Being away from family can be tough during the best of times but this pandemic has truly tested and damn near broken me.
It was only a matter of time that someone closer to you gets infected and that happened 3 weeks ago when my brother fell ill (he's recovered now).

The initial bout of panic and scrambling for travel arrangements (it was looking pretty bad for a while) as his condition started to deteriorate was thankfully short as we needed cool heads more than rash decisions (taking 2 flights and passing through 3 big airports).
My other brother and my sister had to physically stop my parents from being in the same room as him. Shouting was involved. All that was quite difficult to manage from a distance but we have learnt of thousands of families around the world go through much tougher situations.
The medics, I can't even imagine how they are managing. The governments and the people are both siding with the virus in this long war.
Its all just so baffling to me, and even more absurd with every passing day that we have imposed it upon ourselves. On the most vulnerable.
Anyway, my brother is an otherwise fit 34 years old cyclist and he loves to go hiking every chance he gets so he probably had the best chance out of whole family to recover from the pneumonia in both lungs and dropping oxygen levels...
I don't think either of my parents will.
My family is in a privileged and fortunate position where we could care for him at home. We have friends and classmates that are doctors so could just call them and discuss the situation.. Could arrange oxygen and breathing equipment... All this is not available to most people.
Now, with all the (great and positive) announcements of vaccines, many people seem to think its all over, when it is far from!

Best organised regions will need months till everyone (or enough people) are vaccinated.
Others will need years, if at all they manage it.
In the meantime, people will get sick.
They will need all sorts of care, EVEN if they overcome the initial infection.

If you have followed me, you surely know I am bit of a broken record on this but maybe I am possibly not mad to be?
Please do whatever is in your power to stop the spread of this virus, if not for yourself, then for other human beings. Not everyone will survive this.

You really should do it for yourself too, you know. We need you in this world.

@ Trump: don't read the last sentence.

More from Life

1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.

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Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.
https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.