preparedness programs, models, or tools has not increased significantly in recent years.

Among the countries most likely to be hit by natural disasters, very few Thailand and Myanmar are examples have developed mental health preparedness programs.

The researchers who conducted the 2017 review also noted a particular lack of informational material aimed at the groups that are most likely to experience mental health issues in the case of a disaster.

[W]e found a lack of information on vulnerable groups, such as children, women, people living with disabilities, and the elderly, the researchers write.

They also note that there is not enough support for the people who would become first-line workers in the case of a disaster, such as healthcare professionals.

The importance of this brief note, in particular, becomes apparent now that current studies are emphasizing the mental and emotional strain under which doctors and nurses find themselves as they frontline the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The most important factor required to prevent or mitigate the mental health impact of a disaster as it unfolds is access to accurate, helpful information.

As part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO have repeatedly advised those from affected communities to seek information only from trusted sources [] so that you can take practical steps to prepare your plans and protect yourself and loved ones.

Reducing the amount of stigma around seeking mental health support is also an important step.

Research published in BMC Psychology in 2019 shows that first-line responders in the United Kingdom often avoid seeking mental health support because they fear being ostracized due to the stigma associated with mental health issues.

And stigma can also be relevant in other crucial ways. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO have stressed that people experiencing possible symptoms of the disease may avoid reporting their health status and seeking care because they are apprehensive that their communities may reject them.

Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen instances of public stigmatization among specific populations, and the rise of harmful stereotypes, WHO officials have noted.

[Stigmatization] means that people are being labeled, stereotyped, separated, and [may be experiencing] loss of status and discrimination because of a potential negative affiliation with the disease, they warn. They add:

Governments, citizens, media, key influencers, and communities have an important role to play in preventing and stopping stigma. We all need to be intentional and thoughtful when communicating on social media and other communication platforms, showing supportive behaviors around COVID-19.

Finally, in an official briefing, the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) emphasize that individuals must seek mental health support and provide solidarity to their peers. It is also vital for governments and organizations to strengthen mental health supports at every level.

In their briefing, which focusses on the context of the current pandemic, the OCHA note that:

And for the WHO, the management of mental health conditions counts as an essential health service and is included in the operational guidelines recently published by the agency.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.

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What is the psycholgy of disaster management? - Medical News Today

Communities of Color Must Be Centered in Gun Violence Prevention Movement – Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

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Communities of color continue to be disproportionately impacted by gun violence across the United States. Unfortunately, communities that are most impacted by gun violence are often plagued by structural inequities that perpetuate this violence. That is why when we look to address gun violence, we must have a holistic conversation to ensure that those most impacted are being centered in this conversation and moved from the margins.

Lauren Footman

To have a holistic conversation, we must address root causes (such as poverty, income inequality, underperforming schools and under-resourced public services) while also advocating for equitable resources for community-based programs and addressing easy access to firearms. Moreover, once we are clear on the solutions, we have to keep the most impacted communities at the forefront of this conversation. This work heavily relies on data and the data shows us who is most impacted, so we must be intentional to prioritize the most impacted communities in our work when setting policy and programmatic agendas.

When discussing data and trends of gun violence, we cannot help but notice the ages of the victims. Data shows us that black youth both females and males are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. Our analysis of CDC data states Black boys and youths aged 0-19 were over 14 times more likely to be killed by firearm homicide than White (non-Latino) boys and youths, while Black men aged 20-34 were nearly 17 times more likely to be killed by firearm homicide than their White (non-Latino) counterparts. Black girls and youths aged 0-19 and Black women aged 20-34 were each nearly 6 times more likely to be killed by firearm homicide than their White (non-Latino) counterparts (5.92 and 5.63 times, respectively).

This data is sobering, but when you hear these stories firsthand in community meetings you are hit with the harsh reality: There are too many young people who do not get to experience lifes milestones, and there are too many families and communities forever changed due to gun violence.

As we think of the stories of those most impacted by gun violence, we must not forget the humanity of the communities we are looking to amplify and support. A huge part of this space must be ensuring that we are not doing harm in our efforts to support communities.

This means that we are building authentic relationships with the communities, and that they are recognized as the experts of their communities and of this work, as often they have been organizing for years unrecognized and unsupported. Outside of building meaningful relationships, it is imperative that we work to position communities and individuals to get the structural support to do violence prevention work, as so much of this work can be volunteer.

In addition, this work entails facilitating intentional relationships to have their work become sustainable, but also making sure state and national organizations are reflective of those most impacted. The only way we can continue to build a robust holistic movement is ensuring this movement is hiring members of the communities that are most impacted.

Gun violence is a multifaceted challenge that demands a holistic set of solutions to stop the cycles of daily gun violence in the most impacted communities. Those who are closest to the pain need to be closest to the power.

At The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, we recognize that we must engage impacted communities specifically communities of color in our work to reduce gun deaths. We do this by first building genuine relationships with community members. We then use a research-grounded toolkit called Education to Action to turn these relationships into self-sustaining Community Action Networks that advocate for policies to reduce gun violence.

The Community Action Networks are self-sustaining advocacy groups from communities statewide. They advance an evidence-based, holistic approach to tackle gun violence in communities of color by hosting workshops and events that bring together law enforcement, community members, faith leaders and politicians.

They create a space for individuals who were disengaged from the political process to become active leaders within their communities, fighting for policies that will build healthy communities free of violence and inequity. They also act as a forum for skill-building, for instance in public relations and communications, and provide an opportunity for members to collaborate on the development of violence prevention programming.

Lauren Footman is a community engagement coordinator at The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. She has been working in the violence prevention movement for seven years at the intersection of communities and policy.

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Communities of Color Must Be Centered in Gun Violence Prevention Movement - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Please, Don’t Intentionally Infect Yourself With Coronavirus – The New York Times

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As the coronavirus continues to spread, epidemiologists like me are starting to field a remarkable question: Would people be better off if they just contracted the virus and got it over with? Ive heard rumblings about people avoiding physical distancing or hosting a version of chickenpox parties, where noninfected people mingle with an infected person in an effort to catch the virus.

For some, it is part of a herd immunity strategy to build population immunity by infecting younger people who seem to have mild cases of Covid-19. Others are frustrated with staying home. There are also those who hope they could better protect their loved ones, serve their communities or return to work if they could develop immunity.

While frustration, fear and solution-seeking are normal responses to this new global risk, there are seven clear reasons choosing to get intentionally infected would be a really horrible idea right now.

It is all about how much we just dont know yet.

We have not yet established that those who recover from this infection indeed develop long-term immunity. Herd immunity projections depend completely on such a sustained immune response, and we havent found out whether that even exists. We all sincerely hope it does, but we wont know for certain until we study recovered patients over time.

There are documented cases where people who appear to recover from the virus test positive again, which calls even short-term immunity into question. These apparent cases of reinfection may actually be remission and relapse, or false test results. However, researchers need more time to figure out what is happening with these patients, and the implications.

Whats more, even if it is determined that reinfection cannot occur shortly after recovery, it could still happen later if immunity is only seasonal. If reinfection is indeed possible, we need to know whether it will result in disease that is milder or more severe. While antibodies to a previous infection generally reduce risk the second time around, for some viruses, such as dengue fever, they can lead to severe and even fatal disease.

We dont know that recovered patients actually clear the virus from their bodies. Many viruses can remain in reservoirs, parts of the body where they hang out quietly, and re-emerge to cause disease later in life. For example, chickenpox can come back as shingles, and hepatitis B can lead to liver cancer years later. We now know that in some patients, detectable virus can be found in feces and even blood after apparent recovery. Does the coronavirus remain in the body, or are these just residual bits of virus?

Hospital beds and equipment are urgently needed right now for Covid-19 patients. People shouldnt kid themselves that because they are young they will not be hospitalized if infected. In the United States, the C.D.C. has estimated that about one in every five or six people aged 20 to 44 with confirmed Covid-19 has required hospitalization. Avoidable hospitalizations take valuable resources away from others who were not able to avoid infection.

While early reports focused almost exclusively on the risk of death, we do not yet fully understand the other effects of Covid-19. We do know that previously healthy people are being left with potentially long-term lung and heart damage.

As more patients recount enduring painful coughing, disorientation and difficulties breathing, people are coming to understand that the 80 percent to 85 percent of cases considered mild are not necessarily mild in its usual sense. Researchers and health care professionals use the term mild to describe Covid-19 cases not requiring hospitalization. While mild can be truly mild, it can also include pneumonia, and be brutal and scary.

Herd immunity requires a high proportion of a population to be immune (the actual percentage varies for different infections), but we want to get there slowly or, ideally, through vaccines. Right now, too many people are getting sick through non-intentional spread, burdening hospitals and leading to severe illness and death. It is far too early to think about intentional infection as a strategy.

Slowing down the spread of the coronavirus wont just save lives in the coming few months; it also gives us time to study treatments, and to expand or reconfigure hospital services for Covid-19 patients. This means that those who get sick later may benefit from better care, including effective medications. Of course, it also gives us more time to improve testing accuracy and capacity, and to develop a vaccine.

We need to keep in mind that the science is moving fast right now. It is unprecedented to see such an intensive effort internationally being put into studying one disease.

While it is hard to be patient, the best way out of this will likely be much clearer to us in a month or two than it is now. In the meantime, it is important that we dont take unnecessary risks with unknown consequences. If we can avoid infection, we need to do exactly that.

Greta Bauer is an epidemiologist and a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University in London, Ontario.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Sending Community Wishes For Safe And Joyful Easter – Escalon Times

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Hello everybody; I wanted to drop aquick note to you and your family, and be the first to wish you an eventfulHoly Week and Happy Easter. Hopefully everyone is healthy and safe, whilemaking the best of our time together at home. While most of us are shelteringin place, lets remember those that are still working daily and are doing theirbest to help all of us get through this time of uncertainty. I know that I havecome to appreciate my friends in the medical field greatly; their selflessnessduring these days should not go unnoticed.

Individually, we are all going to beaffected by COVID-19 in one way or another. Whether its sickness, loss ofwork, struggling to make ends meet or frustration that your local market hashorrendously long lines and are out of your selective food or personal items weare all in this together. For many the frustration is everywhere and negativitylooms. To get through these times, we need to turn this frustrating mindset ofdifficulty around. There arent problems in this world, only situations. Again,everyone is being affected by this EVERYONE! Individually, we are beingaffected differently, some health, some financial, some family, but everyone isaffected. This hard time is temporary, it will pass; I promise. Again, thereare no problems, only situations. Situations create opportunity. Let me repeatthat: Situations create opportunity. It is how you respond to this opportunitythat needs to draw your focus. If you are chasing and hoping that the normalof last month is right around the corner, or will come back any day now Imsorry that normal is not coming back Ever! And that is just fine. Wheredoes it say a new normal cant be better? Why cant our households be better?Why cant our communities be better? The opportunity you are searching for, isin the ways you are handling your current situations. Are you continuing togrow? Are we being intentional with our activities and interactions? Purposefuldays? Purposeful acts? Are we taking our problems and looking at them assituations and creating opportunities to make your life, household, and world abetter place? Are you taking advantage of this opportunity to make an impact?Creating new habits? Or are you still chasing last months idea of normal?

Personally, for us, it has been quiteinteresting to say the least. Like many, we have had to adjust to distancelearning for school, new routines and the horrible thought of no socialphysical interaction for an extended period of time. Its hard for me not toshake hands, pat someone on the back or give hugs; its something I have had toovercome. But I encourage all to spend this time wisely. Slow down. Appreciatesome of the down time. Restore your principles in the family unit. Play gamestogether. Pray together. Eat together growing up, I learned more with my feetunder the table and breaking bread than I did in any classroom. I feel we needto re-focus and restore our personal principles in our own inner circles. Dontlet this time of uncertainty weigh you down, leverage this time to takeadvantage of your situations and make the most to restore your faith, yourmindset and your love for your family. Mother Teresa once said, If you want tochange the world, go home and love your family.

Create new habits. Habits that promotegrowth, wellness and connection. Meditate on the old daily habits that werenegative or detrimental to you, your family and business. Negative habits thatwere developed way before March of 2020 and that need to stay there, in thepast. Because when this ends and it will end each of us needs to be betterthan the person we were in early March. Cultivate, nurture and grow: we need todo this daily, and this time of uncertainty can be made certain in one aspectof your life, simply by controlling your reactions to your current situation.Have faith, trust the process of new positive habits in your life and moveforward. This too shall pass

I wish you and your family a HappyEaster. Please enter Holy Week with a pure heart, pray with your family, andprepare yourselves for a joyful Easter.

NicholasA. Nick Caton is a longtime local resident and Realtor; this was submitted asa special guest column and the opinions expressed are those of the author.

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Sending Community Wishes For Safe And Joyful Easter - Escalon Times

How local business can drive the coronavirus economic recovery | TheHill – The Hill

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. With our nation in crisis, this adage has taken on new meaning for the investors, developers, and small business owners I work with, many of whom are transforming complex operations almost overnight to meet rapidly evolving demands. Fallout from the coronavirus has wreaked havoc on the most vulnerable people and laid bare our economic disparities, but it has also illuminated the power of local businesses to both serve and strengthen communities, if they are willing to be creative and redeploy their valuable assets.

Thousands of low income communities already faced fragile economies, underfunded support systems, and little investment before this current crisis. Indeed, this is the focus of work driving positive social impact in opportunity zones. Millions of families across the country have lived one everyday disaster away from financial catastrophe for years. These same vulnerable communities are poised to be hardest hit as business shutters and unemployment surges at record rates. Without creative solutions, the inequalities between affluent and low income communities will deepen, therefore jeopardizing our shared economic future in this country.

While the relief legislation passed by Congress offers us a vital lifeline, the intentional collective action of local businesses is desperately needed. By redeploying their unique assets, whether capital, manpower, property, or infrastructure, local businesses can meet urgent community needs in the short term and enable an inclusive economic recovery in the long term. If you are rolling your eyes, I understand because local businesses helping their communities seems simple in theory yet complex in practice.

The Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation based at Georgetown University has developed a network of investors and local businesses that prove this thinking can be implemented in the real world. In response to the coronavirus, they are throwing out the existing playbook and being creative with their valuable resources to meet community needs.

Hotel Revival in Baltimore is repurposing nearly every resource it has. It is providing free hotel rooms for health workers. It is offering kitchens and spaces to displaced chefs and entrepreneurs to their operations running. It built up the infrastructure to provide care packages and free lunches to service workers and those in need, already distributing more than 1,000 with Coastal Sunbelt Produce and Hungry Harvest last week alone.

As cities close dine in services at restaurants and bars, Think Food Group has turned the otherwise dormant kitchens of its popular restaurants into community kitchens, serving hundreds of affordable or free to go meals daily for those in need. Local Initiatives Support Corporation, one of the largest social enterprises in the nation, has partnered with Verizon to give grants to small businesses facing immediate financial threat. It is focused on entrepreneurs of color, businesses owned by women, and enterprises in historically underserved areas that do not have access to capital.

This intentional and collective thinking about how to redeploy what local businesses have to help their communities is exactly what is required to meet the urgent need of this moment and place our country on a path to inclusive economic recovery. This will look different across the spectrum. Small businesses are also among the hardest hit and may need to address their own urgent needs before focusing on community impact. Thoughtful collaboration with communities can also take lots of time and effort.

The idea is to be creative and leverage partnerships to maximize what is possible. Local businesses must not be immobilized by uncertainty. They should lean into it and start small, but also think expansively about who else to involve. They might be surprised to discover unexpected partners. They should think about returns with a long term lens, act on immediate needs, and share what is working so everyone can be more effective.

While the crisis our nation confronts is challenging, it is also a powerful opportunity for visionary leadership to prevail and for local businesses to reimagine community impact. They can be creative and think about the unique resources or manpower they can redeploy to meet an immediate need for their fellow neighbors and contribute to an inclusive economic recovery. Our shared economic future in this country depends on it.

Jennifer Collins is a fellow in residence with the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation based at Georgetown University in Washington.

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How local business can drive the coronavirus economic recovery | TheHill - The Hill

Success of Just Transition in community’s hands – Craig Daily Press

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Just Transition Advisory Committee members made clear in a town hall meeting in Craig last month that the communities who weather a transition from coal to alternative industries are those that take control of the process themselves. The committee wont be providing the plan for economic viability, but rather the support for the community to organize itself and define a vision and strategy.

The Committee was established as a result of House Bill 1314. The bills primary goal is to provide transition assistance to workers and communities impacted by Colorados move away from coal-based electrical generation by 2030.

If Just Transition is going to be an effective partner with Craig and Hayden and other communities facing this transition, it will first be because those communities are leading the way and driving the process internally, said Wade Buchanan, Director of the Office of Just Transition housed under the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Craig City Councilor Ryan Hess fears that a common problem in rural America is a dependency upon outside resources to fix things and a lack of experience within communities to diversify the economy until its an emergency.

I think well hide and wait to see what the state and federal government do before we take local action, Hess said. We cant wait until we hear a plan we dont like to be angry; we need to come up with a plan locally right now. Brainstorming how to take our out-of-place workers and repurpose them locally is more beneficial than brainstorming who can come save us.

Still, some communities naturally transition more easily than others.

Mark Haggerty of Headwaters Economics who leads the teams research in tax policy, rural economic development and community planning around energy and economic transitions was quick to point out that communities who transition successfully have a distinct set of advantages that not every place has. Outside of major airports, universities and national parks, there are precious few examples of places that have successfully transitioned.

The ability of a community to come together around a common vision and a strategy to implement that vision is critical, and thats really difficult for a lot of these coal communities to come around to, he said. Theres an immediate reaction to want to defend what you have because the future is scarier.

The strategy and vision has to come locally. If there isnt one, theres nothing that the state or the committee is going to do to help. Once you have that strategy and vision in place, theres a lot that the state can do to help.

Developing big industry ideas without an investment in people and local institutions as well as policy reform could see Moffat County build the proverbial bridge to nowhere.

Hess sees things similarly with a vision that there should be a focal person whose day-to-day task is looking for grant money, making sure that economic development efforts are all in alignment and whose role is to bring thought groups together.

We cant take on ideas and delegate them to a bunch of people who already have full-time jobs; we need one person who wakes up in the morning whose mission in life is to find economic stability and then growth, Hess said.

Reinventing the industry that can drive Moffat Countys economic engine as well as unemployment and the loss of a strong skilled work force have been a focus of the conversation related to Just Transition, but driving fiscal policy change is a critical component of long term success, too.

Experts who have seen similar transitions both successful and unsuccessful in other communities recognize that the viability of towns like Craig depend on the health of critical infrastructure, which is a unique struggle when transitioning from coal-based industry. Big mines and power plants have paid the bills for a long time, and a transition to renewable energy simply doesnt provide the same kind of financial returns.

An important piece in Colorado is reviewing the incentives around renewable energy. If you replace a coal-fired power plant with a solar or wind energy facility of the same size, youre going to get substantially less revenue from it and its because the state has made a conscious decision to incentivize renewable energy and the way that they incentivize it is by giving them property tax breaks, said Haggerty So the state has essentially given local government money away to meet a state priority and it doesnt work for these communities. We have to change that. If the state wants to incentivize it, great. But dont take it out of local governments budgets.

According to Craig City Manager Peter Brixius, efforts are underway in Moffat County to gather public information, explore new industries and get input from local businesses, though there is not a formally organized group or communication channel as of yet.

Since the announcement in January, the state has been tremendous in the amount of attention this part of the state has received, said Craig City Manager, Peter Brixius. Senator Rankin has especially been involved with the community and has tried to initiate various meetings with a good cross-section of the pubic and private partners and educational institutions. We are trying to define what our priorities would be if there are allocated resources.

By all accounts, this is an urgent issue, but its not immediate.

We expect that coal is on its way out in the whole region, but the only timeline we really have is the one that Tri-State has given us, and were five years out from the first closure, Buchanan said. This first year is really about both the state and the communities trying to come together to develop the framework we need to put in place.

Memorial Regional Health is a critical infrastructure in Moffat County and with the introduction of COVID-19 to an already stressed system, the importance of industry that can sustain community healthcare is even more important today.

Healthcare is part of the backbone and fiber of a community. Were going to need to be here no matter what, said Jennifer Riley, Vice President of Operations at MRH.

Tax base erosion and the erosion of a strong employer base will mean a bigger switch from commercially insured to uninsured or Medicare/Medicaid.

What a benefit it is to have time and to know whats coming and to be prepared for it and to plan for it, Buchanan said. Lets not squander that.

Its not all gloom and doom.

There are potentially advantages for communities based on their costs and quality of life to attract different kinds of businesses, Haggerty said. They will need infrastructure broadband, access to markets, skilled labor force. And that doesnt happen over night. If you have an intentional policy to get there with support from the state, you can start putting those pieces together.

Its not just Colorado thats experiencing the transition. Colorado has some advantages that other states such as Montana and Wyoming dont have, Haggerty said. Colorados economy is not dependent on coal. Youve got the political capital and attention of the legislature and the governor.

Haggerty believes that its not too big an ask for the state to provide some short-term assistance in terms of planning support so that communities have the time and the resources to gather information and learn from their peers.

If I had my magic wand, there would be someone in the area that networked across county and state governments and their goals would be: economic growth and development, preparing for economic correction, transition from one economy to the next and create ways to find full-time skilled jobs, Hess said.

Transition?

The coal transition has galvanized a rhetoric and a commitment thats kind of unique. These communities have quite a bit of resources at their disposal if they know how to ask for it, he said. And its usually not a lack of money thats the problem. Its a lack of strategy and vision.

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Success of Just Transition in community's hands - Craig Daily Press

Seeking All Perspectives, ASA Writes Letter to Biden on Appraisal Impact in Minority Communities – Appraisal Buzz

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There has been much talk in the appraisal profession about the adoption of a specific appraisal issue by former Vice President Joe Biden as part of his platform seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Specifically, Mr. Bidens inclusion of a policy to tackle racial bias that leads to homes in communities of color being assessed by appraisers below their fair value has appraisers wondering what, exactly, they are doing that could be perceived as systemically devaluing homes in minority communities. After all, USPAP specifically prohibits any kind of explicit or implicit bias from affecting an appraisers opinion of value.

In a recent letter to Mr. Biden, ASA worked to bridge the gap in the conversation, both by acknowledging that USPAP and its enforcement by state licensing agencies is sufficient protection from overt acts of bias against communities of color, but also addressing a concern expressed in multiple conversations that something in the appraisal process has the effect of carrying forward historic bad acts such as redlining that disadvantaged communities of color in the first place.

In the letter, ASA makes it clear that [t]he cornerstone of USPAP is its requirement that an appraiser must be objective, impartial, and neutral in determining an opinion of value in connection with any appraisal assignment. This bedrock, and its enforcement, demonstrate clearly there is no need to establish a national standard specifically focused on appraisals in minority communities. A standard which addresses this issue already exists.

ASA goes on to discuss how a potential overreliance on the Sales Comparison approach by the mortgage lending community and a nearly exclusive use of a retrospective approach to developing an opinion of value could lead to unintended outcomes that perpetuate historical acts of bias in housing finance. By encouraging lenders to more fully and appropriately incorporate the Cost Approach and Income Approach into the process, and allowing appraisers to apply appropriate weight to the findings that each approach shows, there is more opportunity for single family and multiple dwelling homes in communities of color to reflect values to those in similar, non-minority neighborhoods. ASA does caution, however, not to push for intentional overvaluation where no evidence exists to support higher home values.

The letter closed with this summation of ASAs point: [T]hat comprehensive use of all the approaches to value, and reviewing and analyzing future trends, could begin to overcome historical factors that led to depressed home values in minority communities in the first place.

When asked about ASAs letter, International President Douglas Krieser, ASA FRICS noted There are a range of experiences with the homebuying process, including when the home is appraised. While we believe and would expect that no one is intentionally depressing home values simply because of someones race or ethnicity, we are sensitive to anything in the appraisal process that can unintentionally disadvantage communities of color. We welcome a full conversation around the issue, and hope that open minds from all corners can figure out if theres a problem and, if there is, developing solutions that are well-thought out and based upon the excellent Standards already in place.

To read ASAs letter, click here.

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Seeking All Perspectives, ASA Writes Letter to Biden on Appraisal Impact in Minority Communities - Appraisal Buzz

A Waukesha man murdered his wife and sister-in-law to ‘save’ them from the coronavirus, complaint says – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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A Waukesha man on March 10 stabbed four of his family members, killing two of them, includinghis wife,in a violent outburst linked to his obsessiveconcern overthe growing coronavirus pandemic, according to a criminal complaint.

Adam Roth, 36, wascharged Wednesday in Waukesha County Circuit Courtwith two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, two counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, and one count of mistreatment of animals/causing death by use of a dangerous weapon.

The two victims who died from their injuries were Adam Roth's wife, Dominique Roth, 34, and his sister-in-law Deidre Popanda, 26, according to a news release from the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department.

Desiree Popanda, 36, and Gilane Popanda, 62, suffered"significant injuries" in the stabbing, according toTown of Waukesha Fire Chief Dan Buchholtz, and were transported to area hospitals.

According to the complaint:

Gilane Popanda said her son-in-law, Adam Roth, had been "acting obsessive" over the coronavirus for several weeks leading up to the incident.

At 5 a.m. March 10, she said he woke everyonein the houseup to tell them he loved them and was sorry for everything he had said and done to them.

Gilane said her daughter, Dominique, and Adam were in the kitchen eating later that day when he began stabbing her. When Gilane and her other daughters,Desiree andDeidre, told him to stop, he "turned on everybody," includingDesiree's 9-year-old son. The child escaped with his mom and ran to a neighbor's house.

Around 6:45 p.m. March 10, a caller told dispatchers"her brother-in-law was going crazy and was trying to stab her sisters."

When a deputy arrived on-scene, he spoke withDesiree and Gilane Popanda, who were outside "covered in blood," and later transported to the hospital.

When the deputy entered the home, he immediately heard screaming.

The deputysaid Adam Roth had a large knife in his hand and was also"covered in blood." After the deputy pointed his rifle atRoth and told him twice to drop his weapon, Roth obeyed and said, "All right, I am done now."

When police found Dominique Roth, she said "Why did he do this?"and "Please help me" before succumbing to 19 stab wounds.

Police found Deidre Popanda and a family dog dead on scene.

Whena detective interviewed Roth at the hospital the day after the stabbing, Roth said "it (coronavirus)was coming andI had to save them."

Roth made his initial appearance in court via Zoom video April 8. Hiscash bond was set at $500,000, according to online court records.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 17.

Sophie Carson contributed to this report.

Contact Hannah Kirby at hannah.kirby@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HannahHopeKirby.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

Read or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/waukesha/news/waukesha/2020/04/08/waukesha-man-charged-stabbing-left-2-dead-2-injured/2972486001/

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A Waukesha man murdered his wife and sister-in-law to 'save' them from the coronavirus, complaint says - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Three Ways To Be Mindful With Your Influencer Marketing In A Crisis – Forbes

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Now, more than ever, it is important to be cognizant of brand messaging and how it may be perceived by the public. Concerns about COVID-19 have us operating at a higher level of awareness, and it's vital to keep this top of mind while continuing to execute successful marketing campaigns.

While influencers are a wonderful way to connect brands with viewers, more importantly, they add a human touch to what could otherwise be seen as opportunistic advertising in a tense social climate. Let's go over three ways to practice mindful influencer marketing during a crisis.

1. Rely On Trusted Influencer Partners

Uncertainty is currently a big theme in many of our lives, but coming back to what we know can be reassuring and comfortable. The same idea can be applied to influencer marketing: By partnering with known brand collaborators, you can give viewers something familiar to lean on. Because a large portion of the population is practicing (an often mandated) social distancing at home, social media content use has begun to increase dramatically (paywall) meaning many people are likely checking in with their favorite creators a lot more often.

To use this increased viewership productively, work with creators who have a true and authentic track record with your brand. This means that creators will be able to speak about your brand intelligently and with a strong personal testimony the keys to promoting mindful brand messaging.

2. Keep Messaging Brief And Personal

As much as we'd like to keep things business as usual, they're pretty far from it, which is why evergreen brand messaging is a good starting point but needs a bit of tweaking. Consumers do not want to feel sold to right now, and most of them will see straight through any attempts to do so. On top of that, many feel the need to be more conservative with their spending. These are two limiting factors when it comes to consideration and conversion.

So how do you find a happy medium? By keeping things to the point: No fluff. No exaggerated claims. Just direct and honest communication. Instead of complicated talking points and impersonal brand advocacy, a brief explanation of your brand's value proposition combined with personal testimony from trusted influencer partners can help mitigate viewers' skepticism.

3. Understand What Consumers Need Most

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, seek to understand what consumers actually need specifically, what product or element of your brand will be most helpful to them during a time of crisis. Whether it's providing advice about finding child care, online learning services, meal kit delivery, mental health services, etc., there are ways you can serve communities by simply making them aware of what's available to them.

It is important to be intentional when considering what consumers need, and who better to understand this than the creators that an audience has chosen to follow and look to for insights. Creators know their viewers like one big extended family, and they can act as a positive liaison between your brand and your audience at a time when consumers might otherwise be apprehensive about brand messages.

Wrapping Up

Mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword in the marketing community, but its importance is staggering in our current state of affairs. Influencers can provide a way to connect with consumers during a time of need, but in a way that personalizes their experience with your brand. Keeping messaging brief and personal arms them with the tools for success at all points of the marketing funnel. They are able to effectively communicate with their viewers and, in turn, help your brand understand what consumers need most. The road ahead may be rocky, but you can rest assured knowing that you've humanized your brand experience even if only a little.

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Three Ways To Be Mindful With Your Influencer Marketing In A Crisis - Forbes

The Marbut Report: Nominations open for Lawyer of the Year – Jacksonville Daily Record

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The Jacksonville Bar Association is seeking nominations for the annual Jacksonville Daily Record Lawyer of the Year award.

Nominees must be a member in good standing of the JBA, exemplify the standards and characteristics of the associations values, and practice with professionalism and integrity.

Candidates also must display outstanding commitment and service to the community.

The 2019 recipient was Kathy Para, who retired from Jacksonville Area Legal Aid after a decade as pro bono coordinator and pro bono director, recruiting attorneys to represent low-income clients who otherwise would have faced often life-changing legal issues without benefit of counsel.

Mike Freed, a shareholder in Gunsters Jacksonville office and founder of Freed to Run, was recognized as Lawyer of the Year in 2018.

For the past three years, Freed has run six marathons in six days from the state Supreme Court in Tallahassee to the Duval County Courthouse.

For the past two years, he was joined by relay teams from the business and legal communities that pledge donations and run a marathon leg alongside Freed.

The event raises money for the North Florida Medical Legal Partnership endowment at JALA that helps local pediatric patients and their families by providing free civil legal aid.

With a 125% match from Baptist Health Foundation, Freed to Run has raised more than $1 million toward the $2.25 million goal.

The 2020 award will be presented May 6 during the JBAs annual Law Day meeting.

Nominations can be made by linking to the form at jaxdailyrecord.com/loty2020 or by email to [emailprotected] before 5 p.m. April 24.

The JBA Law Day poster contest exhibit traditionally is installed near the staircase at the Duval County Courthouse, but with it closed to comply with the COVID-19 social distancing directive from the state Supreme Court, this years contest is on the internet.

Posters drawn by students at West Riverside Elementary School to represent the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are displayed on the JBA website.

Visit jaxbar.org/postercontest2020 to see the virtual entries.

Votes may be cast by JBA members and the public.

The young artist whose poster receives the most votes will be recognized May 6 at the JBA Law Day meeting.

Duval County Tax Collector Jim Overton says a common inquiry is how to renew a vehicle registration now that all the branch offices are closed.

Overton said there are four choices:

Renew online at duvaltaxcollect.net.

Mail your renewal form and payment to Duval County Tax Collector, 231 E. Forsyth St., Room 440, Jacksonville, 32202.

Call (904) 255-5700 and renew by phone.

Visit the website and request a call back.

After learning of an incident that occurred after a member of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office apprehended a suspect, State Attorney Melissa Nelson issued the following statement:

Unfortunately, despite having to deal with all of these challenging circumstances, I have become aware of at least one incident in which a defendant, while being detained and ultimately arrested, informed the officer that she was infected with the COVID-19 virus, and then intentionally coughed into the officers face.

In light of this inexcusable criminal conduct, the purpose of this memorandum is to make clear that the State Attorneys Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit shall have a Zero-Tolerance Policy for any intentional COVID-19-related criminal conduct that either harms or threatens to harm any law enforcement officer or first responder, Nelson said in the memorandum.

According to State Attorneys Office spokesman David Chapman, the charge could be corruption against a public servant.

Thats a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison if actual harm occurs; or a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison if its merely a threat of unlawful harm.

Because of the duties that law enforcement and first responders are required to perform, they are at considerable risk of being infected by the COVID-19 virus. Just like health care practitioners, law enforcement and first responders on a daily basis are faced with the reality that they are likely to come into contact with an infected individual. In addition to the potential health hazards related to contracting the COVID-19 virus, law enforcement officers and first responders are also experiencing considerable stress due to these increased pressures and obligations both inside and outside of work, Nelson said in the memorandum.

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The Marbut Report: Nominations open for Lawyer of the Year - Jacksonville Daily Record

Six Communication Insights For Creating Value In Times Of Disruption – Forbes

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Change and transition are constant and infinite. When our social norms are negatively impacted, we tend to initially react with fear and a mindset of scarcity to the situation and circumstances rather than be proactive and challenge our beliefs and thoughts to take ourselves through a cognitive and abundant process for positive and lasting results.

Rather than allowing ourselves to become intimidated and suppressed from reactive behavior and limiting beliefs, we have an opportunity to stop, pause, think and open our hearts and minds to connect to others while evolving through change. This is a mind shift from living in isolation, frustration and anger from past experiences and anxiety and fear from future unknowns to that of being present and having courage, confidence and discipline and being accountable for our intentions, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, actions and, ultimately, the outcomes and consequences.

Take a moment to reflect on the possibilities you have to create value, growth and opportunity in times when life and work are disrupted with constant uncertainty and change. These six communication insights can help.

Six Communication Insights For Creating Value, Growth And Opportunity

1. Intentions And Gratitude. Begin with setting positive intentions each day and recognizing and expressing appreciation and gratitude for the value that is being added in the present time. Spend 2-5 minutes before your feet touch the floor in a quiet state, breathing deeply while setting your daily intentions. Begin and end each day with three statements of gratitude. As simple as it seems, these two mental exercises will afford your well-being and life more empowerment and clarity and reconnect you to the purposeful you.

2. Expressions And Shares. Be intentional and purposeful when using the power of verbal, written, physical and environmental language. Writing things down opens the conduit of heart-mind action and connection. Journaling, posting online in blogs and social media and even handwriting a note, letter or email to share and express your vision, intentions or thoughts connects us through an intimate experience, whether virtual or physical. Make it thoughtful and purposeful. Use the power of video connection. Our phones, computers and online apps and tools give us a forum to link, click, dial in and connect to each other, live and in-person, at least virtually.

Use the infinite power of nature to inspire and ignite creativity and joy. Combine walking and talking. Take a brisk, five-minute walk. Clip your favorite flower and foliage to place in a cup or vase to bring the outdoors inside to a colleague or friend. If youre able, host a leadership development exercise outdoors, incorporating the power of nature itself into your curriculum.

3. Creativity And Development. Lets use this moment to indulge and engage in opening our hearts, minds, bodies and souls to the gift of learning and growing. Exploration, discovery, observation, invention, listening, reading, testing these are actions we need to give ourselves permission to do daily, to the extent we schedule ourselves and prioritize time to expend our energy in this space where continuous learning and growth affords us an expansion of wisdom and value to be shared.

4. Vulnerability, Courage, Humility And Discipline. All greatness comes from these four attributes that are naturally internal and eternal to all humans. Great leaders master these attributes to achieve and experience success. Not living in fear of rejection, failure and other limiting beliefs is the purest and most powerful form of vulnerability. Finding the courage, humility and discipline to strike the match to ignite the energy that creates the momentum and builds the energy to take us into that state of abundance and value is the start. Be present with your well-being, and for the sake of others well-being, as able and willing. Even in times of challenge, assuming positive intentions and holding productive dialogue to work through and eradicate limitations, miscommunications and distortions establish a trusting and productive foundation for quality relationships.

5. Service And Sharing. All this would be null and void if we did not share and extend our highest and best selves to our family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, peers, teammates, organizations and communities. Knowing your purpose and purposing the best of into creating value, growth and opportunity for others exponentially extend a lasting and positive experience.

6. Cognition. Lets continue to challenge our own beliefs and thoughts first. Recognize and acknowledge our own limiting beliefs and distortions that trigger our reactiveness. Refrain from criticism, shaming and blaming. Be intentional and assume positive intent of others. Actively engage in investigation, identification, discovery and exploration of meaning and understanding before labeling and confirming a belief or thought. Ensure the decisions you are making stand true and align to your personal values and purpose. When taking action, be responsible and accountable for your behavior and the consequences to come from your part. Retrain yourself to stop, pause, be cognitive and then move into productive action. Enjoy the process. Practice the process by sharing your experience of change and transition with others. This is cognition at its best where we are able to continuously learn and grow while connected to others and making a difference, day by day.

It is important to note there is no perfection in communication, and time is of the essence. The threading of these attributes affords joy and delight in our experiences. At its best, humanity is designed to be evolutionary and experiential. Be grateful for the good and learn from the challenges. Try not to dwell in the muck, where you will remain stuck and miserable.

So why not begin the shift in mindset and mastery of aligning ourselves with our true and best selves, imperfectly and abundantly creating value, growth and opportunity for ourselves, others, our organizations, communities and in the world? Join the transformation and experience the abundance of connection, even in socially disruptive times.

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Six Communication Insights For Creating Value In Times Of Disruption - Forbes

Five investment strategies to mitigate systemic risks before the next pandemic – ImpactAlpha

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As we watch unemployment numbers rise and markets flounder, it is painfully clear how pandemics not only impact individuals health and well-being, but also devastate the entire global economy. The scope and scale of COVID-19 and its related economic fallout stem in large part from the fact that the worlds social and financial systems with their interconnected businesses and supply chains have become so intertwined and interdependent that a disruption to one can ramify, rapidly wreaking havoc for all.

Yet, most investors continue to operate on the assumption that they somehow operate separately from these systems and that systemic risks are beyond their control. We believe theyre wrong. We think individual investors and the financial system at large can and should invest and lend in ways that intentionally enhance, and not destroy, these systems.

Although finance cannot prevent the threat of the next pandemic, intentional system-level decision-making by investors and lenders can help us prepare for it more effectively and mitigate its worst societal and economic impacts. We need better guardrails. By taking a few decisive steps, we can help put these in place.

Heres what we need to do.

Allocate assets to the sovereign debt and municipal bond markets. Only local and national governments have the authority to take the draconian steps necessary to slow or stop pandemics. Investors need to invest in governments strong enough and with deep enough pockets to build guardrails and kindle economic recoveries. In addition, through the municipal bond market investors can support those non-profit hospitals that make up the vast majority of our acute care healthcare system and disproportionately serve low-income communities.

Many institutional investors, in search of yield today, have drastically cut their allocations to fixed income, chasing short-term returns by shifting assets to alternatives such as private equity and hedge funds. This is a short-sighted decision.

Investors should also stop investing in companies that dont pay their fair share of taxes and in financial services firms that promote tax avoidance services. What they are doing may not be illegal, but they are starving government of one of its most basic sources of revenues.

Insist that companies understand their business models and prepare backstops for their meltdown. Todays airline industry may never recover. Why? Because it did not understand that it is in the business of bringing people together: uniting families, convening businesses, solidifying friendships. If it had, it would have invested in Zoom or established its own telecommuting subsidiaries. Flight delayed? Stay at home or stop by our lounge and use our remote conferencing platform.

Todays fossil fuel companies, with few exceptions, lack the imagination for anything more than running out the clock on their current business models in as orderly a manner as possible, although decades ago some among their leaders had active renewable energy portfolios that they since opted to sell. At least the automobile and electric utility industries have an inkling that they should adapt to a future of alternative fuels.

Be willing to invest in firms that invest in the health of systems and prepare for potential systemic breakdowns. Excess manufacturing capacity may not be the most profitable way to run a business, but efficiency is not about letting people die because no one planned for ramping up ventilator production. The pursuit of efficiency has to stop short of abandoning all protection against disaster. If a firm makes belts, investors should ask whether they have a suspender line in the wings. Suspenders may be redundant and inefficient but its best not to be caught with your pants down.

Pharmaceutical companies that emphasize vaccines, generally a less profitable line of business than patented prescription drugs, deserve credit for understanding that prevention, particularly of pandemics, is part of their industrys mandate. A drugstore chain can remake itself into a full-service preventative healthcare provider. Invest in the system today or pay the price tomorrow.

The financial community thrives on lending. Debt is the most efficient way to boost the consumer economy. It works its magic for corporations too. Except when it cannot be repaid. We lent profligately to the housing market in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. Corporations loaded up on debt in the days before COVID-19 hit. The bonds of debt are excruciating to unwind; it can feel like forever; it can turn worlds upside down. The economic, social, and human costs of doing so destabilize.

The equivalent of belts and suspenders for lenders is the willingness to forgo a loan that is in fact too risky and to forgive those that cannot be repaid through no fault of borrowers. That means tough love to strengthen borrowers and lenders both. That strength will be needed to get through the next systemic crisis, pandemic or otherwise.

Being prepared means anticipating the worst, building in circuit breakers and guardrails, assuring redundancy and resilience, even when the worst seems unimaginable. Being prepared means investing in the health of fundamental systems.

We may be lucky and dodge the worst-case scenarios of the current fast-moving pandemic and the slow-motion train wreck that global warming will bring, but the 21st century will see other such systemic disruptions and we had better be ready for them.

William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg are the authors of the forthcoming book 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021).

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Five investment strategies to mitigate systemic risks before the next pandemic - ImpactAlpha