But then I'm going to take that list and give it to my local agent I'll have a relationship established with instead of picking an agent on Zillow or one of these online platforms. So they're picking and choosing what makes their life easier with technology. Well, we're back to this relationship centric industry, I believe. Technology has come in and played a cycle or two. And what we've done as an industry and as a consumer is we've taken these cycles of digital that's happened, this technology, these technology cycles in the market. And what we've done is we've picked out the parts that we like and the parts that we don't like, you know, like we went through a couple rounds of, you know, buyers basically choosing random agents online and that ended up not being such a great thing at the end of the day, you know, percentage wise, you know, so now the market's leaning back towards picking an agent they know, like and trust has created this bond with and this relationship with and feels like they're a friend or family member. We're leaning back towards that. So that's one thing, okay, we may take the, okay, I'm going to find all my properties on Zillow, but then I'm going to take that list and give it to my local agent and I'll have a relationship established with instead of picking an agent on Zillow or one of these online platforms, you know, so they're picking and choosing, you know, what makes their life easier with technology and they're using that to speed the process up and it makes everybody's life easier. But then they're falling back to the old school, you know, methods and certain things that they didn't like about technology and then as time goes on, there's going to be new technology come into the market, right, and we're going to have to evaluate that as a consumer, as agents to see what we like and we don't like about that technology that comes into play. So, you know, it's very interesting. I think the consumers just want an agent that understands what their needs are and it really listens to them about what they're looking for, you know, what they want to happen and an agent that is empathetic towards their situation, you know. Some agents aren't.  They're not necessarily building a brand. They're not trying to build relationships. I know a lot of these agents, they do exist and like they, you know, they don't do anything to stay in touch with their database, you know, they're literally just prospecting for the rest of their life, trying to get the next deal, the next deal, the next deal, but they're not taking those deals and accumulating them as relationships in their pocket for a rainy day, you know. So, I think consumers want just agents that care at the end of the day. They just want agents that care and will stay in touch with them, answer their phone, let them know when stuff's not going right, smooth the deal out for them, you know, get them what they feel like is the best negotiated deal. I went back to roofing houses, I worked on a oil rig, I served tables, I went bankrupt, I was sleeping in my car, I was eating out of people's refrigerators, you know, that's what I did, okay. So, I read 100 books because I was so curious to why I failed because I felt like I was one of the most hardest, I was one of the hardest working agents in my market. I feel like I wanted it, you know, more than most agents. I feel like, you know, I was honest. I'm doing it for the right reasons, you know. I felt like I was a great agent.   So, I was negative. How did I go from, you know, on top of the world to negative, you know, being one of the hardest working honest guys out there? Well, I had to go back to the drawing board, right. And try to figure out what, and piece it all together. And I'll tell you a lot of things that I learned through that process and reading all those books and watching and thinking about how everything went down and trying to piece it all together, you know, outside of the things I did wrong, what I realized is that, you know, when you go through a moment like that, of course, I was in my mid-20s and there were guys that were 40 and 50 and even then in their 60s that went through the same exact thing. Here I was in my mid-20s going through what they were going through in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And I was like, wow, how fortunate am I? I wasn't worried about it. I was still in my 20s. Like, I could still go out till seven in the morning, wake up at eight o'clock, go roof houses, feel fine.  So, it wasn't a big deal to me. I didn't have a family. I didn't have any bills. I was in a very, I was very blessed to be on it. And I knew it at the time. I was like, you know, this is incredible for this to happen to me right now. Subconsciously, not on the front end. I wasn't thinking that. I wasn't telling everybody, like, thank God, you know, or anything, but I was definitely, but I definitely knew that on the inside. And a couple of things I realized, when you go through something like that, it makes you realize a lot of things about business. Okay, and one of the biggest things I realized was that regardless of any market condition, because that was the worst real estate crash that we've ever seen in our life. If you even go through the scariest moments in our life here in terms of markets, you'll find that if you go back through your MLS, closings happen every single day through those scariest moments. The market never stopped. The market slowed down, but it never stopped. There's still closings happening. Every closing represents two opportunities to represent someone, a buyer, and a seller. So multiply the closings happen every day by two, and that's how many opportunities there are every single day in your market.  And look at how many closings happen every day. When you start to realize how markets really operate and how the cycles happen in the industry, you'll realize there's nothing to worry about when it comes to a crash, like a crash or a market downturn or a cycle or a correction. These things aren't to be worried about in terms of, are we gonna still continue to be real estate agents? That's not a question. If you understand it, if you let it scare you into a place where you feel like you can't succeed, then yeah, you'll get scared, you'll make timid actions, and you won't make it, and you don't have to get out of the business. But if you understand this, and you go more all in with, okay, it doesn't matter as the market changes in the cycles that happens. If a lot of people in the market know who I am and realize how hard I work and how honest I am and professional and dependable, and I've built my personal brand with all the people that you've talked to that created great first impressions with, if you have something on the back end to build that personal brand with them from there, you're golden, right? That's why I do the weekly email. It's every single week, let me mute Betty, bam. That's why I do the weekly email every single week on the same day of the week forever to my entire database to continue to build that brand. And that's how I've continued to sell 100 properties a year is from that brand that I built through making all those calls to make those great first impressions, right? That's how the business works. You gotta talk to people. I don't care where you get your leads from. You're gonna have to, at some point, sit down and call a list of people. You do an open house, you're trying to develop a list to then call those. If you get online leads from Zillow or Facebook or wherever, you gotta sit down and call the leads. So it all comes back to talking to people one-on-one.  New listings, right? You could be the new listing guy. Every week, you could have the new listings. That's market, that's breaking news. New listings is breaking news. This stuff came on the market this week. Here's your list of new listings on the market this week. Who else is sending out new listings every week? Nobody. So what if you're a Corey, the new listing guy? And every week it's like Corey's new listing update. Boom, hope you're having a great week. I wanted to let you know. Here's the new listings on the market this week. Click here. If you see something you like, let me know. If there's anything else that I can do for you, please reach out. Have a good rest of your week. Talk to you soon. Boom, send that out to your database every single Wednesday. And then sacrifice the business you might lose on the other 100 things to really focus on these three or four things. And I think a lot of you are probably really spread out with the different avenues of business that you're trying to do. So in 2008, to get back in and make that 80,000, the next year, 2009, I'd do 100. And then 2010, bam, the oil spill hits, the BP oil spill. We had oil washing up on our beaches. You probably guys probably had some of that, experienced some of that if you were on the West Coast of Florida. I'm not sure how far that went, but it was a scary moment. We really didn't know what was gonna happen. And this was my moment right here. This was it. I got to test out my theory that because when I lost everything and came back, my thing was I wanted to build a business that would never ever get shook by the market. I wanted to have complete control of my business. I never wanted to be victim to something that was out of my control. I definitely never wanted to lose everything, go bankrupt, sleep in my car and eat out of people's refrigerators. So when I got back in the business, one thing that I really recognized and the reason why I lost everything, the real root of the reason why I failed so hard was because that first part of my career, I was 100% focused on listing, sales, getting the contracts, closings, money. I was 100% focused on the money. And when I went through the crash, not only did I realize my friend was doing the same exact strategies he was doing before the crash and that succeeding in a big, big way, I also realized that some of my clients that were buying and selling with me before I got out of the business were still buying and selling during that 2005 and 2008 range. I think you guys are, a lot of people are thinking, just try to sell this house. And if not, I'm moving on. Don't even collect data. Don't even collect data. Don't even do weekly email. Do nothing to build your personal brand. Just in this constant sales mentality. When you're in the sales mentality, you're only good as your last sale.  But when you build personal brand and you accumulate, when you accumulate clients and friendships and a database, right? And these people know who you are. They get your content every week. They know your opinion on the market. They know what restaurants you like. They know what properties you sold. Thousands of people in the market know all that stuff about you. You have a large business and you can accumulate these people five at a time, five at a time. Five new friends or property owners every day, 25 in a week, 100 in a month, 1200 in a year, 24 in two years, 36 in three years, 48 in four years. In four years, you guys could all be one of the top agents in your market. But you're worried about getting 20 listings this year. When in 2024, 2025, you're not gonna care what you did in 2021. But you're only gonna care what you did in 2024. And 2024 is only gonna be dictated. Your success is gonna be predicated by how many friendships you created this year and next year and the year after. So it just comes, it comes all back to the simplicity of, can we just talk to people and create, build, be friends with people in the market, see what we can do to help them, offer them our services and then stay in touch with them forever.


So, whenever something bad happens, whenever Trump gets a new Supreme Court appointment that he gets to pick, whenever he gets more authoritarian, smug liberals look down upon the peasants from their ivory towers and they remind them, you did this, peasants. You are responsible for all of this. It's not the system that led to Donald Trump. It's not Democrats for failing to appeal to voters. You did this. It's not even Donald Trump or Republican Party voters. You are the one responsible for all of the problems happening in America.  This is why people hate liberals. So let me show you a couple of examples. Vox writer Aaron Rupar tweeted this out, Amy Coney Barrett is anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-healthcare and even seems to oppose same-sex marriage. She could sit on SCOTUS for 40 years. Both those Jill Stein protest votes were worth it, yes, because the 1% of the electorate that voted for Jill Stein is more responsible for this than Hillary is for losing, or more responsible than Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself for not retiring when Obama was still in power, when Democrats were in control of the Senate. If you have a system where our entire democracy hinges on the well-being of really old people with cancer, that's a really dysfunctional system. Now, I feel bad that Ruth Bader Ginsburg struggled and suffered for that long, but she had autonomy. She could have retired, so does Hillary not get any blame for not campaigning in Wisconsin? Why is it? Well, it's because they weren't compliant, and to you, obedience is everything. Obedience is everything. You know, we're never going to look in the mirror and try to determine what we did wrong. As Democrats, we're just going to name and shame until you fall in line and anytime Trump does something bad, we're going to remind you, you did this. This was you.  Not to relitigate old wounds, but all the Hillary equivocators from 2016, the people who said she was racist, not really that different from Trump, the ones who voted third party, the ones who stayed home because, you know, the lesser of two evils. Sorry, but you all have to eat it one more time because, oh, how I would love me some of that Hillary evil right now, you know, the evil where liberals would currently have a six to three majority on the court, the evil where people wouldn't be facing, having their health care taken away or their right to vote or where America wasn't sliding into autocracy. Yes, yes, let's let's look at the alternative universe of a few more people in 2016 had told themselves, yeah, she's not my favorite, but you only get two choices in our system. It's probably better to make sure this sane, competent person gets in as opposed to a malignant narcissist. In that universe, we're still in the Paris climate accord, and Iran's nuclear program is still frozen, and maybe so is Greenland. There have been none of the rollbacks on clean air and water. Dreamers don't have to worry about getting tossed out of the only country they've ever known. William Barr is just a right wing crank, self publishing a book on our moral decline. And Brett Kavanaugh is drinking from home. Oh, it's a, it's a wonderful world, this world. People hearing the words p-tape only think of R. Kelly. And no one has needed or heard of a pink pussy hat, let alone tried to knit one. And look, no nation as fundamentally unhealthy as this one could escape a pandemic unscathed. But I think Hillary would have done a little better than let them drink bleach. So the Supreme Court hears oral arguments to overturn Obamacare on November 10th. Once this new justice is seated, Obamacare is likely gone. And after that, Roe versus Wade.  You can name it Jill Stein. That was horrible. That is why people hate liberals, leftists and socialists who should theoretically, you know, be able to work with liberals on some things, can't stand them. Why there's this civil war in the Democratic Party. It's because there's no respect.  It's just judge, judge, judge, blame, blame, blame.  When they're the ones who are bearing the brunt of the consequences, not you. You're judging them from your ivory towers in the most condescending way imaginable. He says, the ones who voted third party, the ones who stayed home because, you know, the lesser of two evils, sorry, but you all have to eat it one more time.  What? And then he goes on to explain, you know, Hillary would have been so much better. Nobody is saying that Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been better than Donald Trump. Sure, you can say, maybe it was the case that some people went too far in their criticisms of Hillary Clinton and perpetuated this false equivalence. That was harmful. But nobody is saying that things wouldn't be better under Hillary Clinton. We all admit that Donald Trump is bad and acknowledge that Donald Trump is bad. But Hillary Clinton, she's got to be at least somewhat culpable in your mind, no? If Hillary had the foresight that everyone says she does and that she warned us about all of this, why didn't she have the foresight when voting for the Iraq War? Why didn't she anticipate that Trump would be a bigger threat than he was when she propped him up with her Pied Piper strategy when Bill Clinton encouraged him to run? On top of that, Hillary Clinton kept giving the middle finger to Bernie Sanders supporters. And even though 85% of them fell in line and voted for Hillary Clinton, you're still outraged at the fact that that 15% didn't fall in line. And most Jill Stein votes probably came from these deep blue states like California and New York. But still, you blame the voters and not Hillary Clinton. Like, do you understand why this is problematic?  Do you think this is going to encourage people to vote for the Democratic Party? Do you honestly believe this is going to benefit you? Or are you just doing this literally because it makes you feel superior? Here's the thing. In 2016, 46.9% of eligible voters stayed home. And, you know, Bill Maher kind of alluded to the fact that they're also to blame. But do you think this is because half of Americans were just like super petty and hated Hillary Clinton? Or do you think that there are systemic factors here worth looking at? The fact that voting rights are under attack, the fact that people have to work and they may not be able to actually go to the polls, but it speaks to a flaw in the entire system. Because when you have like most people or half of people not participating in democracy, that means that that democracy is not very healthy. That means that democracy is dying in that country. So there's something deeper going on here. But Bill Maher isn't intellectually curious. He just wants to do what makes himself feel better.   How many phone calls did you make for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Bill? How many phone calls are you making for Joe Biden? How many doors are you knocking on? How much money are you donating? Come on, man. Now, he also blamed people that voted for Jill Stein and suggests that she acted as a spoiler. And Democrats always point to Wisconsin and that, you know, if Jill Stein wasn't there, Hillary Clinton would have taken Wisconsin. But if you look at those 2016 results, Gary Johnson was the Republican Party spoiler and he got three times the amount of votes that Jill Stein did. And in this particular state, if you took away third party options and assumed they would have voted for the two major parties and you distribute their votes away from Jill Stein and Gary Johnson to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Trump wins by an even larger margin. So the spoiler ended up helping Hillary Clinton in many ways in 2016, not to mention the fact that someone like my mom who voted for Jill Stein helped Democrats because look, my mom was in her 60s. And for the very first time she registered to vote in 2016 because she believed that Bernie Sanders was the only politician that ever cared. But when Bernie lost, she decided, I don't want to vote. I'm going to check out. So I showed her Jill Stein's platform. You know, I told her that she has policies that are very similar to Bernie Sanders. And you know, of course, I explained we're in Oregon, it's a deep blue state. So you know, it's not as crucial here, the electoral votes will go to Hillary Clinton. And you know, if we vote for Jill Stein, maybe we can get the Greens to 5% to where Democrats will feel the need to steal some of their policies and see them as competition or institute ranked choice voting. Like my mom voted because Jill Stein inspired her. And a lot of people voted because Jill Stein inspired her. If Jill Stein wasn't an option, that's not to say that those voters would have voted for Hillary Clinton, it would have led to more people probably staying home. And guess what? My mom didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, neither did I. But we still voted for Democrats down the ballot. My mom did too. She's a nonvoter. And then she registered to vote for the first time because of Bernie Sanders. And had she not been convinced to vote for Jill Stein, she wouldn't have voted for Democrats at the state and local level. So by you shaming Jill Stein voters, when just getting people to vote in and of itself is a challenge in America, you should be ashamed of yourself, Bill Maher. You should be ashamed of yourself, especially considering the fact that most leftist and Bernie Sanders supporters end up falling in line anyway. And guess what? You basically got what you wanted. Look at this poll here. A plurality of people that voted third party in 2016 will in fact be voting for Joe Biden this time. And an outright majority of people who just didn't vote in 2016 say that they will in fact be voting for Joe Biden this time.  What more do you want?  You did all of this. Trump appointing Amy Coney Barrett. You did this. It's not that Democrats refused to fight. It's not that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was irresponsible for not retiring as much as we wanted her on the Supreme Court and needed her on the Supreme Court. She knew the risk. Democrats knew the risk. Hillary knew the risk of running a shitty campaign where you don't reach out to the left and you don't go to Wisconsin. But yet you blame voters.  I can't win.   I'm just not going to vote. Like, do you honestly think you're helping Democrats here? It's just astonishing that liberals like Bill Maher continue to do this. No sense of self awareness whatsoever.


Thank you, Christopher, that very kind introduction. Patrick, thank you, Simon. And I want to thank the Rural Society and the Academy for inviting me and giving me this really great pleasure and honor to be here with you this evening. As you can see from this first slide, I'm going to talk about multiple aspects of both COVID and HIV from a scientific public health and policy and show the comparability of these two. We often talk about lessons to be learned, and I think some of the lessons carry over from one disease to another. As Chris had mentioned, I've had the privilege of leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for almost 40 years. And in that capacity, my responsibilities and my career were bookended by two pandemics that have really described our experience in our lifetime, namely HIV and AIDS. So I'm going to start off before we get to the comparable lessons. Just give a little background that I think this audience probably is thoroughly familiar with, but I'll just mention it. We know now the global burden of HIV that there have been 40 million people who've died, 39 million people living with HIV, over a million newly infected each year, and 630,000 died just in the last recorded year of 2022. With regard to COVID-19, again, we were all familiar with the numbers. The number of deaths globally is seven million, but we all know that that is likely twofold less than what the reality is, is probably closer to 20 million. In the United States alone, we've lost 1.17 million people to COVID, one of the worst, if not the worst in the world. So getting to the lessons, there are eight lessons that I've chosen. There are probably many more than that, but I believe these, in my mind, illustrate how strongly comparable these particular diseases are with regard to the science and society's response to them. So let's go through them and I'll briefly give examples of each. First and foremost is expect the unexpected when you're dealing with the evolution of emerging infectious diseases. I wanna show you this slide because the person who wrote this was one of the mentors of mine and one of the original editors of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, my friend, Bob Petersdorf, at a time when vaccinations and antibiotics and antivirals had diminished the number, particularly if childhood deaths to infectious diseases, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Robert Petersdorf wrote an article called A Doctor's Dilemma, and that was at a time when we were evaluating the number of people who were applying for fellowships in infectious diseases. And this is a quote from his paper, even with my great personal loyalties to infectious disease, I cannot conceive a need for 309 more infectious disease experts unless they spent their time culturing each other. And he published that in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, even great iconic infectious disease people like Dr. Petersdorf can be wrong because three years following the time he wrote that, we had the first indication of a new disease that was thought to have emerged because the first cases were officially reported in the United States of the MMWR Mobility Mortality Weekly Report, which is a newsletter that comes out, you're probably familiar with it from the CDC every week, describing five curiously young gay men presenting with pneumocystis pneumonia, although they had no prior disease. I actually thought at the time that that was a fluke until one month later, when the second MMWR came out in July of 81, now 26 curiously all young gay men who not only presented with pneumocystis, but with capricious sarcoma and other opportunistic infections, not only from Los Angeles, but also from New York City and San Francisco. Little did we know that this had already spread throughout the world because at the time that this was reported, you were seeing cases here in the UK, the French and the Belgians were seeing it in the European Union. It was a disease without a name. Those were one of the darkest periods of my medical career.   And in regard to expect the unexpected, we certainly didn't expect a brand new disease. I mean, who knew about brand new diseases? I know when I was in my training, a brand new disease was something for the history books, but this was a brand new disease. But the surprise kept on, it was the gift, if you wanna call it that, a bad gift that kept on giving. And if you look at the evolution of the disease over time, first we thought it was only in gay men. And then we found out that we were seeing it in Haitians who were heterosexual. Then individuals who received transfusions for hematologic abnormalities. And then there were transfusions for people who had loss of blood. And then there were people who were heterosexual transmitting it women to their infant, so it kept on evolving more and more, expect the unexpected. Now, with regard to pathogenesis, it was something we'd never seen before. It targeted a specific element of the immune system CD4 cells. It evaded immune response and had chronic infection with a viral reservoir that to this day has not been able to spontaneously be cleared from anyone, even people on therapy. And it directly or indirectly impacts all organ systems. The other thing, the unexpected, that we didn't know, this was a slide I made decades ago. And it shows that in the acute stage, you have a burst of aremia. It goes down to below detectable according to the older aspects of detecting, but now we have sensitive assays and know that cannot be true. And then individuals go over a period of clinical latency, sometimes as long as several years, all along transmitting the virus when they were so-called asymptomatic. So the idea of asymptomatic spread of disease really had its originality in HIV. Now, let's switch over to SARS, a unique pathogen, highly mutable, multiple variants. We've never seen a single disease in a big burst have multiple variants. A symptomatic spread was common, aerosol transmission turned us upside down when we were trying to compare it to flu, which can be asymptomatically transmitted, but not very often. And then we had the post-acute sequela that we call long COVID. Now, here's a family tree, a phylogenetic tree showing on the far left-hand part of the slide. In the beginning, we had the ancestral Wuhan strain. We thought that was the virus we would be dealing with. It would peak in the winter, go away in the summer and that would be it. And look where we are now in our fifth year with multiple variants, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and then Omicron, which came in the winter of 2021. And since then, we've had multiple, multiple variants of Omicron. The one that's now dominant in the United States is the JN.1. Interestingly, each of these variants increasingly evaded the immune response, something you almost never see in infectious disease. Prior infection does not prevent you from getting infected again. The immunity that you build up likely will protect you from getting severe disease, but it won't protect you. I've been infected twice and vaccinated six times. So that's what we were talking about, so-called herd immunity. It just somehow does not exist. So what are we gonna do? This is a cartoon that shows what we can't do. We can't play whack-a-mole. We can't be making a new vaccine for every single new variant. Otherwise, we would have had about 25 different vaccines right now. However, there is a concern that somehow lurking, we may get a new variant that actually is as variant away from what we're seeing now as Omicron was from Delta. The other issue is the asymptomatic spread. This fooled us from the very beginning. We should have known because they were seeing this in China it was not reported as transparently as it should have been. Is that about 50 to 60% of all transmissions occur from an individual with no symptoms? Aerosol transmission, the whole paradigm that the CDC, our own CDC got wrong, where we used the model of influenza of a symptomatic person, cover your cough, that kind of thing. People were spreading it through aerosol when they were without symptoms. And then we had long COVID. We know that you can have post-viral syndromes associated with influenza mononucleosis, but never to the extent where there's estimated about 17 million people now have long COVID in the United States. Now, the second lesson, political leadership at the highest level is critical for a rapid and effective pandemic response. And now we get into politically sensitive things. So if you look at the estimated high incidence among people with HIV in the United States in the early 80s, the president of the United States who had many good qualities, Ronald Reagan, did not mention the word AIDS until his second term. So he went four years and one year, five years at a time when we were having an explosion of cases in the United States, and the leadership did not mention it. And I felt that was a lost opportunity to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to get people aware of this emerging plague. I met him the first time, and here I am, briefing him for the first time. I tried without much success to get him to go out there and be more forthcoming about it. He's all the way over on the left-hand part of the slide, as you can see, and I was talking to him a little bit about what the NIH is going to do. Now let's switch over to COVID. This is a quote from the former president of the United States. It is going to disappear from February to the end of October. The president declared 38 times that COVID-19 is either going to disappear or is currently disappearing. And these are some of the quotes. You know, a lot of people think that going away in April with the heat and the heat comes in, that'll go away in April. It's going to disappear. It's like a miracle. That's when I had my first confrontation, not in the sense of with him, but when the press asked me, is that going to happen? And I had to say, no, it is actually not going to happen. While he was saying it was going to disappear, this is what it was doing, the deaths in the United States. And this is what the deaths were doing globally. And so in fact, the beginning of trying to get the country galvanized to wear a mask and to understand the seriousness of it, we lost considerable amount of time in January, February, March, and then when April came, there was really a split where he went off and was worried about the election and then we were left with a lot of conflict in the country. And then next one, prior scientific advances enabled robust pandemic responses. And I'm glad I put this next slide in because I just saw the wall of presidents of the society and Isaac Newton, who was president in 1703, said, if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants and that's exactly what we do in science. If you go way back several years before HIV, it was the fundamental basic science discovery of David Baltimore and Howard Timmon when they discovered reverse transcriptase that allowed us to least identify a retrovirus, which we would not have been able to do. Bob Gallo showing that you could grow T cells in culture allowed us to first isolate in culture HIV. And then a whole number of other studies, HTLV-1, the first retrovirus that was discovered by Gallo and his colleague and Japanese investigators indicated that this likely was a retrovirus who we're dealing with. And fortunately, in 1983, Luc Montagnier and François Baraissinoussi discovered HIV in a lymph node biopsy of a person who had this brand new syndrome. A year later, Bob Gallo proved epidemiologically and virologically that it was the cause of AIDS and the advances we've had in HIV science have been spectacular. I could spend the entire time discussing it with you but the one that we know that's impacted the field profoundly is the fact that we have now antiviral therapy, which when given to persons with HIV can bring the level of virus to below detectable and have them live essentially a normal lifespan, as well as making it virtually impossible for them to transmit it to someone who they have a sexual relationship with. Switching over to COVID, the comparability there, I wrote an article in science a few years ago on the story behind the COVID-19 vaccines. And it really relates to work that had been done decades before on both platform technology and vaccine immunogen. As you all know, platforms are what you use as your virus, whole-killed, inactivated, viral vector, virus-like particle, and the immunogen is the actual epitope of the virus or the bacteria itself. The dominant platform technology, though not the only one, with COVID was how mRNA technology burst into the field. People don't fully appreciate that Drew Weisman and Katie Carrico did their original studying showing that the molecular modification of an RNA molecule will allow it to be used as a vaccine. That study was done and published in immunity in 2005. Things get even more interesting and complicated when you talk about how we got the optimal immunogen for the COVID vaccine. And it really goes back to HIV where investigators from a number of institutions throughout the world were using structure-based vaccine design, using cryo-EM to get the right confirmation of the immunogen for HIV. At the NIH, the Vaccine Research Center, which I started about 25 years ago, the two investigators there with the red circles around them, the one on the lower left is Peter Kwong, a structural virologist, and the one on the upper right is Barney Graham, who was more interested in respiratory syncytial virus than he was interested in HIV. And what they did is that they partnered in a way that is the beauty of science where people from multiple different disciplines get together. And Peter Kwong, among others, solved the ability to stabilize the HIV envelope trimer in a way that was immunogenic, even though we still don't have an HIV vaccine. Now, that's sort of interesting because the technology that didn't yet give us an HIV vaccine was used to develop an RSV vaccine, namely, use mutations in the molecule to stabilize that molecule in its most immunogenic form, which with RSV was the pre-fusion F protein. The investigators then, as they were trying to make a vaccine for mayors, showed here that they were able to get a successful immunogen, even though we're still working on a mayors vaccine. But when SARS came along, the exact mutations that they had been working for decades on was used to stabilize the spike protein in its pre-fusion form, which was highly immunogenic. And these are some of the vaccines that had been developed. And if you look in the far right, almost all of them use that S2P mutation which stabilized the immunogen. Just another example of it was decades of research, but what were the results of that? You all know that, but let me just mention it to you. This is the fastest by far in history of getting a vaccine from the time you got the sequence. We got the sequence on January 10th. Five days later, we started on the vaccine development. 65 days later, phase one. 139 days later, phase two. 198 days later, phase three. And in less than 11 months, we had a vaccine that was safe and that was 94 to 95% effective. It was going into the arms of individuals throughout the world. Now, I'm gonna show you a slide that's a little bit almost tongue in cheek when you look at the time to develop a vaccine from the time that you have the pathogen. So Typhoid, it only took 105 years. Polio 47, go down the line. Measles even took 10 years, but COVID took 11 months. The global impact of that has been nothing short of breathtaking. Vaccinations prevented 14 million deaths in 185 countries and territories in one year from 2020 to 2021. Appropriately, Drew Weisman and Katie Caracol recently won the Nobel Prize for their work. Next, misinformation and disinformation of the enemies of pandemic control. Some of you may remember Peter Duisburg. Peter Duisburg was a person highly qualified, a professor at Berkeley, a member of our National Academy of Sciences. The claim that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but rather by non-infectious factors such as recreational and pharmaceutical drug use and that the drug was making people sick, not the virus. I spent years debating this person on United States television and I referred to it as I was mentioning to Chris and to Patrick the famous false equivalency. You have one scientist that says one thing, another scientist says that another and the New Yorker magazine said, well, I got so frustrated, I usually don't say things like this. I said, this is murder. He said after listening to Duisburg's speech, it really just that simple. And in some respects it was because in South Africa, Tabo Mabeki and his health minister, Shahbalala Missamon, did not want to subsidize drugs for HIV in South Africa, the country with the most cases. And they said because scientists in the United States don't believe that HIV caused AIDS. And what happened is that when they did a modeling study, they felt that somewhere around 300,000 lives were lost in South Africa because the government did not provide AIDS drugs. Switch over now to COVID. Misinformation, as you all know, is ubiquitous. 78% of the public in the United States believes or is unsure of at least one false statement and a third believe at least four of eight. And here are some of the examples. COVID-19 is a hoax, conspiracy therapists, Europe's coronavirus cases rise, so do voices crying hoax. Now misinformation, as I've often said, is the enemy of public health. We have someone right now who is gonna be running for president of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who doesn't believe in vaccines and thinks COVID vaccines are killing people as opposed to COVID killing people. So in the United States, there was a modeling study that showed that over 200,000 deaths could have been prevented among people who did not get vaccinated because they thought vaccinations were unsafe and did not work. Despite the data I showed you in a prior slide. Moving on, increased attention to the human-animal interface is critical for pandemic control. We know that the one health issue is that emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases are a perpetual challenge. 75% of all emerging pathogens are zoonotic. They jump from an animal reservoir to a human. Some of them adapt well and spread among humans. HIV. It took years before investigators were able to show that the reservoir was a chimpanzee and that it spread slowly decades before we noticed it and only in the early 1980s that it become a pandemic. I wrote an article in Cell with my colleague a few years ago talking about the unbalanced interaction in the animal-human interface. And as I was discussing with Patrick and with Chris a little bit ago, the evidence now, we don't know what the origin is but there's so much effort that's put into conspiracy theories about what the origin is, is that we don't know for sure but the prevailing evidence from scientists throughout the world including here in the UK indicate strongly that it likely, though without definitive proof, came from a natural spillover in the Wuhan market. So what are you gonna do about it? One, you expand pathogens surveillance at interfaces between human domestic animals and wildlife. Stop clearing and degrading tropical and subtropical forests. Improve health and economic security of communities living and emerging infectious diseases hotspots. Enhance biosecurity in animal husbandry and importantly, which did not happen in Wuhan.  Because as Eddie Holmes, another member of your community and his colleagues have shown that there were in fact illegal animals in the Wuhan market the year before the outbreak occurred. Next lessons, inequities, health disparities, stigma and discrimination are amplified in pandemic settings. We have a lot of that, sadly, in the United States. So if you look at HIV disproportionately, affects the global south. 67% of all infections are in sub-Saharan Africa. 90% are in the developing world. In the United States, African Americans comprise 13.6% of our population. Yet 40% of all new infections are among African Americans. If you look at the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, which when used properly is 99% effective in preventing the acquisition of HIV. Take a look at the availability in the trends in the blue line among whites and in the darker lines, red and black, among Hispanics and African Americans. Move now to COVID-19. We saw the same thing in the United States, a disproportionate amount of infection, hospitalization and deaths among minority populations, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Alaskan natives. The longstanding systemic health and social inequities drive these disparities. Discrimination, significant in the United States, sadly to this day, limited healthcare access and use. The occupation of people with essential jobs is disproportionately among lower income people, particularly among minorities. Education income and wealth gaps and housing issues where multi-generational families spread it among them. This is an interesting slide. If you look at people with lower incomes, they're much less likely to work from home during COVID. So if you go from the lowest income on the left to the highest income on the right, and the vertical access is the percent of households that switch to telework. So if you're poor, you're not gonna be able to switch to telework. If you look at the vaccine doses administered again, sadly, look at this by the income of the country. Lower income in the lower part with blue, lower middle and then high income gets vaccinated. Next, community engagement is critical. The birth of AIDS activism sometimes is confused with the pushback against scientists with COVID. It's entirely different. As I mentioned with Ronald Reagan, he triggered the beginning of activism because he didn't recognize or use his office to call attention. The scientific community, me included early on, did what we scientists often do. Retrospectively, it doesn't make sense, but we did it and we thought it was right. To tell the patient, we know what's best for you. Our scientific principles, entry and exclusion criteria and clinical trials, regulatory constraints, we know better. The activist was saying, well, that works for a disease like hypertension where you have multiple drugs or you're not gonna die in the matter of a year, but for us, we need to have a voice in how things roll out. The scientific community didn't listen. However, the activists decided they were gonna call our attention to it. So Larry Cramer, who is one of the icons of activism in the United States, playwright and author, ultimately became a good friend, wrote this article in the San Francisco Examiner.  He got my attention. And then what I did, I started to actually listen to what the activists were saying. And this is a New York Times article when I broke with the establishment and said we should allow people to have compassionate use access to drugs at the same time we do a clinical trial without interfering with the integrity of the clinical trial. Now, the activists, I get credit for calling it parallel track, but the activists deserve the credit because they came up with that terminology, a parallel track. Do the clinical trial, but also have access. Now, this next picture is a classic example of what I said, the difference between people who are trying to harm me and even people in this room who are anti-science, anti-vax, and the activists during the AIDS era back in the 80s. This is a picture of me in 1989 when I went alone with my assistant, the young woman next to me, into Greenwich Village in the Gay and Lesbian Community Center with a hundred angry, frightened, sick, gay men. Never for a moment did I feel in danger of anything sitting among them because they just wanted me to listen to them. They stormed the NIH, they made the needs known and we listened. This is very well documented in a Academy Award-nominated documentary, How to Survive a Plague. The leader of that pack is a person named Peter Staley, a very articulate AIDS activist. Fast forward 30 years and here's he and I discussing the history of AIDS at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. And these individuals now are some of my closest friends. Switch over to COVID now. We had to outreach to the Native American population. I spent a lot of time reaching out on TV by Zoom and in person with the Native American nations, the Indian nations in the United States. We did that with the African American community and we continued to do that with regard to COVID. In addition, we've reached out to the long COVID patients and are now listening much more carefully to their needs. Finally, infectious diseases are a perpetual challenge and HIV and COVID clearly show that. If you look at thing, I say this often and it's true that emerging infectious diseases existed before recorded history. I mean, we know that with a plague of Athens, we had no idea what that was. We have a good idea now. In fact, we know for sure what the bubonic or the black death plague of the 14th century was Yersinia pestis. We also know now the Spanish flu, as we used to call it, in 1918. When I first started at the NIH, I would testify before Congress and it was in the beginning of HIV. I drew a map of the United States and I put HIV in there as an emerging infectious diseases. I've testified before the United States Congress, I say this smiling, it's painful, about 285 times over the last 40 years and every time I come with the same map, but each year I put a new emerging infection. This is what the last time I testified in the fall of 2022. These were all emerging diseases. Now to be certain, some of these are one-offs and they're trivial and they don't cause pandemics, but as we know, some of them are in fact the beginning of a significant outbreak. So if you look at selective events in infectious disease emergence from 1981 to 2024, which I showed you on the second slide, there have been many. Again, the two bookends that really called our attention was HIV and COVID, but there are others in there. So the real last lesson that I've learned will you bring COVID and HIV together is something I wrote in 2008 with my colleagues, Dave Morins and Greg Fokers, is that emerging infectious diseases are a perpetual challenge. They've always been with us, they're with us now and they will continue to be with us. The only way to address a perpetual challenge is by perpetual preparedness. Thank you. Well, Tony, thank you very much. That was absolutely spectacular, both in terms of the content and in terms of your personal contribution over many years, as Chris said in his opening remarks. It was really amazing to see that pulled together in that way and to reflect on the different time points and the differences that they've made to what happens now and what needs to happen in the future. I want to actually also take this chance to say a big thank you to you because during COVID, you, me and Chris spoke very often and it was a wonderful therapy session. Thank you. Me too. The other thing that occurred to me as you were speaking was that your quote from Peter's door reminded me of a quote from a very senior person in the R&D part of a pharmaceutical company who produced a video at one point in which he made the mistake of saying that as long as he was around, there would always be infectious diseases. I'm quite sure that's what he meant, but that's what he said. We're going to open this up to questions and I'm sure there'll be lots, but let me just kick off and just ask you, what do you think in terms of the immediate need for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics, what does the world need to do to be ready for that? Yeah, well, we need to do a few things, Patrick, but I think the thing that stood out more to me than anything else was the extraordinary lack of equitable access and the disparities. So I look at these responses, there's pandemic preparedness and pandemic response, and I look at it in two buckets, the scientific preparedness and response and the public health preparedness. The question you're asking, Patrick, is the scientific preparedness but also the implementation of it. I think if we want to look at how we're going to prepare for the next outbreak, which inevitably will occur, we can have a situation where there are real sharp distinctions between the haves and the have-nots, where you get a vaccine and you have countries like the United States, who are talking about their second and third booster, and other countries have not even yet gotten access to the vaccine, I think that's what, and it goes for therapeutics and monoclonal antibodies also. Thank you. Let's open this up for questions who would like to kick off. Yeah, Chris. That was a superb talk. Can we give a microphone, please, about the game, yeah. That was a superb talk, and you covered a rather wide range of things. I just wanted to ask you about a comparison between pre-exposure prophylaxis, in fact, which has been, obviously, for HIV, a very interesting area. And what do you think of this in relationship to COVID? Because here in the UK, we have about 4 million people who are effectively not able to have, by virtue of being immune deficient, et cetera. And we, at the moment, don't seem to have an effective treatment for that, and I wonder if you have views on that. Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about pre-exposure, you're referring to people who are maybe immune deficient and they won't respond to a vaccine. Yeah, I mean, there's good news about that now because we have, and early on in the outbreak, we had good monoclonal antibodies that were very specific for the particular circulating variant. We got into trouble with the monoclonal antibodies because when you went from the ancestral strain to gamma to delta, the monoclonal antibodies that worked beautifully as a pre-exposure prophylaxis for immunocompromised individuals didn't work anymore. So if you're dealing with a COVID-like illness in which you have this unprecedented multiple, multiple variants, you're just gonna have to put a lot of investment in making monoclonal antibodies for the different variants. The trouble is the pharmaceutical companies are not excited about doing that. That is something that has to be subsidized by the government. And that's one of the things that the United States government will try to do to de-risk a company saying I'm gonna make an antibody and then if the variant changes, it won't work. Hopefully, even though I know we will have another pandemic, it's not gonna be one that has multiple successive variants where you can get a group of monoclonal antibodies that will serve as good prophylaxis for people who are not gonna respond to a vaccine because of immune compromise. Okay. Give the mic over. I think that one of the big problems in a pandemic is we all live in a silo-based world and it is very, very difficult to get out of your silo. If you look at that, that's an incredibly expensive solution to produce a monoclonal antibody. In fact, and as you say, it's a specificity changes, et cetera. If you look at actually the world at large and you look at people, in fact, in a number of studies which show quite clearly that there is a drug which is available, which produces about 65% of coverants of a vaccine, which is extremely cheaper, which is being widely used. So if we just look at epidemiology, you can get a very clear idea of what might be an effective way of treating this. Right. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. I think the other problem and it'd be interesting to pick up on this maybe at some point is in HIV, you've got a chance to give a drug which can have a long-lasting effect and can be given frequently. In COVID, if you missed the window of opportunity, you probably had no effect at all. Yeah. And that ability to get things done. I was just thinking of that. In HIV right now, the pre-exposure prophylaxis is just an unbelievably effective tool. To the point now you have an injectable that you can give every couple of months and likely be able to give it every six months and the effectiveness is over 90%. And by the way, when we made that in GSK, the commercial people were totally opposed to it. Yeah. One there and then somebody here. I'll ask about genetic susceptibility and genetic resistance. In the UK, we had the distressing observation that most of the doctors who died of COVID early before vaccines were available were actually ethnically of Asian origin. And I wondered if that has held up in more widespread analysis of genetic susceptibility on an ethnic basis. No, a great question, but the answer is no. There really is not anything like we have with HIV with a Delta 32 heterozygote or homozygote that makes you less susceptible or even completely protected. We don't see that. I mean, we have seen situations. I'm wondering if there's anything other than just being Asian. Is there something about access to care? But you're saying if they're the physicians that are dying, that kind of normalizes them with everybody else. So I don't have the answer to that. We've got one here. And then I'm gonna go right to the back after that and then we'll come down to the front again, but here first. Professor Fauci, thank you for that terrific talk. And I was wondering, you've been talking about emerging new disease, but I've been following the increase in rates or missile in Europe, in Italy and in France. And it's really a shame that we have a vaccine that we know it works. We have access to it, but people have lost faith in using vaccine even for disease that disappeared from Europe. And I was wondering what is your view on how we can re-engage the general population in using what we already have? Well, that's an incredibly important question that we are struggling with not only in the USA, but throughout the world. The anti-vax sentiment, there was always a lower level of that. We've always had that in the United States, but when you're dealing with measles, make that the prototype. You know, if you're over 90%, 91, 92, 93% of the people vaccinated, you're in good shape with regard to herd immunity. Because of the anti-science, anti-vax approach that we see related to COVID, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approach about vaccine, that it's spilling over now into vaccines of any type. And what we're seeing in the United States literally in real time last week and the week before, we had 25 cases or so of measles, mostly imported people who come in from out of the country. We now just already this year have like 115 cases of measles, which is four times what we had. And it's the same thing. When you have pockets of people in different areas, get below the threshold for herd immunity, you're gonna get a measles outbreak. I'm really concerned that we are gonna see that in the United States, even though the United States still, as a country, is over 90% vaccinated. There are regions of the country where it's down to 80s and 75, and that's really dangerous with measles, as you well know. One there, and then one at the back. Yeah. Hello. Thank you very much. Anogara here from Francis Crick Institute. Wonderful talk. And your comment about the countries and have nots is a really important comment about Africa and not receiving vaccines. And what are we going to do about it? And you speak about HIV and COVID, and COVID received amazing funding in the developed countries, but Africa, as we know, the vaccine didn't get to very successfully. And tuberculosis still remains a major problem where funding is not really going in that direction for the same reason. So you speak to the governments, you have connections and vision of how this could be brought about. In the past years, there were cuts to the funding, for example, that the UK provided towards developing countries' research. At a global level, how do we, how should we tackle this if you had the power to do so and to influence? Yeah. Well, that's a question that's being hotly debated right now with the WHO trying to get, you know, it started off with the word treaty, a treaty where all countries agree of certain equity of distribution of a certain percentage of your product, be that a vaccine or an antiviral or a monoclonal antibody, that you would give it out to the developing world. Interestingly, there's a lot of pushback about that even from the United States. In fact, I was mentioning to Patrick and Chris that one of the chairs of the committee that's investigating COVID, Brad Winstrup from Ohio, is pushing back completely on that, saying taking away the autonomy of a country to decide what they wanna do.  But there is a pushback, but you bring up a very, very good point. And that was one of the questions that Patrick asked me right when we sat down, is that to me is really one of the big obstacles that we have about equity, about not getting it to the developing world. We also saw right now, and again, it becomes a financial thing. I'm not a, I don't, I never criticize pharmaceutical companies because I don't really understand in there what they do, but sorry. But, you know, Moderna was gonna build a plant in Africa and last week pulled out a vaccine plant because they didn't think it was gonna be economically feasible for them to do that. So everybody's talking about wanting to do something, but when it comes down to, you know, getting down to the actual doing it, it's always seems to be something getting in the way. I think question at the back. Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for a wonderful talk. And my name's Lynn Laidlaw and I'm a patient and I work closely with the Academy of Medical Sciences. And I just want to say thank you for mentioning the importance of community engagement and involvement in this context. And I just wondered if you had any tips or hints actually so that other people would understand how fundamental it was and make it something that we absolutely do, just maybe against looking at it as a nice to have. Yeah, well, I went quickly through the slides, but I alluded to that, is that my experience with the AIDS activist in actually sitting down and talking to them and getting past the iconoclastic, confrontative and theatrical behavior, activists sometimes have to do that because they get frustrated with the lack of appreciation on the part of authorities of their issues. And that taints it because it looks like they're just pushing back for the sake of pushing back. So I try and when I speak to my scientific colleagues to tell them to take the time to actually sit down and listen to what they have to say. It's more often than not, it's going to be value added to what you're doing. Thank you. John Radford, University of Manchester. Dr. Fauci, thank you very much for your excellent talk. You mentioned two key principles, one, the importance of science, and the other was the importance of leadership. Now, there's a tension there because many leaders are not, they don't have origins in science.  Yeah. Well, you try to, in a leadership role, base decisions on solid information. When you don't have all the information that you need, you need to be very explicit that science is an iterative, self-corrective process. We got into significant trouble early on, particularly because you had people who were perched to push back on science. And as the COVID outbreak was evolving, the scientists would use the data that they had in January for decisions in January, the data they had in February and March for decisions in February and March. What the public got confused at is that they looked upon science and the scientific process as something that's static. In other words, it doesn't change, not appreciating that if you're gonna be showing leadership, you have to use correct information, data, and evidence. I sometimes jokingly try to explain it to a lay audience that they look upon the biological sciences as almost the mathematical sciences. And I always say that two plus two equals four in January of 2020. And in April of 2024, two plus two still equals four. SARS-CoV-2 in January of 2020 is very different from SARS-CoV-2 right now. So if you're gonna be a leader, you've gotta make sure you articulate the changing nature and how you've gotta go with the evidence. Our politicians who attack our scientists call us either misleading or flip-floppers. So there really is a big anti-science feeling among several of elected officials in the United States. What we call changing our advice in response to evidence, they call doing a U-turn. Yeah. One here, we've got time for two quick questions and then we're going to have to wrap up. Thank you. What arguments do you use to persuade governments to make the necessary investments for preparedness when the politicians are elected on a four, five year cycle and to make the necessary investments for a pandemic or an epidemic, which might occur next year, might occur in 10 years time, it might not occur in their elected cycle. So what arguments do you use to try and persuade the governments to make those investments? You know, I have failed in the preparedness aspect. I've been rather successful in certain circumstances for the response part. We came up with that in actual reality as the COVID third year came down and we said, okay, now the lesson is we've got to invest $88 billion in preparedness and response for the next pandemic, which as I said, would be inevitable even though we don't know exactly when. And there was some modicum of enthusiasm about it. But as you alluded to, the politicians who were worrying about what their immediate problem is now to get re-elected were not being concerned about what was going to happen five years, 10 years from now. It's a very, very difficult thing to do. The United States had one period that I was involved with President Bush and Vice President Cheney after the anthrax attack, which was felt to be an al-Qaeda attack and was a homegrown terrorist in the United States, that they were afraid that we were gonna have bio warfare against us in the United States. And they put in an extraordinary amount of money in a preparation for bioterror. But the thing that drove it was the fear that there would be a bioterror attack. If you just start off and say, by the way, as I've said in my last slide, you need to be perpetually challenged. People's eyes are gonna roll over and say, what are you talking about? We have our own problems right now. So I don't have a good answer for you because I have not been successful in that long range preparedness. We're out of time. I'm sorry, we're gonna have to draw this to a close now. Look, thank you very much, Tony, absolutely superb. And Julie Maxson is gonna come up and say a few words. But thank you very much indeed, Tony. Thank you. So Tony, a final thank you. You've been extraordinarily generous with your time in coming here and with such a frank and lucid talk. We want you to come often to London. And so we have a little gift from the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. It's a copy of a letter which is in the Royal Society Archives and it has an American slant. But just to know, we want you to come back. So it's a letter written by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, which outlines his experiment with the kite, the key, the thunderstorm and the charge. And we thought, you might like to take it home with you. Don't worry, we'll get it to you. You don't need to take it in your bag. But anyway, here it is. Oh, thank you, my goodness. Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you so much, take a picture. She wants to take a picture.


One of the main sources of uncertainty in carbon budgets is that continental landscapes are made up of a heterogeneous mosaic of ecosystems. Here the authors put forward an integrative framework to improve estimates of land-atmosphere carbon exchange based on the accumulation of carbon in the landscape as constrained by its lateral export through rivers. This article was authored by Joan P. Casas-Louise, Pascal Bobmer, Kelly Ambona, and others.


Hey, Virgo. Welcome back. Time to do your weekend reading for February 9th through the 11th. Okay, so let's take a look. I'm gonna use my Chinese Oracle cards to see what's showing up each day for you what you need to know. If you are new, welcome, please do smash that subscribe button and like the video if you enjoy my readings.  You can get a personal reading with me. There's a link in the description box below and also if you want to become a member of my channel, it's only $2.99 per month. You can sign up for the loyalty membership. All the cool people are doing it. So jump on in. Become a part of the Virgo gang gang. All right, you guys. So Let's see, starting on Friday. What are the messages starting with jealousy? Watch who you trust with your personal secrets on Friday and plans. Spend time outdoors with nature to reconnect and replenish. All right, let's take a look and see what's happening here. Friday. Watch who you trust with your personal secrets and plans. All right. What's going on? Virgo. Oh, yeah. Okay. You got to be really careful. You've got the nine of one. So there's definitely something happening on Friday, which hmm, you may not be, you may, you may have been burned before and now you're hesitating. Okay. I do feel like there may be someone in your circle somewhere, whether they're in your inner circle, outer circle. I feel like there's someone here who is showing like they're damaged and they have like this jealous streak about them and they I feel like this kind of feels like they're watching you like they're looking like side-eye someone's giving you the side-eye on Friday. The jealousy. Oh my goodness.  Oh, yeah. This person is an attention seeker. I feel like there's competition. There's some kind of competition. You got to be careful with this person. Now we're getting some fire. So with the wand energy, so it could be a Sagittarius, Aries or Leo. The jealous of your success or the things that come to you. Right? They want what you have. They want your success. They want the awards. They want the recognition. They want the attention that you get. Okay, this person they've been they're like a try-hard. I feel like this person has been trying and they're getting beat up in the process where they're jealous of how easily these things come to you. You might be one of those people that just has like all the good comes to you easily. Now, this could be a friend. This could be a partner. God forbid. I hope that's not a partner or even a friend. It could be a sibling or someone that you work with. Okay, or just whomever could just be someone. Okay, if you have like I'm just hearing like jealous of the people who sell it. Not jealous of the people who celebrate you jealous. They want that. The people that lift you up or the people that, you know, maybe they think that you're on your high horse, but it's not in a negative way. I don't know that you might not put yourself there. Others may have been uplifting you. Somebody here is not. You got to be careful and it does feel like perhaps it's a fire sign. You might need to like just kind of pull yourself away and get out of the limelight a little bit, not because of them, but just to kind of get yourself grounded or one with nature. I'm just hearing. I don't know what that means. Just to reconnect and replenish. Yeah, I don't know, Virgo. I just kind of feel like it feels like a fire sign is just, yeah. Yeah, they're struggling. This person, this fire sign could be an earth sign. They are there. They're struggling. They have a poverty mindset. They're not doing so good and they're jealous of your success, your achievements, your gifts, the things that people that maybe you have like a support these people around you who look at all this. That's like a winner, winner, winner chicken dinner. They're jealous of all that. Okay. Yeah.  Friday seems to be like, I don't feel like you should change who you are. Don't do any of that. That's not your problem. Don't lower yourself to make someone feel better about themselves. Don't do that. It just feels like this person's suffering. I mean, if anything, kindness is always the best way to go, I think. But it's really not your problem. I just feel like you need to protect yourself as far as if you know who this is and this resonates, whoever this person is that they might, they might use anything personal, like your plans that you tell them or your hopes and dreams or your personal stuff, your secrets, anything you tell them, they might be looking because they're looking to find a flaw in you to make themselves feel better. Like don't give anybody your secrets. Don't tell anybody what you're doing. Okay. Just be mindful and the nine of wands is having your boundaries up. So do keep your boundaries up around certain people because you never know. You know what I mean? People can definitely come off as being genuine and wholehearted and it's unfortunate, but you never know what's lurking behind in someone's mind. So just protect yourself, I feel, because there's definitely someone here who's they're not happy for you.  They don't want to be one of your fans. They want to be you. And we had this reading the other day, remember the beginning of the week, we had someone who was like mirroring you, mimicking you. This person might be like, Hello, they're back. Hello. Could be somebody you work with or that you make a money with something along this line. So just be wary of that. This is going to be a short reading because I feel like these messages. Oh yeah. And I just, okay, they just said, this person jealous of your, your, your fortune. Like you're very fortunate. They see you as someone who's very fortunate and they're not.  They're busted up, bruised, physically injured, whatever, trying to be and gain all of the luck that you have. Okay. They call it luck. Maybe you just say, well, you're just blessed, right? But they, they think that you have all the winnings, that you have everything, that wheel of fortune. Yeah, they want that. They don't have that. They want that. They want to be you. Oh, creep vibes right there. Creepy. Let's move on. Now you've got travel. Okay, this week. So Saturday, long distance, long distance communication will open up your life, exciting experiences for singles and career advancement for others. Okay, wow. So yesterday's reading was definitely for the singles where you did have a connection that you could be meaning this could be happening over the weekend. You also had like a proposal, romantic offer. So if you're traveling or you have some type of long distance communication with someone over the weekend, it's going to like open things up for you, exciting experience, especially if you're single and possibly career advancement for others. Let's take a look. So travel is on the travel is on the horizon on Saturday. Ooh, okay. All right, we've got Sagittarius energy there. There's definitely some type of block physical block. So this could be, you might be communicating some with someone long distance over this weekend. Okay, and connecting with them and very loving energy.  Okay. So in other words, what I'm trying to say is because when I look at the seven of ones, I feel like there's no physical connection here. Okay, there's a pushing back on that, which tells me this might be a telecommunication thing happening here that you connect with someone on Saturday. Now this could bring you a career advancement as well. So you could be talking to someone online over this weekend where there could be a remote type of job offer or a travel type of job offer, but there's also love as well. Okay.  Okay. Let me see. And it starts what I feel like it's going to be more of a long distance communication that you're going to start connecting with someone on Saturday. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is like beautiful. Saturday's energy is beautiful. So much joy, happiness and contentment. So I feel like you're connecting with like a soulmate over this weekend. And this person was brought to you by way of like an angel, you know, because somebody's name could be angel, but I feel like you're going to be meeting someone, but not physically. That's what I'm trying to say. And this is a connection or you're going to be connecting with someone, either meeting them or connecting with it. You're making a love connection on Saturday. They may live at a distance to you, but this is meant to be. And I feel like this is going to bring such happiness. Is this the person that you're going to, we go from the two of cups to the 10 of cups that you're going to wind up with happily ever after? Absolutely could be. For some of you it's a sag, Sagittarius. Okay. Either way, career advancement, exciting experience on Saturday, long distance communication, opening things up for you, no matter what the situation, Saturday looks amazing. Okay, Saturday is amazing. It's a far cry from Friday. Friday is like, hold up, hold the phone. We don't need this person back. Okay, Saturday looks amazing. Now let's take a look. You also have on Sunday, let's get these out of the way, you have friendship. A friend needs your help, your kindness and excellent counseling skills. We'll put them back on track. Holy, so is it that person, that jealous person? Okay, we've got the king of cups. King cups always showing up in the reader. You guys remember in the beginning it used to be um, the emperor was always showing up in the readings in the very beginning when I was doing this channel. And then what did we move to? It felt like the king of swords was taking press now. It feels like the king of cups is showing up a lot.  They have a big decision to make. They're confused about something and they need your advice. They need your help. They need to talk to you. So Sunday it feels like this person wants to talk to you. Oh, could be about another earth sign or could be about you. They're having a lot of stress and anxiety. Oh, okay. It's either, so a small percentage of you that this is about you. Okay. They're having a lot of stress and anxiety. They're feeling very defeated. And you know, Virgo's the one to talk to about stuff because Virgo's always giving some prime advice. Do you know what I mean? You have a really good ability to listen and sort things out for people. Maybe you are a counselor. You might have someone reaching out to you if you work in mental health on Sunday, but this feels like it's a friend and they really need your help. They need your sincerity and your kindness. So Sunday really feels to me like you're going to get a reach out either from an earth sign, Virgo Taurus Capricorn or a water sign, Cancer, Scorbio Pisces, where they're just having a really difficult time, perhaps in a relationship with someone in regards to maybe there's some abuse or conflict or something along those lines or someone's just being really nasty. They don't know what to do. They think they know, but they want to maybe confer with you a bit to get some advice. But also for some of you, this could be a friend. And like I said, it's a small percentage of you. There might be some communication between you and another person that you could have a friendship with that this person wants to talk to you about how they're feeling about the friendship. And they might be needing some reassurance about your connection. I just want to get one more card. Okay, yeah, justice, a Libra energy there. Try to make things right. Okay, it could be something turning to romance or romance romance. Wow. Okay. So for some of you now, I know this might sound strange, but some of you might have a friendship that could turn into a lover's situation. And this person is stressed. They want to talk to you about it. And it's kind of like this person loves you. Okay, could be an earth sign. It could be a water sign. This person is in love with you. They could be talking about a marriage proposal, friendship like from friends to lovers is what I feel Sunday. So expect some type of getting back on track on Sunday is how I feel. Okay, Sunday is all about getting. So let me just summarize. Okay, Friday, watch your Ps and Qs. You've got somebody around you who is not, they don't have good intentions on Friday. Okay, they do not. They're very jealous and they do not wish you well. So be careful. Okay, who you share secrets with. Make sure you trust, you fully trust. You might be surprised to find this out. You might find out on Friday. Saturday looks great because Saturday looks like you have a connection maybe with family, friends or a romance blooming. Some travel work offers good experiences, especially if you're single or if you're not single, then there's something brewing on Saturday where there's like this full on like go in the distance in some type of a love relationship. It's lovely. Sunday looks like you're needed. Sunday looks like you're going to be called on to help someone out with something on a mental standpoint, whether it's regarding them and another person or regarding you and your relationship with them to get back on track. Okay, so there's something occurring. Now keep in mind that this energy is fluid. So even though I've given you Friday, Saturday and Sunday, this could just kind of shape shift and it could happen, you know, Sunday's energy could happen on Friday. So just keep in mind, nothing is ever written in stone. Okay, nothing. So just keep that in mind. I'm going to get some charms and some initials for you guys. I'm not going to pull any Chinese signs because it was just too confusing because we had three separate days. Someone's 51. Someone's born on September 3rd. Someone is 58. We have the initial A, the initial E. Someone is 63 or born in 63 or 58, 51. Okay, someone is 68 or born in 68. Someone is 32. Letter T, the letter O. Alright, initial K. Someone has a young child. Someone's on TikTok. The letter Q initial, so initial A, E, T, O, K and Q. Names could be Catherine, Keith, Q could be anything. I'm not picking up anything strictly with Q. Etna, I just heard like the name or Ethel. Etna, maybe that's your insurance company. Amy, they just said Amy. August 23rd, someone's born in 79. Okay, let's see. I want to ask your rising sign, Virgo. Okay, you could have a Scorpio rising, Leo rising or Pisces rising and a couple more rising signs, Scorpio rising, Scorpio rising, Aries rising. All right, and one more, one more spill, Aquarius rising, Cancer rising, Taurus rising. Okay, so if I called your rising sign, that's more specifically for you, but it doesn't mean it's not your reading if I didn't. All right, what else do you have? Okay, we have the letter A again. Someone was born in June. We also have the 31st and September 14th. Okay, September 8th, someone's 47. Okay, first they said 1986 and then they said 1981, right, it flipped. And someone was born in 74 and then we have the letter E. Okay, and someone is born in February birthday showing up here and LN, N is a Nancy, the name Lynn, someone's name is Lynn or has Lynn in their name. Home, H-O-L-M, home. I just heard home. Okay, let's get a charm and then we're gonna leave your weekend reading. Very interesting energy for the weekend. What the hell's that? Oh, okay, Merry Christmas, y'all. So we got Christmas candy canes. Okay, something to do with candy canes or peppermint. Significant to someone. Candy canes or peppermint. Okay, we got a couple of other things going on here. Hold on, I have a very strange thing happening here. What the, what the heck? Oh my gosh, what's with all the Christmas stuff? Now you have a reindeer. What's going on with the Christmas, is Christmas something happened at the holidays? Did something happen at Christmas? That's significant for someone? Did I say September 3rd? Something with candy canes or reindeer? You know what? Something happened at the holidays or Christmas is significant for someone or the holiday season. The other charm you have is a guitar, an electric guitar. Okay, so that's significant for someone does something with electric guitars. Maybe you were like doing Christmas carols in a band or something to celebrate the holiday. You also have a Dalmatian. Okay, spotted, obviously. Leper never changes the spots. Something there for you to recognize or to know. So there is a connection to the holidays. There is a connection to someone, now maybe you have a Dalmatian, you might, but there's also a connection to someone that's not going to change their ways, their behavior. And that might be something that you need to recognize and accept and then something to do with a guitar or a rock band or music. So I'm going to leave that there for the weekend. I know it was short, meant to be. You don't want to get dived too deep. I hope you guys have a great weekend. Do leave me comments if any of this energy occurs for you or if it resonates in some way. You know exactly what this is or if the charms mean anything to you. Definitely let me know. Leave a comment below and I will come back on Sunday to welcome all of the new members who have joined my channel. If you have recently joined today as you're listening to this or going forward over this weekend, thank you so much. I will definitely be giving you a shout out Sunday evening. And yeah, I appreciate you joining. Thank you for all the coffees that everybody's bought me. Thank you to the mods for being here. I'm super, super grateful. And if you haven't booked your reading with me, you can go ahead and do that now. The booking site is up and functioning beautifully. All right, you guys. So have a fantastic weekend. Enjoy yourselves. Love you very much. And I will see you all back here on Sunday. Take care.


Hey everyone welcome to the VIP Q&A. I hope you all enjoyed the live celebration earlier. Something different for a change and as I mentioned at the end of the live I said I was going to be doing a Q&A later so here we are. So please let me know what are your questions. What would you like to know? Multi Powers asks, how old are you? I'm 32. Sandra asks, do you feel better today than even a year ago? Definitely. Without a doubt I feel so much better now and as time goes by I continue to feel even better. I feel more aware of myself and other people. I just feel really good you know and I feel like the older I get the better I'm going to feel. Cupcake Explosion asks, does your family support what you do? Yes and no. I think they did mention that they do watch my videos and stuff but they also don't fully approve of it. You know this is a thing when you get on here and you start talking about the narcissist in your life they're not going to take it seriously. They're not just going to come out and say yes I'm the narcissist. No they're not going to do that.  You're crazy. You're delusional. You're just imagining it. It's all in your head. That's what they're going to try and make you and everyone else think. Occult Candy Stardaga asks, why do narcissists think their fantasies are real? They have to think their fantasies are real. It's essential for their emotional survival. If they didn't think their fantasies were real then they would be in reality and reality is something a narcissist cannot deal with for long periods of time. Daniel Vibes asks, what time did you notice that the narc was bad for you? I knew the narc's were bad for me when they started devaluing me. When they started putting me down and manipulating me, gaslighting me. That's when I knew that something was wrong. I don't know how to say a name but the question is, what have been your most common workplace morbing techniques? I find that in the workplace, narcissists will often group together and they'll display some kind of superiority over you.  Callum says, my ex-girlfriend abused me and she was a narcissist. How can I let go of the pain she caused me? Will she ever pay for hurting me? To let go of the pain, you do need to process it but then you also need to take time to yourself and to focus on things that you like doing. There has to be a balance between both of those things and of course you need to work on healing as well. I do have a playlist of videos that will help you with healing but of course I also recommend that you speak to a professional in trauma recovery and as many of you may know I work with BetterHelp and I have my link as well as I am partnered with them. It's betterhelp.com slash NARC Survivor and it's definitely a service I trust and have used myself in the past. I believe it's very effective so you know if you want to let go of the pain from dealing with a narcissist and healing then definitely check out BetterHelp. There's lots of good doctors and qualified therapists on there to choose from. Will she ever pay for hurting you though, Callum? I definitely believe that they all pay for it whether it's karma or the law of cause and effect. I believe it all gets them in the end but if you look at them they're paying for it right now.  They're miserable people. They've been getting their karma since before they even got involved with us.  Kenny asks where do you live? I'm currently living in the United Kingdom. Vintage Rose asks how long were you with the narcissist? Someone with for around a year. Others I was with for up to four years. So I understand all of the different lengths that one might deal with when they are with a narcissist. Angie Green asks did you ever want to destroy the narc? Of course. I've been there. I wasn't always like this. So forgiving and compassionate. There was a stage where I was angry and I've analyzed what happens you know after we leave the narcissist we go through all sorts of stages. We might feel anger, denial, guilt, depression. There are specific stages that we will go through and in my coaching that's what we will work through. For those of you who would like to work with me on healing, I will take you for the stages. Something we do gradually until you get to the final stage that I have outlined where you go from just being a victim or a survivor to being someone who thrives. Livo asks do you think there's a difference between an unhappy and secure people who hurt others since they've been hurt and narcissists? Yes, definitely. People who are just unhappy and insecure and maybe they're just victims. They might be angry in the beginning. I mean, as I said, I was angry in the beginning. But I'm not so angry now. I'm not going out looking for revenge years later. Because if I was doing that, that would mean there's a serious problem. That would mean that I must be suffering from some kind of mental illness. So I think that is one of the main differences really. You see, all the person is going to know when to let it go. They're going to have a cut off point for the abuse. But with these narcissists, there is no limit. It's never enough. You become like they're life support. The emotional punching bag. The emotional tampon.  That's the difference. Norma asks, can a narcissistic person ever care or love a person for real? In my opinion, no, definitely not. The shame based individuals doing everything they can to avoid reflecting on their shame.  Love is one of the highest. And it's a level that they will likely never achieve. Because to experience love, you must first recognise and accept your shame. You must be able to look at the things that you've done in your life and say, yes, I did that. And I feel bad for doing that. Only then could you let it go and then go up the vibrations. The accountability is very important. I don't think there's any love without accountability. Just looking for the comments here. Princess High Frequency asks, did you ever involve law enforcement? And what were the results? No, I never really did that. It's up to you really if you want to try that. But the truth is law enforcement isn't really going to understand anything about narcissists. They're not trained to recognise these kinds of things. And in fact, many people in positions of power are narcissists themselves. Kenny asks, where did you first hear the term narcissist from? It was just over three years ago when I stumbled on one of Sam Vaknin's videos. And that was when everything suddenly made sense. That was when I first heard the word narcissist. Vintage Rose asks, does the narcissist know they are a narcissist? That really depends on what level of a narcissist they are. The lower levels don't really know. But then the mid to the higher levels are aware of what they are. They might not know that they're a narcissist. Maybe they've never heard that word before. But they do know that there's something wrong with them. They do know that what they're doing is wrong. And they understand the effects that they are having on you. They just don't care. Multipowers asks, do you still watch Sam Vaknin? Yes, I'm still subscribed to him. I still watch some of his videos. I'm always interested in learning more. Every day I spend at least one hour researching about narcissism. It's a very complex topic, you know, you can never really know everything about it. There's always more to learn.  The DSM five states that they are mentally ill. Doesn't say that they're evil, of course, but by the definite definition of evil, it seems pretty accurate to a narcissist. Planet Pat asks, so you are a survivor of community harassment? Yes, definitely. I have experienced that. I have been a target of gang stalking for many years. I do have another channel gang stalking survivor. I have real video footage of some of the things I've experienced. Gang stalking is just another level of a smear camping with a lot of flyer monkeys. Yes, Lenny, I am 32 years old. Anyway, that's all for this Q&A tonight. I hope you all enjoyed the live celebration for 100k subscribers earlier today. And there will be two more premiers tomorrow. So I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you all for joining this live. And you will have a good evening.