Covid and the Search for Silver Linings
Dear Friends!
Welcome to #3 of my newsletter. If you missed the first two you can find them here.
I will try brevity this week. Be as short as I can.
Current Covid Sentiment
It is both encouraging and scary that more states here are trying to open. Encouraging, because we have to do it anyway. We just can't keep the world in lock-down much longer. Financially, emotionally or spiritually. Scary, because I am not sure we are doing it right and that we have used the time in lockdown well enough to be prepared for what is coming. It feels a bit like taking a bungee jump. Excited about the view. Exhilarated for the rush. But nervous about whether the cord, my weight and the height of the fall has been calculated properly!
I am keeping a close eye on the math in terms of CFRs, scaling of testing and contact tracing as well as co-morbidities and will keep reporting on what I learn. This article my Dr Jordan Shlain, might be the most helpful, objective, complete and nuanced one I have found so far. Thank you to Dr Mark Hyman for sharing it with me.
The Search for Silver Linings
I am spending as much time as I can (when I am not trying to help my businesses get to the other side of this) looking for the bright side. And as usual, you only find what you are looking for. So I keep looking and I keep finding. There is a lot to be found. There are amazing stories all around. I am sharing a few below. But I am trying to spend several hours every day making sure I read non-mainstream media, talk to people with a positive outlook and really try harder to look for human goodness. It is way more plentiful than what is reported.
I'd leave it at that. Please click on some of the stories below.
This is a great piece by my health mentor and good friend Dr Mark Hyman. We are not good as a society to think long term. Food is the best example. We pay way too little for good food today but pay the price many times over for medical treatments tomorrow. Makes no sense to me. I know some of my friends will be defensive and take cheap shots at my prior career. But this is not about french fries, McDonald's or any particular food. This is about a toxic lifestyle and a food system, like most other systems, designed for short term efficiency at the price of long term debts. We are pennywise and pound foolish. As usual, an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. At least.
Excited to share this Sam Harris episode with Yuval Noah Harari. I am sure you are familiar with both. I am an avid reader and follower of Sam Harris. He is serving humanity in an incredible way by unpacking important and complicated matters such as ethics, religion, consciousness, truth, etc. Their conversation about what we are learning about humanity in the Corona Crisis is depressing and optimistic at the same time. As a bonus you can read Yuval's great NYT piece here.
John Krasinski and friends should be saluted for starting a newschannel on youtube called SGN Potluck. Perhaps not completely up my "style alley", but I so much respect what they are trying to do here. What if all our reporting indeed could be about finding out what is good rather than just ONLY looking for what is bad. Of course we need media to be a check on power. But have we possibly taken that job so far that we NEVER hear the good side of humanity and is the deafening negative surround sound perhaps affecting our own attitudes? I believe it is. You could call it mind pollution.
Ending with David Brooks this week. It probably won't be the last as I am generally a big admirer of Davids work. Particularly as a weaver these days. I did Military Service as a Marine in Sweden. I have often reflected on how much that time shaped me. I think every country should have a "service year". Spending time with people you don't know, serving needs bigger than your own and learning how to appreciate values, traditions and circumstances far from your own, builds the fabric and character of a nation. Now is a good time to do just that!