Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Aloha and welcome to another Stand the Energy Man show segment. I'm Dave Molinaro. I'm a project manager with the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies. Stands off Island this week working on a secret renewable energy project on an undisclosed location. That's okay because he usually brings back Donna's cookies, oh, so much for the undisclosed location. So today's guest is back by popular man, Mr. Ryan Wubbins from A&E firm Burns and McDonald. And we're going to share and garner his expertise on all things related to renewable energy. Ryan welcome back. Good to see you again. And looking forward to this conversation within the next half hour. So what we're going to talk about and cover today is a topic very important to both of us obviously, microgrids and how they enhance power quality. It's an issue that traditional utilities contend with on a daily basis. Now we've all experienced power surges and sags which can have significant effects on electronic equipment like televisions, computers, communications gears. And fortunately for us our local utilities do a very good job at managing power quality on the grid. But Ryan, we've all experienced challenges and power qualities like surges, sag, spikes, outages on occasion and it's a really significant and costly problem. In fact, worldwide damage to equipment, loss in productivity, downtime for production like manufacturing runs into billions of dollars every year. So it's really a worldwide challenge that we need to deal with. And what we're really talking about is good quality power that can be defined as a steady supply voltage that stays within prescribed ranges, frequencies and rated values and really a smooth voltage curve. That sine wave that we all know and love very much in the electrical industry. In other words, it's power quality that's compatible between what comes out of the outlet and the load that is plugged into. And what we're talking about too is very short periods of time relating to seconds maybe in a few minutes which responds, required rapidly responding technologies like flywheels, capacitors, maybe a variety of batteries that respond to these short time scale fluctuations. So it's all helping in managing the grid's electrical capacity within those narrow bands and boundaries that we have to have to maintain electrical balance. So again, power quality is really important to our national grid. It's obviously a power quality is a very important thing to the islands as well. So any momentary sag, surge, outage can cause problems. But Brian, what I wanted to get into you and Garner from your technical expertise is let's talk a little bit about power quality. And it can deviate in three ways, voltage, frequency, and waveform. So highlight us, talk a little bit about what each of those issues are and what they mean to us. Sure. That's a good question. Voltage and frequency are the two main key factors when we talk power quality. When we talk waveform, we're bringing in multiple aspects of the waveform. The waveform is just a derivative of voltage and frequency. But when we stack waveforms, the voltage waveform on top of the current waveform, we can start to measure what's called a phaser. A phaser will give us power factor.  Power factor is also a very important power quality issue, especially when you go to the grid.  But the voltage and frequency are the big ones. So voltage, there's all different types of voltages that you're used to seeing. 120 volt, 115 volt, 200 volt, 208, 220, 240. All of those are actually the same class of voltage being a single phase or three phase off of probably 480 or a distribution line. The key that you want to make sure on voltage is that you're within, it is actually a typically small percentage deviation from that. Let's just stay on 120. You need to be very close to 120 because that's what all of our components that we're plugging into the wall are made for. Your plug is designed so that you're not plugging in that plug into the wrong voltage outlet. So 120 or 115 are essentially the same. For all of your components, let's say, and your HVAC is probably a 220 outlet. HVAC is an HVAC, just the window AC unit. It's got a different plug on it once it gets so big. When the voltage comes off of its narrow band, it depends on the rating of the air conditioner. But as it's starting to dip down, you will get to a point where the motor within that air conditioner, it doesn't have enough oomph. The voltage isn't giving enough power to keep on spinning, and it'll just drop out.  That's where we start to say, OK, we have a power quality issue because our components are shutting down. And they're shutting down for the right reasons because it doesn't have enough power to do what it was designed to do. That's a case on a voltage basis. When you go to other countries, you're going to have different voltages, but the tolerance is still going to be the same. We've got to be within that narrow window. Frequency is how fast our voltage is actually alternating. We have an AC current that was decided a little battle a long time ago. That AC was going to be what we're going to use instead of DC. Frequency for us is 60 hertz. Typically on power quality, the same thing with the components, your cell phone charger, everything is wanting to see a certain frequency so that it can convert it and use it for its own use. Consumers are going to spin in accordance with that 60 hertz. What's the level of tolerance if you deviate from 60 hertz? Where you really get into problems? It's very, very small. We would tend to say anything outside a couple tenths of deviation off the 60 hertz. So maybe at 59.9, I'd start to say, OK, we're getting off of what we need to be at. The islands are a little bit different in that they're all only providing power for themselves. So you've got a little bit wider window because frequency on the mainland is all contained because that is a giant machine, the whole grid on the mainland. You've got grids that are interconnected on the mainland whereas here, the islands are not. Each island, it's own separate grid. So while it gets more complex that that massive grid, it needs to cooperate with the other components. Because it's so big, it's really well once you get that 60 hertz generated, it's really hard to come off that 60 hertz. Every time you plug in a motor, it's going to try and pull off of the voltage and it's going to bring you a little bit of a dip because it's asking for a little bit more power. Same thing can happen with frequency where it's getting pulled back a little bit. That really giant machine? Not a problem. Here, it's just a little bit easier to come off it. So over the years, the rule, I think it's rule 14 with HECO will designate what that frequency band is and we'll get to that in a little bit on why they're changing that band. But they're really good at hitting that plus or minus a tenth of a percent. Again we are very fortunate with HECO and their capability to manage the grid in an expert manner. Let's talk about some of the common causes for power quality issues. Sure, so a voltage sag can happen in a couple of instances. What's really common on the mainland when you look at power quality issues, just a lightning strike on a power line, that's going to cause a big disturbance on the grid. We don't experience it that here as much, but vegetation faults. If a tree were to fall on a line or on my side of the island, people like hitting the power poles with their cars and that just knocks them over, all that causes a disturbance. When we get that fault, there's a lot of clearing to make sure that we don't escalate from a fault to a fire. A lot of clearing will happen turning off those power lines. That changes the design of the grid very, very quickly. And all the prime movers, all the machines are adjusting to that change in a short amount of time. That's one change that you can start to see power quality, just the stability of the network change. Everything is changing very fast. So you're going to just see some small deviations in there. Also distributed generation, as we add a lot of solar and wind, does a lot of the same effects because it starts changing the grid for you instead of being a traditional load, which is easy to predict. So it really doesn't take a huge catastrophic incident, say, for example, a hurricane or a tsunami to cause any type of grid instability. It could be like we've experienced over past years where we've had a pole failure or a lightning strike that really destabilizes the grid to the point where it has actually shut down in some areas, too. It's interesting. So talk to me about how does utility like HECO improve power quality? And now, when you talk about improving power quality, is that called power conditioning? Is that we talking one and the same? A little bit. If you have a power quality issue, you might start to add power conditioning to morph it back into what you would deem necessary as quality power. Power quality from a voltage and frequency standpoint is generated at the prime moving power plant. So those are the ones that just say, here's our voltage, here's our frequency. Everybody else follow along because I'm really good at setting that voltage and frequency. As long as that mover is big enough, it's kind of like a tug of war competition. You're not going to have something else. Another generator come in and say, I want to operate at 59.8 because of the way the machines are built and we're all tied to that same grid. If you're not big enough, you're not going to be able to move that really large power plant. When we get away from large power plants, it gets a little bit trickier because now we're switching to distributed generation. Distributed generation gets cheaper. So everybody starts doing it themselves. That includes wind mills, but includes all the solar on your house. That's included in that discussion. So the solar that you put on your house, it's not that big. As far as the grid's concerned, the grid doesn't care that you have that. But when you stack everybody's house doing the same thing, now we have an issue because all of those are starting to pull at the same time and coming off of that voltage and frequency altogether, potentially. Okay, interesting. So we're at home in the office. How do we protect ourselves from power quality issues? I mean, I know there's UPSs. There's surge protectors. What else is there that we can do to really handle things at home, if any? Those are the two big ones that you want to be working with. Putting a surge protection at your main panel board is a great place to have those. Those are not that expensive a device. A UPS, just your power strip that you get that you're plugging everything into, they can have their own surge protection built in or their own UPS, which is an uninterruptible power source. So it's taking power in. It's conditioning because it's providing it right back out through a battery. So if you get a power strip that has a little backup time in it, you're going to be held to the power quality of that. I can't speak to the power quality of the actual device because you could buy a really cheap one and you'll probably be worse off than what you're getting off the grid. Interesting, okay. So a few moments ago we just dabbled into the renewable energy challenge of power quality. So let's talk a little bit about what renewable energy like PV and wind have with respect to power quality on the grid as it is right now. When you add distributed generation that's for renewables, you do affect the grid in that you're actually making the power quality worse. That's if we don't install it correctly. This is what started. When you have just a little bit, everybody's falling along with that prime mover. As it increases, you've got to be a little bit more concerned because you don't know when the wind's going to blow. You don't know when the cloud's going to hit and that solar production's going to go down. So you're having to deal with that loss of production elsewhere. So it becomes a balancing act between who's actually providing that power quality. Over the years, the inverter technology, the device that converts you from the DC coming off the solar back to the AC, that device has gotten tremendously better over the years. And that technology has enabled us, the inverter technology has gotten better to the point where we can actually bring a higher percentage of renewables on a grid at any point in time. Absolutely, that's exactly what's happening. So that inverter as it gets better, we're able to do a lot more with that inverter. Today, that inverter can even possibly help us with power quality issues at the distributed level. And that's the advances you'll see with HECO on there's so many different classes of solar that you can be. There's so many different programs you can fall into as you add solar on your house. And that's them increasing the capabilities of that inverter to help support the grid from a power quality standpoint. Interesting. Okay. So we're coming up on break right now in a couple of seconds. And what I want to get into is we've talked about the grid writ large after the break. I want to talk a little bit about, again, a project that's near and dear to both of us. And that's the Pearl Microgrid. And let's talk about power quality issues that micro grids can help prevent maybe some nuances and stuff. But with respect, because it's a military micro grid, we'll talk a little bit about micro grids at writ large too. So all right. Thanks. And Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hello and welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. I am your villainous host, RB Kelly. Today we are playing Two Truths and a Lie. And I will tell you two truths, and you will tell me which one is the lie. Truth number one, this is a real mustache. Truth number two, I want you to watch my show on Tuesdays at 1 p.m. So tune in and let me know which is the truth and which is the lie. I'm RB Kelly with Out of the Comfort Zone and show up next Tuesday to see my mustache live. Okay, great. Welcome back to Stay in the Energy Man. We're discussing power quality. My guest is Ryan Wubbins, double-E extraordinaire with the A&E firm Burns and McDonald's. So Ryan, we talked about power quality, what it is, what some of the remedies are for home and office, some of the challenges that renewable energy provides, or I should say causes with power quality. In this segment, this last few minutes of the show, I really want to talk about how microgrids play into this role in affecting power quality and enhancing power quality in the grid. So as a refresher for those of you who don't know what a microgrid is, you've got to have a definition in here. So what a microgrid is and what we're referring to is this is a Department of Energy definition that a microgrid is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources with clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. Microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid and enable it to operate in both grid connect and or island mode. So the key is microgrid can basically operate separate from the grid at large. Why this is important and why Ryan and I are talking today is in respect to the power quality issues. We are building a renewable energy microgrid at Pearl, that's a Department of Defense Air Force project called the Pacific Energy Assurance and Resiliency Lab. One of the challenges that we are focusing on obviously is power quality. So Ryan, real quick, real short, what can a microgrid do to improve power quality? A microgrid can help power quality, absolutely. When the inverter technology starts to increase and distributed generation being solar or when it starts to increase, the inverter becomes the key component in there. So as the inverter capabilities get better, you can now manage the power quality at a distributed generation spot. Instead of the power quality coming from that prime mover, maybe we are helping support or correct or giving ourselves our own power quality at the microgrid level. The difference starts to come in now that we increase our renewables and much higher and higher like how far can we go and still retain that power quality. The inverter is always going to be the limitation of that in addition to the control source that is deciding whether or not we do or do not have power quality.  It is due to that grid forming inverter to say you have to give us the power quality which is that voltage source, that frequency source that says this is what everybody else has to follow along with. So you said the level of penetration was 20 to 30%. We could probably get 50% even higher and a lot of that is predicated on maybe the inverter technology as it develops and the controller software obviously as well too. Right, the devices that are deciding how far to go or who is in charge. Right now I think we are at 20 or 30% pretty easily, 50% is achievable if you have got a lot of spinning reserve sitting behind you. If it is a diesel generator you can get to 50% because you have got to be ready to just lose 50% of if you are at 50 you have got to be ready to just lose it if that cloud comes. It is not going to be the whole 50% but it will be a lot of it. You have got to start asking the questions where is that energy coming from very quickly. Spinning reserve is a great place to hold that and that is going to hold your power quality. Define what spinning reserve is. Spinning reserve is asking your generator to be sitting at 50% capacity so that 50% is spinning ready to be used. If you are in your car and let us say you have a manual you are about halfway through your revs that you are going to allow on that gear. So do not get all the way up into that red band but sit somewhere right on the bottom side of that band so that you are ready to hit it when you need it. That is kind of like spinning reserve. Another thing that you can have is energy storage and you are ready to convert that very, very quickly into the spinning reserve that you need which is possible but you need a very good inverter and very fast energy storage to get that. Okay. Well you have already dabbled into some of the technologies so talk about some of those technologies. The spinning reserves, the energy storage systems that you see playing a key role in power conditioning. So on power conditioning, spinning reserve right now, your diesel generator for here is a great spinning reserve because we are just used to having it but it is not very renewable in that right now it is not renewable at all because it is steel. It is not and will not meet the 2045 mandate for renewable energy. It will not get us there. Bio diesel maybe has some ability to get you there and it is going to act and perform just like an engine which will be great spinning reserve to have. When you go to the other renewable energy sources, let us take hydro off because we are not dealing with hydro at a large scale right now but that is a very good spinning reserve as well. Now we start talking, if we want to talk battery and hydrogen, there is more energy storage devices we can talk about but once you sit behind the inverter, power quality comes out of the inverter. So we can stack anything we want behind it. The inverter is going to be due up for deciding the power quality that we are dealing with on our micro grid. So that power quality issue is really the type of energy storage, instantaneous response to act upon a SAG or a lag or some other type of maybe a frequency issue. That is a good point. So I should clarify to meet your question a little bit better that the inverter will have its capabilities. The energy storage needs to meet the demands of the inverter. So if you have a slower acting battery, you can't demand a lot of power from that inverter in a very short amount of time. The inverter will be ready to give it to you but if it can't request the energy coming from the battery or the fuel cell within the right amount of time, it is just not going to be able to give it. Same thing as far as duration. If you want something that provides power quality for a really long amount of time, once you're out of gas, once you're out of battery, once you're out of hydrogen, then you're out. The inverter is only as good as the energy behind it, but it's due up for the quality. Definitely. So again, the challenge we've got are the type of energy sources that can react quickly to any type of environmental change. With respect to the microgrid, it's on a military installation. Are there any other unique challenges that we've got to contend with? Obviously, you're dealing with an energy load, a load that is very sensitive. It's got to be able to conduct a mission, obviously, and you're dealing with some very high-tech equipment items, too. Are there any other unique issues that we'll have to look at with parole with respect to power conditioning, and if so, what technologies are we looking at? I know you mentioned hydrogen, you mentioned flywheels, as well, too, for maybe power conditioning purposes. So let's talk a little bit about specifically to parole in the military, what challenges we've got there. Sure. When we talk about a military base, we start to talk about power quality and the need for power, like how critical is the power that they have? When we ask about how critical power, we also need to ask, how critical in respect to time? Can you lose power for a second? Can you lose power for an hour? Can you lose power for a day? Maybe even two weeks. Puerto Rico is without power on a large part of their island for much more. So you do need to ask the question all the way from one second. I, as an electrical engineer, go much lower than that. I'll start talking cycles. Like, I don't even want a little blip in the power. And then you ask that back to the base as to what their mission requires. You're going to be a little bit different. Those same questions get asked to hospitals and data centers who are very sensitive computing. That's a great point. Within it. But we each have a little bit different stomach for how much drop in power that we can sustain. But on a military base, you will have very sensitive pieces of equipment that need to be protected at a very high level of power quality. And then you have other instances where it's like, OK, yeah, I could let the lights come off for a minute. I could go for maybe an hour. But you're going to disrupt something that's going on within that mission across the whole base. So you're disrupting a lot. When you stack all those up, the criticality of that power requirement does start to creep up towards the other things like the data center and that health facility where we couldn't lose just a little bit. We need to keep that on as much as possible. Those are the very key parts of a microgrid when you start talking from a military perspective is how high is my critical power? But then let's add on the duration of that. Like, how long can you stomach being without power? Absolutely. The genesis for Pearl really came several years ago when the military started to realize that power was provided by the off base utilities and the inherent challenges and risks that are associated with that. Again, the utilities do a fantastic job of providing power. But with a microgrid, you're really allowing what we call mission assurance or energy assurance. The power quality piece is a huge component of that as well too. And we're looking really forward to demonstrating that at Pearl. So moving forward with Pearl as we conceive that project, it's really going to be a renewable energy microgrid. So the base and the mission will be able to run indefinitely on a microgrid using renewable energy. Power quality conditions will have to be resolved. There's this cybersecurity element that we'll have to lay for another conversation here. But in the last two seconds, I want to talk a little bit about the transition from this microgrid to maybe a microgrid writ large and what something like Oahu has to go through with meeting some of the energy requirements to get to 24, 45s mandate. Right. So you take what you're doing with this microgrid and you get to 100% renewable within your own bubble, extend that to a bunch of other microgrids, and eventually you can get there. Great. A little bit harder than that. Just on a bigger scale, the technology is that there the engineering is certainly capable of doing it. We're lucky we've got the A&Es like your firm, Burns and McDonald Ryan and your skills to help make that happen. So we know this is an important issue and we're looking forward to working with you and your team on developing Pearl. And today we covered a pretty interesting topic which everybody has to contend with every once in a while. It's power conditioning and power quality issues and I appreciate your time and effort and explaining and providing some due diligence on what's out there and what we really have to contend with. So I think that about wraps it up for the show and we're good to go. Ryan, thank you again for being on the show. Yeah, thanks, Dave. We'll talk to you soon. Aloha. Aloha. And that's it. Thanks for watching and we'll stand and be back very soon and hopefully I'll be back on in the near future as well with another interesting topic. Aloha. Bye-bye.


The form in a big robot. The video home system. For its time, VHS was the biggest video-watching technology that revolutionized the 80s and 90s, but then slowly died out during the late 90s, and stopped making VHS tapes after 2006. But in that year, the last and only VHS tape made by Disney, which had switched over to DVD at the time, was a Pixar film named, Cars, which was the very last Disney VHS tape made, and is one of the rarest items in VHS history. The main reason why Cars VHS tapes were really rare and hard to find, is because VHS died out on the same year the VHS came out, and people are using DVDs to make home-release movies. Although it was the main reason, nobody knew that there was another reason why except for me, that a copy of the Cars VHS haunted kids for as long as they live. Parents who bought a copy of that supposed distorted Cars VHS, complained to Disney via email about how it made their kids not want to watch Cars ever again. Even young adults told Disney that they had a really unsettling feeling of anxiety and night terrors, after managing to get a corrupted copy of the VHS. You may be thinking that I was lying about this, but boy do I wish I was especially since I was one of those victims. For those of you who don't know what Cars is about, Cars is a movie about a rookie race car named, Lightning McQueen, who on his way to the Los Angeles International Speedway, McQueen gets separated by Mac, and while trying to find him, McQueen ends up finding a small town called, Radiator Springs. After destroying the town, he does five days of community service, and falls in love with the town, and shows up at the Los Angeles International Speedway to win the Piston Cup. I do love the story behind a small town based off Route 66 which is a real life highway that is open to tourism. Anyway, back to the story. What's on the VHS tape contains some questionable events that happen in the tape. It starts off as it always does, and you may think that nothing can be scary about it. But the scene where McQueen, Chick Vicks, and the King, are about to cross the finish line. It cuts off right before they reached the finish line. Then it cuts back, but now the tape starts glitching out, which is a layer of static covering the screen, making it hard to see what was on the screen. The tape glitches out to different scenes that only last about three seconds per glitch. If it wasn't doing that, then it would mix different scenes at once and freeze on some frames every now and then. It came along with a sound of heavy glitching and buzzing noises that overlap each other, getting louder and louder the further you watch. The glitchy overlapping gets so intense, that it sounds like it's generating a loud, gut-wrenching scream, which can scare almost anyone or give them a sense of dread and terror. One person ended up getting a seizure from the flashing lights that came from the glitching on the tape, and they ended up having to recall all of the cars VHS because of complaints. As a result, they quit selling the cars VHS tapes as a precaution. Although it was only about four or five tapes, it was enough to make Disney never sell them again. Other people that don't have the corrupted cars VHS tape were lucky that they didn't have to go through night terrors and end up getting a bad case of anxiety. Luckily, no tapes of it exist, except for mine, which I never took out of my old VHS bins. I never want to see it again, and I know others will agree with me on this one, they just don't want to talk about it. Honestly, I can't blame them at all.


Welcome back to the breakfast. Our first major conversation this morning is on the third wave of COVID-19. In the last few days, we've reported the closing of unilag school hostels and of course, the governor of Lagos State also making statements with regards to what needs to be done to ensure that Lagos residents are protected from a third wave of the COVID-19 virus. We are speaking this morning with Dr. Thuyi, who is joining us to share his thoughts on this. Good morning, Dr. Mabawandu. Good morning, Dr. Thuyi. Thanks for joining us.  And this is coming from, you know, in the same country where we used to have more than 2,000 a day. It almost seemed like something to celebrate that we were, you know, over this. What do you think may have changed as the figures are starting to rise and there seems to be a little bit of panic now in the air? Is it with our, you know, the protocols that we dropped or was this just expected? The people, the information management was also not so much. We left the information management to those people who were called the audience of conspiracy theories and who is the firm. That's happened. I said, probably the critical discussion of public space about COVID-19, we see that we are not talking about COVID-19 again. Everybody felt that, well, it's over. It's not existing. Let's talk about the banditry, which is also important anyway, that it could be, you know, where the information management of the public space, it was the case of the other thing. And the incident commanders of the COVID-19, which used to be some group of the presidents, they called PTF, the other tax force, and people in the state governor were not speaking about COVID-19 again. So when this seems to happen, what do you expect? People would drop their guards and then became careless. People would fly to the country, testing was not being done. Effectively, I learned the good, the determinants, their cause problem in India, their cause problem in South Africa, and Thailand to our country. Okay. During the last COVID-19 vaccination updates, the head of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, you know, went on to answer questions, you know, that journalists asked regarding a third wave of COVID-19 in Nigeria. And he didn't seem to speak with much certainty regarding if we are already experiencing a third wave. So if, you know, there's not certainty regarding, you know, the third wave of the virus in Nigeria, what do you think Nigerians must do to prevent that?  And even the vaccine that we're supposed to use to drive the numbers down, or do you put, prevent severe illnesses, and adjust available in sufficient quantity. Okay. Now, now we're not having a vaccine, because in public health, if you want to fight a pandemic, you have to look for a vaccine, very essential. That's the fastest way to fight a pandemic to come in here. We are not going to have vaccines. Here's what he said, about a hundred percent of Nigeria's are in the past, they've been so far. And secondly, we don't have the next system that we're resonating off to do, which I'm upset at the number of patients that may have to return to the institution. First, we're dealing with a lot of other factors, economic contractions, and we're dealing with things that are actually worsening the public trust environment. So we do to them, return the visitor commandant back, to keep talking about this. And let me also emphasize this, visitor commandant in this case should not just be the government of Palestine. A local government chairman should be involved in discussing, in passing the right to permission to the population, very essential. Also, if the media must start to step up, they literally can do to protect themselves. But honestly, there's no, there's nobody, when we don't know where the vaccine is coming, we don't know how soon the vaccine is there, I mean, deployed, and then there's no, let's not have space and have space in there to attend to you. All right. He just said it there, protect yourself. Let's move, let's also talk about the Delta variants now. There is fears about how much worse this particular variant is. Looking at how we managed the first two waves, and of course, the fact that we don't seem to have improved it a lot with regards to our healthcare and preparations. We don't seem to have improved our testing. We haven't gotten a lot of people vaccinated. Public information about COVID-19 still doesn't seem to have done so well. How do you think we would cope with a Delta variant that seems to be more powerful than the very first? Dr. Mabon, can you hear us? All right. I think we're going to have to try and reconnect with him. Something that I feel like I should also mention as we go on, and I think this is also a challenge with public information and the attitude that Nigeria as a country and Nigerians have with regards to COVID-19. You walk into a public place at the door. They force you to put on a mask, no mask, no entry. But immediately you get in.  Or totally off on the table. And it makes absolutely no sense. A lot of times I get so irritated, but we're Nigeria. So this really, and I understand how a lot of people don't get to react to things if it doesn't affect them directly, but it's really still a failure on the level of public information that has to do with COVID-19. Nigerians always like to be forced to do the right things all the time. We as people need to do better. The level of sanitizing has gone down to below even what it was in the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic. And these are some of the things that must be fixed. If we're starting to talk about a Delta variant that seems to be even more powerful or causing more deaths than the very first two waves of COVID-19, then I don't think this is a time where Nigerians should wave this off and say this is white man's virus and it doesn't really concern us. See how the sun is hot here in Nigeria is going to burn off all the rest of the virus. We as people need to do better. And I think that when you talked about Nigeria sitting to be forced, if this third wave of the COVID-19 comes as we've seen in other parts of the country, in other parts of the world, Nigerians would not need to be forced to do what they need to do because we all know what we need to do. Ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how we saw our first case in February, we've been having sensitization. Nigerians know what to do, to stay indoors, to wash their hands, maintain hand hygiene, social distancing. We know what to do, but we keep talking about, oh, we need to survive. We need our daily bread and all of that. But you would admit that most of the world has adjusted. Most people still work remotely even now that, you know, it seems that economies are opening up. So many other businesses are going to be working remotely and people are going to be telecommuting for a while for a long time. For some companies, they don't see themselves coming back to fiscal office spaces. So I feel that once this virus gets to the peak, Nigerians would comply. And this is really scary because during some of those meetings recently, just yesterday, he mentioned that this Delta variant is 60 times more transmissible than the Alpha variant of the COVID-19 virus. And what this means is that it's going to be a very bad time in our nation's health and that we must do what we need to do, which is take the necessary health precautions. And I need to also ask Dr. Mabawando once we get back, you know, on the line, you know, when we hear the World Health Organization giving the briefing regarding the COVID-19, it seems almost scary because you hear the WHO making statements like the worst is yet to come for Africa regarding the COVID-19 virus. So it just seems like we've been in a period where we've been having it easy and that when this third wave hits, already the Delta virus is in Lagos, we know that people in the Unilag have been infected, hostiles had to be shot for the safety of others. When this gets to a point that is unbearable or the breaking point, Nigerians would do what they need to do. And another story I saw in the papers this morning is a statement, and this is by the Lagos State Government, the NEC National Economic Council. I was speaking on Thursday saying that there is no indication of an imminent lockdown, but we know that these are statements that will just be said to make sure that Nigerians, you know, don't get so tense and worked up. But the theme remains what Dr. Mabawando said, Nigerians have to protect themselves. Absolutely. Welcome back, Dr. Mabawando. Dr. Tui, can you hear us? Well, if you can hear us, can you unmute your mic please? All right. Dr. Mabawando, can you hear us now? Yes, we can. Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead. All right. If you can hear us. Like I said, we are now at the point where individuals need to take action, no doubt, no doubt. We are at the point where we have to decree what we have. What do we have? Information, talking, explaining. And I want the team to be actually, you know, step down to the level of new government chairman, working in their local community, and sharing protection. In fact, it's a situation where to distribute masks in critical places like markets, and then also meet with the tribe and the religious leader for them to embrace this protocol.  These are critical issues that we need to follow. Right at this, it is essential that government should, as a matter of urgency, find a way to get vaccines. Because the truth is that, without vaccines, you can't fight this coronavirus in any certain way. Sufficiently, we've seen that we've done just about one percent of the vaccination, even though the vaccines are not available or used, and the government is calling again. And then, the vaccine assistance that we are so worried about is not as simple to be happening as we think in Nigeria. So, while we are looking for vaccines, it's important that in the government, the government especially, do more to the locality to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Is it too early to figure out how successful the vaccine is with fighting the virus? Like you said, we've gotten barely one percent of Nigerians vaccinated. Would it be too early to use those figures to show that, if you get vaccinated, you will be able to survive the COVID-19 infection? Well, it's not too early. It's not too early. Because what we're preventing is one, severe infection of COVID, secondly, the infection. Those are the cases where we're doing a severe disease, we're doing one hospitalization. Of course, so many diseases affect us that we're not aware of because they're not bringing the desired severe form of those infections. Now, what we need to do, because we are trying to push for herd immunity, herd immunity means that we want to see as much as 60 percent of the population getting vaccinated. That's herd immunity, that's herd immunity. But even at that, the figure we are taking, we are taking, we are not sure if we're going to track them pass on time, to do a check on them, and explain or show whether we're listening to these, whether it's a variant of COVID. We're not tracking them sufficiently because unfortunately we have somebody to contain it. But if we look at data from other countries, what we have seen is that those countries that were vaccinated are now opening up their spaces. We saw this Sunday, in the year 2020, when there's a 60,000 people in the stadium, they're not wearing face masks. We called the ambassador. We saw that even if they're trying to open up the puncture, they don't give a better, even putting the burden of the vaccination or you, that you demand, it's a number, it's not a demand, it's something that's only left in the queue and they are put in prison because they are not wearing face masks, whereas it is a manner of policy that you should do it. So that should be taken on how to find the virus to another level, to a very limited, very similar, because that's not the first official day. And if we look at U.S., those states that are not abusive access are the ones having the upsurge of the disease. Usually somebody is hoping that because we have vaccines, U.S. is saying that because that's not the the plan. These are sufficient evidence to show that vaccine works. And the better we get that so, the better for us. Okay. Doctor, the first wave of Nigeria's vaccination plan is complete. And, you know, Dr. Faizal Shraibu, head of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, mentioned just last week that Nigeria is expecting more, you know, vaccine doses from, you know, all the different companies that are producing them, you know, 3 million here, 4 million there. So we know that in the first vaccination phase, there was lots of, you know, vaccine hesitancy. People didn't really want to take it because of all the conspiracy theories and what they felt, you know, and, you know, what they saw in social media about the vaccine. But do you think that this third wave now, and this Delta variant might, you know, stare Nigerians in the direction of being open to what's receiving the vaccine in Nigeria's second vaccination campaign?  You see that in Europe, 60,000 people are not in the stadium. They don't know what Max is saying. All these visual visions of you are not there. And this is a scoffing fact that they vaccinated. So, I mean, Nigeria likes to travel and engage themselves as they send the vaccine as a solution to get that result. And thirdly, nobody wants to get so sick. We want to engage in our work. We want to do our best. And vaccine says to be only one of the things. If you don't think that could be, then vaccine is the second thing that can help you escape the disease. So, what we need to do now in our own estimates is that government needs to actually deepen communications. They need to counter negative relations in public space. They need to engage people. They need to meet with the community leaders. They need to engage the market to meet the church leaders. And actually further show evidence that these vaccines are working. Now, we saw a lot of fake videos showing that we take the vaccines. We're not alive to vote. We're going to be magnetic. No. The government is actually demonstrating those sports that are taking the vaccine. For instance, the government or the government chamber that are taking the vaccines. They're coming up on television and are putting this progress and nothing like that. It's not true. Okay. Some of the situations and those conditions that make people think that the vaccine is in danger can be dispelled with such public action. So, we need to engage the public. And for me, I also feel that we need to incentivize the vaccine to take the way that we are going to take those vaccines them up. And now, the key issue is this. There's economic depression. The food price is directly, money is scarce. What the intervention is going to do in this regard to help people face the challenge of vaccination. We had the challenge of COVID. So, if you combine this, now, from a physical intervention, it's only studies. It's only economic support or cash transfer or whatever. I'm sure not who we want to take the vaccine. If you don't do this, economic contracts will face down conditions which regards to health of the people. All right. Let's also talk about what we may have learned from 2020 and in what ways do you think that our health care investments may have changed? Do you think that we maybe have started to invest better in health care now, you know, or is Nigeria still where it was in 2018, if possible? Yeah, it's a tough question. If you tell me that the fact that they have include the oxygen of the factory for manufacturing of oxidants on part of Nigeria, yes, what can I do with you? But, you see, the health system basically follow about three platforms. One, the input in terms of infrastructure, okay, you know, that we could be building, equipments, the oxygen and the input in terms of human resources, okay? You could agree with me that we've seen a reduced number of doctors, you know, and the increased number of doctors in the country and desperately moving away because of bad working conditions. And the third thing is that where is the money? For you to run on the stage, you have to have a few of money. And then, you know, because human resources and money would drive the process, the health process, that we say desire. Apart from the fact that some donors choose to build one of the hospitals here and there, all these other components are not saying, you know, because if politicians build hospitals to get money, that where the human resources, if I come to your studio now and I put the equipment there, and I put the money, it's a system. If you come to an hospital, I'll put the money there, but it's not that beautiful building. No. It's the core things happening in the place. Where are the human people working there? Are we looking at hospital to fight our high mortality and diseases that is delegating us? These are core issues. But if you look at that, I can tell you that we have not messed up at all because we're not even producing medical drugs. The strike in the university is limiting those drugs. We're not training our nurses because of those factors of love that. We're not even applying those drugs that I said, we're not giving them some studies, research worker. So I've seen to see what we have learned from all this. So it's basically, you know, almost going to be a similar situation with what we dealt with last year. That's what it seems like. If you remember, the whole country was struggling with isolation centers and, you know, sometimes even referring people back home because their isolation centers were filled up. And so if we're talking about a third wave now, in what ways have we made better preparations for the possibility of a third wave to accommodate more people who may need to be isolated to provide better health facilities for these people? It doesn't seem like anything changed. Without trying to be the best, you will know that nothing has changed. Yes, we have more information about the COVID right away. And because from those factors I'm not sure, the public is tired. We are fatigued. The COVID has went down and put down the morale of the people. It has created a lot of stress, instability. The public is fatigued. When you're doing the fatigued public, you don't dare wake up and start summarizing. What else can you do that can make those people embrace you, believe in you, and run with you? Now, it has come to the level of individuals to stand up and say, listen, I don't want to be COVID. If it is not essential, don't go there, because there's no other system that's going to respond to an Indian kind of scenario. There's no other system that will do that. So in government, you just need to step up this campaign, the talk, take it to the local government, take it to the councilors at the work, and then help. Even if it means giving face masks, giving sanitizer, and monitoring markets, ensure that people face masks, whatever they are, traffic businesses. And then we have to keep doing those things. Because let's face it, we have just tested 2 million people. That's a number too small. If you don't test, how do you know what to do? So we don't have the capacity to test, capacity to test is challenged. The vaccine distribution is challenged. And then the only thing we now have is to act at the information level. We should be able to do quality information to change behavior. If you act at the information level, act at the real level, act at the community level, and see how to do this. Okay. Doctor, when the WHO makes statements like the worst is yet to come for Africa, what do you think they mean? It's simply this. One, the data variance is supposed to pass 60 times 200 times faster than the conventional alpha and beta variance of the virus. Secondly, the data variance affects younger population. We know Africa has demographics mainly about 80% younger population. So this data variance affects younger population. The data variance coincides, you know, more senior for more units, you know. So unlike these ones, because they're okay, maybe part of the larger world, you know, actually manifest. When it comes to data variance, you see more senior for the future. So in Africa, which is the demographic we see, a lot of younger population, know that system, the system is compromised sufficiently, and then they're having economic contractions. So obviously, you don't need the system to know that if you combine all these things and put a pandemic in that kind of environment, the worst is yet to come. So for us to find the worst, what we need to do is to look at ourselves, measure our capacity and figure out what else can we do to ensure that the worst does not benefit us in this part of the world. Is it also critical?  Do you think we've been able to figure out exactly why? And will that help us with getting into a third wave to understand what, you know, was the reason we or the continent was able to not have as many casualties as projected? Would that be an important information to have if we're expecting, you know, a third wave? You know, from the side that they don't manifest senior forms of disease, yes, it can be carriers. And that's why in the other part of the world, we are simply thinking about access to people in the 20s, 20 years and not taking the taxes in another country.  So now that's actually a very kind of shift for us, why the virus are terminated and they will not see much of it. The other aspect we're talking about is that is the requires, I mean, endemicity of COVID-19, not a virus like COVID-19 as in Africa. The question was that, is this conferring some sort of immunity on us? You know, and the 13 is that, well, you know that in the traditional alpha and beta variants, actually, as much as 90 percent or 95 percent of people that have tested it actually will not show the symptoms, they just get to it. So I bet that could have been a factor that we are not actually testing enough. We didn't opt to know we're not testing enough. So we may not see the true picture of those people that have contracted the virus and will not manifest senior form of the illness. If you don't see that, that will be an alerted. But here now the data variants is up in Nigeria, 23 countries in Africa, 98 countries all over the world. And then crossing that series of people, Uganda, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Botswana, all these countries are having unique challenges with this attenuation. So now the data variants affect younger generation. It's spread easily, I mean, and then in addition, it gives to more senior form of disease. So for us, the message we should have learned that now, the younger generation that returns our own direct representation against the virus is being affected. We are seeing more spread. So we should be able to take charge of the situation by deploying information and looking back at it. Okay. And with all the negative economic figures we're getting out of Nigeria, do you think the country can survive a possible third lockdown in the country? Now, there will be first and second waves, okay? And I didn't compare them as much, and 4.9 percent. Up to 2 percent of what we contracted, the girls, the nurses, we go to Nigeria. 2 percent. We'll be first and second wave. We go as much as 2 million in Nigeria, okay? So now the business is just yet to open up sufficiently, okay? And if you look at the provinces of our economy, even the government, they're limited those who are coming to work. They are paying half-salary, quarter-salaries. Food production is not going up because of boundary tree and all those kidnapped that is going on in the country. We see the food as a skyrocketing. Salary is not increasing. Money is not there. Inflation is double-digit, and employment is double-digit. So if you put all of these things together and then you now add a third wave of community, obviously, you are heading for a very bad economic situation, which is going to respond to the health system or the health system of Nigeria. Now, lockdown will be an additional burden. You have to figure out how to deal with this third wave, with that lockdown. We can try to push for what I would call a smart lockdown. You look at an environment and find out that you're having such a large number of these virus in this area will knock that area down and figure out how to deploy more pharmaceutical intervention to that area as it were. So maybe you can probably think of this to decide if it's not going down. If you remember the country as it is now, it's going to be horrendous. We're still dealing with the after-effect of the first lockdown. You know, the after-effect of what? About a lot of the security. It ended with answers. And after the answers, we are saying that even the security at the state of Nigeria is busy as we compromise. Are we ready to deal with all these after-effects of lockdown? Are we ready to deal with increased armed robbery? Are we ready to deal with increased security? Are we ready? So if we are ready to do that, then we can knock down. If we are not ready, we have to figure out how to navigate this third wave, with that kind of turnaround of that. All right. Let's move away from the health angle. Now, just quickly before we go, trying to remind us that still we haven't heard any stories of anyone being prosecuted for misappropriation of food items and the likes that were meant to be shared across the Nigerians during the first lockdown. If you remember during the Ansar's protest, after the Ansar's protest, there was a looting of some of all these items in different warehouses across the country. But we still haven't seen anyone being made to answer those questions. And now we're talking about the possibility of a third wave and maybe another lockdown. Is this something that maybe you think would come up again if we get into a lockdown? We shouldn't. I just think that we don't get to knock down honestly. And let's face it, who are the people holding the food? The gatekeepers, the people that have the maids, that have the connections, because I don't know if I can get a warehouse, have access to the food store, keep it, you know, are used for whatever, whether politically means or their own party. Now those who will not be prosecuted, let's face it, those who will not be prosecuted. We will see that my own expectation is that governments should now be strategically trying to store food and distribute this or some criteria. And if you are not feeling secure to co-op with their challenges or people more than 40 million people with malnutrition, you know, 40 million people today with malnutrition, that will worsen our future. Then, you know, if we cannot assure food security, then what are we going to, how are we going to deal with the challenges that have come from that? So, if you are waiting to be prosecuted, I doubt whether we will see anybody that will be prosecuted. We should just look beyond that. Governments should strategically, based on local government, look at the intervention that they can do for individuals. Guys, take this ticket or whatever, come and buy a bag of rice for it, at a reduced price. Come and buy this at a reduced price. And if you do this, this will further advance confidence and trust to efficient between the government and the people. We don't need to actively move forward to solve this problem. We don't need to exist for people.  We should be able to honestly look at this. Yes, we desire infrastructure. Are we going to push a new government structure so that we can survive first? I mean, again, if you believe infrastructure, infrastructure is meant to help people, not die to people. So, now, our attention should be on those figures, food security. How are we assured? Two, on the planet, how are we using it? Three, inflation. How is it coming down? I am not an economist, but you see, health is so connected with economy and general even of people. So, if we're not dealing with this dimension of the COVID pandemic, then we're missing a lot. So, now, it's time for them to enhance and be trust between them and the government, and these are few ways they can build those trusts. All right, Dr. Tui, Mabawandu, public health expert. Thank you so much for your time this morning. Like you said, we hope that there is no third lockdown or rather we hope that there is no new lockdown forced across the country, but at the same time, it's a reminder to Nigerians to remain safe and continue to live with the protocols for preventing COVID-19 spread. Good morning once again. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Okay, so we're quickly going to talk about the stories that we saw on the newspapers this morning. Just to quickly remind you of what the stories are, it says Senate's dumps proposal on e-transmission of results, and the proposal is that the Commission, INEC, may transmit results electronically where practicable. Now, this is the nation here, given this breakdown, say, the amendment is that INEC may transmit results provided that the network has been adjoined, secured by the NCC and approved by the National Assembly. Now, how they voted on this? 52 people voted no. They're voting against the electronic transmission of results for 2023. 28 people voted yes to that proposal. 28 were absent at that seating. I would touch through this during off the press with our guest, Mr. J.D. Johnson, the chief lecturer at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism. He mentioned that those 28 lawmakers who were absent at this very crucial vote to determine Nigeria's future regarding the 2023 elections should be recalled because they're not doing what they should be. That's according to Mr. J.D. Johnson. But we know that they have basically postponed the sit-in, postponed further debate on this till 10 a.m. today. So, basically in a few hours, we'll find out what the decision, the outcome, would be regarding the electronic transmission of results. All right. So, first, I don't expect anyone to be recalled. That's, you know, wishful thinking, of course, in Nigeria, and it hasn't, you know, ever worked. And then second, you know, I think that the major things that Nigerians should talk about with regards, this is, first of all, you know, why is anybody voting no? You know, in any part of the country, I heard a particular senator talking about, you know, poor network in this area and all of that. You know, but I'm sure they still do bank transactions in those areas successfully. So, what is he talking about? There is that. Why on earth is anyone voting no? I'm trying to understand and I think Nigerians should ask these questions. Actually, you're representing your senators, you know, National Assembly. Why are you voting no? You know, if you're in Lagos, why are you voting no? What's, what is that bad network in Lagos? If you're in Abuja, if you're in Abelkota, if you're in Benin, Potarkot, wherever you are, and you're a senator representing those areas, why are you voting no, sir, or ma? What exactly is the challenge that makes you vote no? So, the people in your, you know, in your constituency, the people that you represent in Lagos state, because we are here, Lagos Central, you think that the people in Lagos Central don't have good network to send a voting result? Make it make sense to me in any way. And that's why Jeter Johnson said a lot of these people who seem or who claim to be getting into the National Assembly aren't there to represent anybody, but themselves. It's definitely nothing about the network. Now, I'm trying to figure it out. So, why voting no? Definitely nothing about that. And he also mentioned the disagreements, you know, in ideas between the governors and their senators.  The senators completely disagree, you know, or have, you know, spoken against it, and includes the same thing with the Petroleum Industry Bill, 3 percent, 5 percent, 30 percent, all of that drama. It tells that governors and people, they are members of the National Assembly, all the people from the National Assembly don't seem to be, you know, having the same ideas. And it makes you ask questions. Do they really speak in for their people? Are they really representing the people that they're meant to be representing, you know, when they sit in those seats? You know, questions that we need to ask. I spoke to politicians, you know, in the old Progressives Congress and in the Opposition People's Democratic Party a few weeks ago, asking them important questions about the 2023 and the Electoral Transmission of Vote. And I asked, what is the opposition? Why? What is there to fear about, you know, these?  And really, where exactly are we going? Are we going to have electronic transmission results or not? Are we committed to a free and fair electoral process in 2023 or not? I think these answers need to become obvious to Nigerians because the time is running fast. I'm really just trying to wrap my head around the reason. There has to be a reason why anybody is voting no. I mean, they said that on the nation, they said that this will only depend on if the NCC determines that it's a secure way to vote. What else could be more secure than electronic transmission anyways? AINEC has already been given the power to make that decision, has nothing to do with voting the National Assembly or the NCC. It has, you know, it is fully AINEC's responsibility to make that decision. I'm speaking about the senators themselves. So your problem now or the reason you are voting no is because you feel like NCC might feel like there's no network in these areas. We need to ask those lawmakers and that's why the constituents need to begin to ask questions. I want to quickly share, I want to quickly share something that I saw. It says, before AINEC can transmit electronically, NCC must adjudge national coverage, coverage is adequate and secure and National Assembly must approve. It also goes on to say that they are broke. Proposal of section 52, subsection 3 of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill is in conflict of section 78 of the Constitution of the NCC 1999. The section 78 of the NCC provides the registration of voters on conduct of elections shall be the subject of direction and supervision of AINEC. And so it's a lot. It really just means that this will eventually get to court. Exactly. That's what Mr. Dede Johnson said. He said AINEC should be taking this matter to court because it's an independent or it should be an independent electoral body. So they need to be also fighting for their independence. But we'll see what this leads in the next few weeks and especially by 10 a.m. today to see what they decide to the house. Let's take a break here to join Wale Scots for sports.


This chart appeared in the 2017 President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis to demonstrate a link between legal opioids like OxyContin and overdoses. One line shows opioid prescriptions, another the number of people being admitted to treatment centers for opioid abuse, and the third charts deaths from opioid overdoses. It demonstrates absolutely nothing. By using a chart like this as evidence that the increase in opioid prescriptions caused the overdose crisis, government officials committed the most rudimentary statistical error of all, which is to assume that correlation proves causation. Global avocado production also climbed in these years. My age also went up. Does that mean avocado production of my age might have something to do with the increase in overdose deaths? No. While it's at least plausible that an increase in opioid prescriptions led to an increase in overdoses, you can't determine that simply by noting parallel increases. The purpose of statistical analysis is to test our theories and assumptions. And this chart fails miserably in that regard. The way it's drawn in the commission's published report also gives the misimpression that the rates of increase for these three lines were about the same. Actually, all three lines are measured in different units, and the chart should look more like this. Another red flag. This chart doesn't go past 2010, even though the report came out in 2017. There's a reason for that. In the years that followed, the pattern rapidly reversed, with opioid prescriptions falling dramatically while drug-related deaths continued to increase. The use of charts like this one, which is part of the government's failure to correctly understand and respond to the opioid overdose crisis, has caused enormous human suffering. The government has pushed doctors to severely limit opioid prescriptions for pain patients through laws, regulations, and the threat of civil and criminal penalties. And today, thousands of Americans with chronic and debilitating illnesses are unable to access drugs that could alleviate their pain. This chart from the CDC gives us a clearer picture of events. Drug-related deaths involving commonly prescribed opioids like hydrocodone and oxycodone did rise in the first decade of the 21st century, but then leveled off. For the first 10 years, the increase in overdoses correlated with increases in legal prescriptions. But those prescriptions fell after 2010, with no reduction in overdoses. What we did see in 2010 was an increase in illegal heroin use, and in 2013, an even sharper rise in overdoses from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids rarely used in legal medicine. This was likely caused by a change in the business practices of drug cartels, and the fact that fentanyl is cheaper and easier to smuggle than heroin. During this period, fentanyl, which is more potent than heroin, became increasingly common as a heroin booster and substitute. If heroin were legal, most of these overdose deaths probably would not have occurred. The governments clamped down on prescription opioids also probably exacerbated the overdose crisis. The blockbuster pain drug oxycontin became available in 1996. Three years later, we do indeed see a rise in deaths involving prescription opioids, but that does not necessarily mean those deaths involve people who obtain prescriptions from doctors. National survey data from 2013 and 2014 indicated that most people who misused prescription pain relievers reported getting them from a friend or relative. Then a quarter said they obtained the drugs from doctors. A survey of oxycontin-addicted people entering rehab from 2001 to 2004 found that 78% had never been prescribed the medication, and among the 22% who had been prescribed oxycontin nearly all had substance abuse problems before taking the drug. So if they weren't taking oxycontin, they likely would have been taking something else. The stereotype of a clean living person getting hooked on opioids originally prescribed for pain and then suffering a fatal or non-fatal overdose is not common in the data. As prescription opioids became harder to find on the black market, many non-medical users of these drugs likely turned to heroin contaminated with fentanyl, putting them at a much higher risk of overdosing. They were placed legally produced, reliably dosed pharmaceuticals with black market drugs whose potency is highly variable and unpredictable. If we widen the time span, we see that overall drug overdose deaths have been increasing at a fairly steady rate since 1979, or 17 years before oxycontin became available, and continuing along after legal use of opioids was severely cut back. During the same period, we see parallel increases in deaths from suicide and alcohol abuse, or so-called deaths of despair. There have also been steady increases in diagnoses of depression. This suggests that many deaths ruled accidental overdoses could be deliberate suicides, or perhaps they were partially deliberate, although this is correlation, not causation, so we don't know for sure. The data also suggests that the underlying cause of the overdose crisis was more fundamental than overprescribing of opioids. Back around 2010, when opioid prescriptions were still rising alongside overdoses, it was plausible to investigate a link, but none of them took the correct approach, which would be to compare similar patients, one of whom got a prescription for opioids, and the other who did not. Such match pairs shouldn't just be checked for overdose deaths, which after all affect only 0.04% of patients, but for overall health and quality of life. Instead, researchers compared unmatched samples of patients, some of whom received higher doses of opioids and others. One influential and heavily cited study published in 2011 in the Journal of the American Medical Association began with a sample of 750 veterans health patients who received opioid prescriptions for pain and later died of opioid overdoses. It compared them to a random sample of 155,000 other veterans health patients who also received opioid prescriptions and didn't die of overdoses. It found that the high dose opioid prescriptions were more likely to lead to fatalities, a finding that was used to support the CDC guidelines for strongly discouraging large doses. The problem with this study is that the high dose and low dose patients differed in many ways. In particular, the high dose patients presumably had more severe pain and more serious medical issues. They may have also differed in the type of pain they endured or the length of time they suffered. Controls have to match subjects as closely as possible. This study did not meet that basic requirement of good science. It is plausible that the 750 patients who overdosed did so for reasons other than the amount of opioids they were prescribed. Reasons the study didn't control for. 40% had been diagnosed with substance abuse disorders in the 12 months before getting an opioid prescription. 66% had been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. A population with these characteristics is likely to have a higher than normal frequency of overdose deaths with or without legal opioid prescriptions. Perhaps most important, this study ignores the benefits of opioid pain relief to the 155,000 patients who didn't overdose. Even if taking prescription opioids does increase the risk of overdose deaths, which this study doesn't demonstrate, many patients would gladly accept the risk for the quality of life improvement of diminished pain. An influential 2010 study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also attempted to show that higher prescribed doses of opioids correlated with a higher risk of death from overdose. But within the study group there were just six patients who died of opioid overdoses, fewer than the number of study authors. Yet the authors claimed statistically significant results after adjusting for smoking, depression, substance abuse, comorbid conditions, pain sight, age, sex, recent sedative, hypnotic prescription, and recent initiation of opioid use. This is absurd. It would take at least 100 patients who died to estimate the adjustments, much less make any conclusions with statistical confidence. The authors even conceded that it was not established whether their results were due to patient differences or direct effect of higher dose. In other words, the study demonstrates nothing. Although they are more than a decade old, these studies continue to be cited by public health officials and policymakers, including the 2017 President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which relied almost completely on studies published before 2014, which generally used data collected before 2011. Again, there's no mystery as to why. Only by relying on the outdated studies could the prescription opioids cause the crisis narrative be sustained. Government officials haven't reckoned with the abysmal failure of limiting access to prescription opioids. Rather, they've doubled down on the policy while citing and promoting statistically flawed studies based on stale data and promoting charts that conspicuously cut off before the data start to undermine their chosen policy. No one has yet demonstrated that patients prescribed opioids are more likely to suffer overdoses than match patients who were denied them. No one has shown that overall quality of life and life expectancy are lower for opioid patients. The first step to arriving at a serious policy response to the overdose crisis is to take an honest look at the problem by using statistical techniques to gain a deeper understanding of its root causes. Instead, government officials want us to look at three lines going up over a set time period, now long in the past, and assume that they must have something to do with each other.


G'day viewers, my name is Oren Thomas. I'm a principal hybrid cloud advocate at Microsoft. In this video, I'll cover the steps for securing the Enterprise Admin's Active Directory domain services built in Security Group. This advice is based on the documentation published on learn.microsoft.com at the link in this video's description. The Enterprise Admin's group exists only in the root domain of an Active Directory forest of domains. This group is a universal group and is available in all domains in a forest. Members of this group are authorized to make forest-wide changes in Active Directory such as adding and removing child domains. By default, the only member of the group is the default administrator account for the forest root domain. This group is automatically added to the administrator's group in every domain in the forest and it provides complete access to configuring all domain controllers. Members in this group can modify the membership of all administrative groups. Members of the default service administrator groups in the root domain can modify Enterprise Admin's membership. This group is considered a service administrator account. The Enterprise Admin group is the default owner of the configuration, schema, domain and application ADDS petitions. As mentioned, the recommended approach is limit membership of the Enterprise Admin's group to the built-in forest root domain administrator account. You can use restricted groups policy applied in the default domain policy to reset membership of the Enterprise Admin's group on a periodic basis as shown in the image on the screen. If a privileged user requires domain admins privileges in multiple domains in a forest, you should add that user's account to each domain's domain admins group rather than adding that account to the Enterprise Admin's group. You should not remove the Enterprise Admin's group from the administrator's groups in each domain because in the event of a forest disaster recovery scenario, Enterprise Admin's rights will likely be required. A previous video on this channel describes how you can protect the default built-in forest root domain administrator account and why it should only be used for deployment and disaster recovery operations. In forest environments with multiple domains, you should strongly restrict which accounts are present in the forest root domain with everyday user accounts and most privileged accounts instead being hosted in child domains. Restricting which accounts are present in the forest root domain reduces the overall ADDS attack surface. Securing the Enterprise Admin's group involves denying specific rights, limiting group membership, and configuring auditing for changes made to the group. We will cover these elements in the remainder of this video. In terms of assigning rights, you should create a group policy object linked to organizational units hosting member servers and workstation computer accounts in each domain. You should configure this group policy object so that the Enterprise Admin's group is assigned the following user rights in computer configuration, policies, window settings, security settings, local policies, user rights assignments as shown in the image on the screen. Deny access to this computer from the network. Deny lock gone as a batch job. Deny lock gone as a service. Deny lock gone locally. Deny lock gone through remote desktop services. Remember that this group policy object should not apply to domain controllers. This policy restricting rights to the Enterprise Admin's group should only apply to OUs containing member server and workstation computer accounts. Configure auditing to generate alerts if any modifications are made to the properties or membership of the Enterprise Admin's group. Alerts should be sent to the users or teams responsible for administration of active directory in addition to incident response teams in your organization. You configure auditing for changes to the Enterprise Admin's group by enabling the audit security group management audit policy in the default domain controllers GPO. Enabling this policy setting allows you to audit events generated by changes to security groups such as the following. Security group is created, changed or deleted. Member is added or removed from a security group. Group type is changed. If you configure this policy setting an audit event is generated when an attempt to change a security group is made. If you do not configure this policy setting no audit event is generated when a security group changes. The events that you are interested in that will be located in the DC security logo. Event ID 4755 a security enabled universal group was changed. Event ID 4756 a member was added to a security enabled universal group. Event ID 4757 a member was removed from a security enabled universal group. The image on the screen shows the event that occurs in the security event log on the DC when a user account named completely innocent is added to the Enterprise Admin's group when auditing of security group management is enabled. In this video you learned about steps you can take to secure the building Enterprise Admin's group that is created by default in the forest root domain in an active directory forest. The advice in this video is drawn from the article linked in the video description. Increasing the security controls applied to the Enterprise Admin's group will improve your overall ADDS security posture but will not make your systems invulnerable. Security is always a matter of balancing what can be pragmatically accomplished by administrators in day-to-day operations with an assumed breach philosophy. We are interested in hearing about your experiences as an ADDS administrator. Have you implemented any of the security controls outlined in this video in your environment? What steps do you take in your own active directory domain services environment to secure the Enterprise Admin's group? I hope you found this video useful and informative. My name is Oren Thomas you can find me at aka.ms slash oren and if you've got any questions or feedback drop a comment below.