I'd like to begin today's briefing by recognizing that tomorrow anniversary of the first case of COVID-19 diagnosed in Chittenden County. It's hard to wrap our minds fully around the extent to which this virus has changed all of our lives over the last year. I encourage everyone to try to pause and reflect on this anniversary in whatever way makes sense for you in the coming days. We've been through so much over the last year and it's worth remembering those we have lost. Recognizing ways this virus has dramatically changed the lives of every one of us and preparing ourselves for the day not too far away when our lives will be able to expand. We hope in where we are right now with the supply of vaccine increasing virtually every day it seems and more and more Berlin-Tonians getting access to this miraculous and lifesaving medicine. I want to thank everyone in the Berlin-Ton community for the great sacrifice, commitment and collaboration that has gotten us through the past year and really kept Berlin-Ton one of the safest cities in the country throughout this incredible period. This pandemic isn't over but we have come a long way and the end is in sight. Now I'd like to welcome Dr. Leffler back on the briefing to review the latest local numbers. First let's take a look at the case counts in Chittenden County. Like the state, I think Olivia is pulling us up here, like the state we're seeing a modest uptick in new cases over the last few days. Our seven day average is now at 36.7 new cases per day down from about 28 cases per day last week. There is some good news within this number and that is that after a sharp increase in cases three weeks ago, case growth at UBM has now returned to a stable level for both the week of 3-1 to 3-7 and the prior week of February 22nd to the 28th, UBM reported 31 students who tested positive each week and so there's been a stabilization there and that's lower than the prior weeks. Over that same two week period, UBM performed a remarkable, truly 31,539 tests for COVID-19 among the UBM community, students, faculty, and staff and that I think is the most visible example of a number of steps UBM took to respond to increasing cases and act to get new positives under control as they had committed to doing as part of their reopening plans. So I do appreciate that and I think it should be noted. Dr. Lefler, what do you make of the latest case numbers, any observations you have about what's happened at UBM and what's going on at the Medical Center? I'll start with saying that, you know, what's happened at UBM, it's happened a couple other times in Vermont. We had a Winooski outbreak early on if people remember, we've had a couple other school outbreaks, nursing outbreaks, but every time we've used science and we've used the ability to track people, quarantine them, ask them to cooperate and got them back under control and so the UBM data reflects exactly what's happened over and over again and it's one of the reasons that Vermont has been able to avoid the high number of deaths that's happened in so many other states. At the Medical Center, we have 10 patients with COVID today, so that's slightly more than it was a couple of days ago, but we've been running between 7 and 10 for the past week. We have two people in the ICU, plenty of ICU and ventilator capacity and, you know, if you look at as recently as late January, we very often had 15 to 25 people in the hospital with COVID, now we're down to 7 to 10 with a slight uptick over the past couple of days, but still markedly better and every day that more and more people get vaccinated decreases the risk of them ending up in the hospital or our ICU. So the progress around vaccination is so encouraging and so important. Let's talk a little more about vaccinations, Dr. Lefler. So as of March 6th, more than 32,000 people in Chittenden County have now received their first dose of the vaccine. About 88% of people 75 and over have now been vaccinated in Chittenden County, which is, from my perspective, a very positive result. 74% of those 70 and over have now been vaccinated and about 44% of those 65 and over. Even better news is that more people are now eligible to make an appointment to receive a vaccine. You can make an appointment to receive the vaccine if you are here in the categories. 65 and older, 55 and older and have certain high risk health conditions, work in public safety or work in schools or childcare centers. Note that those in the education community will receive information about how to register from your schools directly. And next up, starting tomorrow, March 11th at 8.15 a.m., those 16 and older with high risk conditions can make an appointment to be vaccinated. For a detailed list of these conditions and to make an appointment, go to healthvermont.gov slash my vaccine. Yesterday, the state also expanded eligibility to include the entire household of people in Vermont who are eligible and also from a member of a BIPOC community. They're black, indigenous, or a person of color. I'm going to speak a little bit more on my thoughts on that important step a little bit later in the briefing. But before that, Dr. Lefler, what are your reflections on this latest vaccine news? So the news I think is most encouraging is even the most conservative epidemiologists say that, you know, you need to get to 70%. We have good herd immunity. So when you hear the 88% of people over 75 plus of the vaccinated, we're closing in on 70% for people above the age of 70. Vermonters are choosing to be vaccinated. Vermonters are choosing to keep themselves safe, their families safe and their neighbors safe. So that news is incredibly good news for all of us.  And I think it's going to open up more broadly in the near future to get everyone who wants a vaccine dose. That's not that far away. It's in sight. So in fact, President Biden has indicated now that just about two months from now, we would, there should be enough vaccine for every adult to be inoculated. What's your, I've been a little unsure. I don't know if you can add some late Dr. Lechler. Is there a, what is that commitment going to translate to on the ground? Once the vaccine is available, could there still be some lag before that, that every adult has the opportunity to get vaccinated? Or is that a projection on when we should all be able to, you know, really be protected? So I think it's different for different states because there's two parts to it, right? And we've gotten much better at this. The most important part is having enough vaccine. But then you have to have places that are able to safely administer vaccine, store it, take care of it. The good news is that the first two vaccines that we got were complicated to store, complicated to mix up, complicated to dose. But Johnson and Johnson is markedly easier. It's likely that AstraZeneca is going to be an easier vaccine to administer, which means there'll be more opportunity for people to get it in other locations. Maybe I'll get it in your primary care doctor's office, other pharmacies. I could imagine school clinics where people could go in their communities and get it, especially for Johnson and Johnson. So I think in Vermont, I would be very, very surprised if as soon as we have enough vaccine to vaccinate every Vermonter, we don't have the pieces in place to get it done to very quickly roll it out and get, you know, within weeks to a month, everyone who wants a dose will have one. The trick is getting enough doses here. But we, the state has been regularly talking to providers about that has a good distribution system already in place. So I would think in Vermont, you assume we get enough doses for every Vermonter by let's say mid to late May, 15th of June, we should be in great shape, something like that. 15th of June, everyone would have their dose and have 14 days out to get full immunity. Sorry, Dr. Leffler, I think the mayor is trouble shooting some tech issues. Okay. Oh, Mayor, you might be back. I am back. Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, that's better. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can. All right. Apologies for that. Good. I think we're gonna let you go here in a second. Dr. Leffler, any, any final thoughts as we hit this one year anniversary? Yeah, I mean, we've talked a lot about this in the past year over and over again, it's truly an amazing accomplishment of modern science to be able to have everyone vaccinated within just a couple of months over a year for a brand new novel pandemic. I do want to comment, though, that we are still occasionally seeing people who show up in our emergency departments or our offices who are avoiding really important healthcare because of fear of the virus. I want people to know that if you're having serious or concerning symptoms or a problem that you're worried about, please seek medical care, get in and see your provider. Make sure you get taken care of. There aren't people who are having avoidable complications from not getting medical care. So if you, if you need to have something checked out, please feel confident and safe. We can care for you in a safe way and help you will not catch COVID with your medical providers. They're vaccinated now. They're safely have amazing good protocols. And sign up to get vaccinated when it's your turn. Excellent. Actually, Dr. Leffler, before we let you go, there is one important additional thing that's happened since the last time we spoke, which is that the CDC came out with some, I think, really welcome new guidance on what Brawlingtonians and Vermonters or Americans can do once they have been vaccinated. Now that we do have those high percentages of our older populations vaccinated, there is new guidance that has come out about what is appropriate. I know this is, you know, something that we were looking for my parents have been vaccinated recently. Can you speak to what this new guidance is? And anything you really want to emphasize about it, it does strike me as a very significant moment that, you know, that this new guidance is now out. So the CDC is basically acknowledging that these vaccines work. They're effective. They prevent you from getting COVID. And in all evidence, to this point shows that they are extremely good at preventing you from spreading COVID that once you've been vaccinated, your risk of giving someone else COVID is remarkably low. And with that knowledge and information from the CDC, they're starting to let vaccinated people gather in small groups, travel some, not have to quarantine after low risk exposures. And so you're starting to see some of the things open up in the world that you'd hope for as you got more people vaccinated. So once again, if you think about enough vaccine in Vermont by the end of May, everyone choosing to get dosed or everyone that is appropriate to get dosed, get to 15 days later when you've gotten good immunity, we will be able to gather vaccinated people will be able to come together in groups, vaccinated people will be able to, if they do come near someone who has COVID, not have to quarantine. I think it'll get us back to having lots of stuff in person that right now we haven't done for a long time. I think it'll be a great news for the fall for our schools and sport or school sports and all those things. And I think over the summer, you'll be able to see us doing more of the things that we like to do. I'm not going to say it's going to be completely normal in the summer. I do think there'll be some situations where people will still be wearing masks. I think there still will be some situations where maybe we don't fill some venues like we have for we always did in the past. But I also think that's coming too. We're just going to have to be careful and smart. So I think the CDC is taking a careful proactive approach, letting a little bit more happen, kind of seeing what happens and then going from there. I like their approach and we're trying to do it similarly in the hospital. I'm talking about, you know, when can we like loosen up our visitor policy a little bit? When can we start to have some in person meetings for our learners? Those kind of things. We're having the same conversations right now and then keeping a very close eye on what happens when you do that. Excellent. Good. Well, great. Always great having you here. It's amazing how every week or so this pandemic takes a new shift and a new turn and there's new information to talk through. I really appreciate your commitment to helping the community understand, work its way through this and we'll have you back again soon and looking forward to this. Looking forward to having you back again soon and continuing to make progress here. Take care. Thanks everyone. Thank you, Mayor. So I'd like to return now and say just a little bit more about the expanded eligibility to receive the vaccine. This is something that we really, since vaccinations began, the city has been very focused on equity issues and ensuring that we, as we have tried throughout the rest of the pandemic, ensured that our public health response is a just response. The state announced an important step yesterday that the entire household of people in Vermont who are eligible and are also Black, Indigenous or a person of color can now receive the vaccine even for members of the household who aren't otherwise eligible and we applaud that. It's an important step and I think we'll have some really pragmatic positive impacts immediately from that decision. This is a city, I want to be clear that this is a position, the city, among the things that the city has been advocating for for weeks now to increase access to the vaccine for BIPOC residents who we know nationally and with the state's own data we know there are severe health disparities related to race that we have to take proactive steps to address and this is definitely an important step in that direction. I do want to be clear that from my perspective as we continue this continues to unfold the city of Burlington thinks that we could do even more at this stage to ensure that these disparities are closed and the most vulnerable members of our community have access to the vaccine. My belief is that vaccine eligibility should now be open to all people in Vermont who are Black Indigenous or a person of color at this stage regardless of their age or whether they have other underlying health conditions. It has been shown in this pandemic that just being a member of those groups is a risk factor and that from my perspective should be addressed now. I've shared this position with the state and the city is prepared to back this up and support this effort however we can through outreach and through the setting up something else that we think that should be done is that there should be since we know that there is for a variety of reasons some additional hesitancy to get vaccinated among BIPOC communities we think special clinics should be expanded for all for more BIPOC communities as another way of addressing that that hesitancy and expanding expanding access and vaccination within at-risk communities and that too is something the city is prepared to help with the logistics to make happen. On another matter I related to vaccine eligibility I want to say here I'm continuing to advocate now that there has been an expansion a significant expansion of essential workers to get prioritization and vaccination I am continuing to advocate for essential frontline city workers to be eligible to receive the vaccine we depend on a number of essential workers to keep critical city operations going for example our water plan operators it's no plow drivers and many of these individuals are basically impossible to replace if they do get sick on a short-term and immediate basis and they are critical to city operations and we have made that position clear to the Department of Health and continue to advocate there. All right I'd like to shift topics now to the city's wastewater monitoring program I'd like to share a brief update on the latest results from the city's wastewater monitoring program I'm joined now by Brian Lowe our Chief Innovation Officer and COVID-19 Response Leader Brian what can you share about the most recent results from our wastewater testing and maybe could speak a little to just the confirmation that has now come from the state about what we had found about a month ago about the arrival of the variants. Thanks very much Mayor I'll speak to both those things in turn and Olivia thanks for this slide as you can see here this is a graph we've shown before on a log scale showing these three different color lines the trajectory of RNA viral RNA prevalence at each of the three city wastewater I know it's hard to read over zoom and so the east plant is the red line the green line is our main plant and the blue line is the north plant and you can see it's kind of a mixed bag of news at this point we have a trend line that is is fairly down in the north end our latest sample was a little bit higher but generally downward trend in the north end and then in the east plant kind of rising trend and the same in the main plant a rising trend of viral RNA the main plant is a huge plant covering a significant portion of the town the old north end the downtown the south end hill section and some of the campus so that is a large area and we break that down into component parts about once a week to see if we can see any other trends underway there and what I would say here is that while you have a fairly high set of readings in the east side of the city and a rising trend the old north end of the city is the area that has a little bit of a rising trend currently in terms of the prevalence of viral RNA the south end of the city is also kind of on a similar trajectory to the new north end generally down and so the main plant trend line is up and that risk is concentrated primarily in the the downtown and old north end of the city in terms of your question there mayor I think it was you know obviously disheartening to hear that the variant has been officially identified in Vermont not surprising but also you know in a way a helpful validation of this surveillance effort here to corroborate these findings great thank you for that report Brian anything else you'd like to add before we move on no nothing nothing further from me thank you okay why you stick around in case there are questions about about the wastewater thank you again for the leadership you've played along with along with our water resources team in getting this capacity stood up it is striking the just the additional this the speed with which we were able to get that information because of this effort and it's much appreciated and I think has helped Burlingtonians be aware of the risks that are out there and been a factor as for the city to continue to navigate its well through navigate its way well through these hopefully final final weeks and months of the of the pandemic here thank you mayor okay last topic we want to welcome back on to the briefing Tracy Schamburger and Aaron Rockel from age well we talked before about the really high uptake of the vaccine from our senior communities and one of the reasons a big reason that there has been some such success and so much work is still underway so those numbers are going to go even higher in the weeks to come is that there have been many organizations families and individuals who have have been focused on it on achieving this and and really a leader amongst that effort has been age well since seniors started becoming eligible to receive the vaccine age well has gone to great lengths to make sure that all older residents in Burlington in the surrounding area had the information they needed to access this vaccine age well has done this by taking calls to its helpline that we've talked about and helped publicize on past briefings and through those help helplines they've gotten help to older adults with transportation or mobility challenges either by getting them transportation or in some cases to actually get vaccinations to take place in the home and they have proactively called thousands of remoders now to make sure that they know they're eligible and to see what questions they have Tracy and Aaron I want to really thank you for this rigorous granular work that that you've been doing my sense is this has really helped push those numbers in these very high risk groups up and we wanted to have you come back and share any additional thoughts that you have anything that we can do and the community can do right now to to continue helping you get the word out and succeed in these efforts Thank you very much Mayor Weinberger it's so nice to be here first of all I want to thank the City of Burlington because you've been incredibly supportive in helping us share information also translate information many of the communities and people that we serve as as been part of this discussion English is not their first language and so sharing that information in mailers and spreading the word is incredibly valuable and I'm so thrilled to see the number of older Vermonters who have been vaccinated you have no idea how happy that makes us so as many of you probably know age well as one of five of the agencies on aging throughout the state of Vermont we serve older Vermonters 60 and above and those with under 60 with a with a disability we're extremely fortunate that we have such strong community partners like the City of Burlington since the beginning of COVID we've worked very collaboratively with our partners to make sure that everyone who's eligible knows that they have support and services and resources available to them at age well the vaccine has been our primary focus obviously lately but in addition to that you know we we spend a tremendous amount of work and effort in making sure that older Vermonters are not food insecure through our meals on wheels program and also through our care and service coordination team who provides resources and wraparound services to make sure that people know what's available to them to be able to support them at home in addition we have a huge volunteer team many of those volunteers in the Burlington community and I just have to give a little shout out to them because they are spending many many hours calling people to check in on them because our biggest concern is always social isolation many people are feeling disconnected and particularly older Vermonters so my colleague Aaron is going to give you an update on what we've been doing to support the community in regard to access to the vaccine Aaron is our director of care and service coordination and oversees that very large team so I'm going to turn it over to her thanks Tracy so I'll just give a brief update and I think you captured some of the things that we've been doing to reach out to older adults in our service area the helpline certainly is a main point of access to all of our services but beyond that it's not just the way to get connected to age well services it's also the way to get you know information about anything or connected to other services in the community just for reference we receive anywhere between 1500 and 2000 calls on average to our helpline every month and we've seen that fluctuate at various points throughout the pandemic in response to either changing you know guidelines and requirements and restrictions early on and now of course with each wave of new vaccine rollout so you know we interact with individuals who may be on one of those services that Tracy mentioned or several of those services and then also really anybody in the community 60 plus or anybody who's calling about somebody who's 60 plus through our helpline so we've done a few different things our care and service coordination team as Tracy mentioned is quite large in general we're working with between 800 and 1000 older adults through that program who have a dedicated care and service coordinator or case manager so we've been actually doing direct outreach calls to each of those individuals as they become eligible to make sure that they know that they're eligible and also that they understand the process of how to access registration or transportation or if they do need an in-home vaccine we've also been contacting clients who are receiving meals on wheels or volunteer services and also somebody some clients who may have contacted our helpline in the past but not be actively receiving one of our services I think Tracy mentioned previously that we sent out a recorded phone message that was recorded by one of our staff to over 2000 older adults just recently to just give them a quick you know direct to their phone update hey you know we've got we understand that you're now eligible here's the process for registering you know contact us if you need more assistance and I think as Tracy said as well we've really been focused on helping clients who may have restrictions to leave their home either they've got a medical condition that makes it very difficult to leave the home they're lacking transportation to get to a vaccination clinic or any number of other barriers and we're assisting those both through those individuals both through the direct outreach calls that we're making to clients who are actively receiving our services and then also through the helpline so we've been working very closely with UVM Home Health and Hospice and Garnet Transport Medicine excuse me who are actually administering the vaccines in the homes for those who are not able to leave their homes we're really trying to work with transportation providers as well to get anyone who is able to leave but doesn't have access to reliable transportation to get to a clinic so I believe as of today we've connected about 130 older adults in our service area to in-home vaccinations with one of those two partners and we've certainly helped hundreds of other clients with access to transportation to get to those clinics so the work is ongoing but very important and I think the interesting thing is that we're finding that many of the clients who we're talking to or many of the older adults who we're talking to who feel that they're unable to leave their home to get a vaccine have not taken any steps up until our call to register a vaccine because they didn't think that they would be able to receive one so we see that as a really important part of the outreach that we're doing both at age well and in strong collaboration with our community partners and Tracy I know things have shifted a little bit if you want to just talk about what we're doing going forward sure sure so as of Monday we know that the Vermont Department of Health has developed a call center and I think it's important that people know if you're homebound or if you think you're homebound you can always call the helpline at age well to find out you know how you can get the services but if you are homebound and you need to reach the Vermont Department of Health to be able to get scheduled to get a vaccine at home there is a phone number for that and I can provide it here but it would be also great to put it on the city the city site the resource and recovery site and that number for the VDH is<PHONE_NUMBER> and age well will be moving forward referring people who are homebound to the VDH so that they can get an in-home vaccination however we continue at age well to refer our helpline as a no wrong door and I love that because basically that means that our team is available to anyone for any reason whether you're 60 or you're a family member or someone in the community who's concerned about someone or you have a disability and we want to make sure people are connected to this proper services so if you're questioning you're not quite sure just call the helpline and I continue to promote the helpline everywhere I can I know that it's probably on the city site but that number for the helpline is 1-800-642-5119 this is a statewide helpline so even if you're listening and you're not in the Addison Chittenden Grand Isle or Franklin County area it doesn't matter you can still call the helpline and wherever the call originates from will connect you to your closest agency on aging in Burlington area and Chittenden County that would be age well but the process has been going along quite smoothly we have not seen any hiccups or wait lists we seem to be able to manage everything that's been coming in so we're not expecting any change and all I can say is we're here and we're happy to help as always Tracy Erin that's a great report it is really heartwarming to know that you're able to provide that kind of direct support I think at one earlier stage when we had you on you were getting some sense that people some people weren't signing up because they wanted they didn't want to be kind of selfish about it they didn't want you know they wanted others to go first has that shifted? Are you hearing in these calls now is there any kind of theme to why people still haven't signed up if they haven't that you've detected or do you think the word is really getting out and we're getting this done I think there's always that theme with you know vaccinations and then also with many of the services that are available even outside of the pandemic we hear that about meals on wheels and access to food benefits you know vermonters are fiercely independent as we know and also very community minded and so I think there's always that sense of I don't want to take something away from somebody else what's been really helpful I think with encouraging older vermonters to register when they're eligible is just reminding them that that is actually what they can do for their community at this time is registering as soon as they're eligible and making sure that they're moving forward with that process and I think that's people have been very receptive to that great great are you able also since I know one of the other issues that you really help people battle and have throughout this pandemic is isolation are you able to help get some of that guidance that we were talking about with Dr. Leffler earlier sense that probably everyone that could benefit from that doesn't realize yet the kind of CDC recommended you know what is now okay and is that you do you get that do you help get that information out to the people you're working with is that something you can do we do yeah so we've been staying very closely connected to older vermonters throughout the whole course of the pandemic and while a lot of our conversations have been around vaccine eligibility we're pretty constantly keeping folks up to date about any changes in requirements whether that's increasing or lessening restrictions based on you know where they may be so we our care and service team makes at least monthly calls and for many older vermonters who are connected to a case manager or care and service coordinator it's even more often than that and so at that point they may be getting updates from their contact at age well about those changing restrictions and we certainly get a lot of calls on the helpline just wanting to speak to somebody who has an update and we're providing that information there as well great well awesome really great update it's impressive the number of calls that you get 1500 to 2000 calls a month is a lot it's a great update thank you why don't you guys stick around maybe we have a few members in the media they're with us and we'll go see if there are any questions that maybe for you guys so Olivia do we have any questions yes we do and reminder for members of the media you can get in the question queue just by sending me an email so the first question is from Carolyn at NBC5 and one second Carolyn you should be able to enable your microphone can you hear me yes perfect hi thanks for taking my question you answered a little bit about it when you were talking about the BIPOC community and being able to now get a vaccine if you're in an eligible household but specifically in Burlington you know either educationally or at clinics what are you doing to kind of try to limit some of the barriers of that community might be seeing when trying to get a vaccine thanks Carolyn we've been very concerned about this from the start of the vaccination efforts in December and January one of the important things that we advocated for that has been in place basically from the start of the community vaccinations is having walkable sites in Burlington and Winooski that people can sign up for to try to lessen that transportation barrier from communities that you know are in walkable communities and households that might not have a car we have been working very hard with just as you've been hearing from age well about how the city's been working with the age well and other senior providers to get information out to all of our seniors and individuals living in nursing homes we've had a kind of a parallel effort very much focused on strong communication with our immigrant communities and our BIPOC communities we have set up during the pandemic a program called the trusted community voices program as well as a separate team called the rapid response team and we use those two teams to get information out and get feedback and information back from our BIPOC communities and it is from that information that is one of the reasons we have been advocating for these special clinics to serve the both immigrant limited English proficiency communities as well as sort of broader BIPOC communities that because of historic injustice and a variety of other factors have some additional hesitancy when it's coming to vaccination we know that from the certainly from the national data that vaccinations in BIPOC communities is lagging behind that of white communities and so we've been trying to combat that through good communication and through advocacy for these additional clinics which have been started to a certain degree in which we think there should be more of going forward do you want to add anything to that Brian? Sure thank you mayor you know in addition to what the mayor said there's also a group led by the Winooski town manager Jesse Baker that meets three times a week with different organizations primarily focused on those with limited English proficiency in the community and so sometimes that overlaps with Black indigenous and people of color sometimes it does not there is also an internal city communications team focused on Black indigenous and persons of color communication out to different groups around in and around Burlington to make sure that information is shared through non-traditional channels as well and that people have access to information to make their own own and informed decision that group has done some work as well to help identify additional potential sites for additional clinics as the mayor mentioned that have been passed on to the Department of Health and as the mayor noted the city is ready to support those clinics through registration outreach and that kind of back-end administrative staffing support if needed and just a quick follow-up to that if I can right now as it is if somebody does have that language barrier and needs a translator or something like that how is the city able to provide that kind of service there Oh, go ahead Mayor Saving Well the Burlington-Wanewski sites community sites have from the start routinely whatever those sites are open they have translators there that's in addition to these special language limited English proficiency clinics so it's been a real focus in those settings on having translators are there translators at other sites as well Brian? Yes, there are translators or interpreters at every test site in Burlington and in Wanewski but beyond that there's a multilingual task force where a number of organizations have done just really incredible work that's USCRI, Vermont, AALV, LEND and a number of other organizations have supported the Department of Health provide translations provide interpretation help share information about these test sites, vaccine clinics, eligibility through a variety of channels in different languages and the city also has relatively recently started a newsletter that's translated into seven different languages each month that tries to highlight kind of the most salient information and make sure that's shared through all our channels as well Thank you so much Thank you, Carolyn Great, the next question is from Katya at VT Digger Katya you should be able to enable your microphone Hey there, can you guys hear me? Yes, we can Katya, go ahead Wonderful, so I would just love some a little bit more clarity on what you mean by these specialized clinics I know you've had some for limited English proficiency in particular or are they for or I just like what is your vision for these clinics and then like do some of them exist or if not like how are you sort of advocating for them on a state level? Yeah, that all makes sense So there have been for some weeks now additional clinics for limited English proficiency clinics and Brian why don't you speak to on any detail that we can share there about this? Sure, the state and the number of the partners that I referenced before have really worked to provide these additional clinics because the registration process is cumbersome and confusing particularly if English isn't your first language and there's been real concern about the disparity opening up nationally and also in state data about kind of vaccination rates for Black, Indigenous and people of color in in Vermont and so the limited English proficiency clinics run at least twice a week one in Burlington, one in Manuski and have now for I think six or seven weeks I'm not certain of that exact time frame but I believe it would be early February the very end of January is when they started what the mayor is saying is in addition to those the city is ready to support and has been advocating for additional clinics for BIPOC Vermonters who may not be in refugee or immigrant populations Black, Indigenous and people of color in Vermont who meet the current eligibility criteria and will be able to bring their household along with them as an additional clinic beyond what the state spoke to yesterday and I think, Mayor, I don't want to speak for you but I think it's even further than that in terms of removing eligibility criteria or restrictions That's right The feedback we've gotten from BIPOC communities is that there it would be helpful to spreading the word and breaking down some of the hesitancy that BIPOC communities have had about vaccinations for there to be these specialized clinics in locations that these communities frequent and trust and that would involve leaders from these communities This is that's our vision of how we could help reach some of these harder to reach populations and then beyond that Yes, I do think given the extreme racial disparities that we have seen from the very beginning of this pandemic my perspective is we should just open up vaccinations at this point now that we have reached the point that we can offer it to anyone with a basically a health risk factor I think race has proven to be a risk factor in this pandemic and we should just open it up to adults, people over 16 that are from these at risk communities and put them at the front of the line with these other individuals who have health risk factors at this point and it's something we've we've been advocating for for some time and it's a further step that I continue to think at this point we should take Okay, thank you about this that's all I have appreciate the answer Great, thank you Katya All right and it looks like that is all the questions we have for today Great, thank you everyone for tuning in Tracy and Erin it's really great to have you here I really feel Chinden County so fortunate to have Agewell operating here and just really thankful for the ways you've stepped up and innovated during this pandemic and it was it's great to just to know that those services have been able to provide that kind of specialized help to hundreds of hundreds of Chinden County residents already and that you're standing by and I love your no wrong door policy there Tracy and let's I hope we can continue to help get the word out that anyone who has questions about how to serve the seniors during this pandemic know that they should go to go ahead and recall that Agewell hotline so thank you for your service thanks for being here with us today Brian, thank you for being on again we will be back in touch again soon stay safe thank you for having us we appreciate it take care take care bye bye


For some marine families, Christmas trees can be an expensive luxury. On December 10th, volunteers from Korean Lutheran High School donated hundreds of trees to show their gratitude to marine families during the holiday season. All I want to do is support them and show them that everybody in my circle, people that I know, do care about them and think about them and want to support them. The trees were delivered to Camp Pendleton from Oregon. Marines and volunteers unloaded more than 600 trees for Marines and their families to choose from. We're buying Christmas presents and cutting it close right now. To have this Christmas tree giveaway meant a lot. We almost were talking about not getting a tree because we couldn't afford it, but it's nice to have something like this. It definitely makes it worthwhile. Reporting from Camp Pendleton, I'm Lance Corporal Tyler Iris.


Hi, so I'm here today to talk to you about making super humans. I know that sounds a little outrageous, but I'm telling you it's possible, especially with all the cool new exponential technologies that are developing. I mean, why not? We're already cybernetic. We already do most of our lives through technology. How many of you Googled me before coming to this early morning talk to decide if it's worth? Yeah, see?  You might look them up on Twitter or LinkedIn. The other day I watched this YouTube video to figure out how to tie my husband's bow tie. I felt like Trinity from The Matrix. Only there was something missing, right? It wasn't as immediate as Trinity's experience. It was kind of painful, actually, because I had to watch this video and then I had to figure out how to make that happen in real life. The two were not combined. It was a linear progression, which was not the way that that actually happened in real life. So I would say that we're actually cybernetic, but with an anchor holding our brains back. It's like technology doesn't want us to catch up with us and it's keeping us at bay. Now, let me give you an example of what I mean. So there's another cybernetic tool that we use called GPS, right? I used it this morning to get here. Got a little lost because I didn't understand the map. This happened to me recently.  And on top of it, I don't really have a lot of familiarity with rentabouts. In San Francisco we have some fake ones, but they're basically four-way stops. So I get this map indication telling me that I'm about to hit a roundabout, so I'm already nervous.  And then I get this map. And then on top of it, this map is indicating that intersection, which I've never seen before and I don't understand at all, and I really don't understand the relationship between the map and that intersection.  The problem is that the reason when I say we're cybernetic, it doesn't feel like, yeah, great, we're cybernetic, it feels like, we're cybernetic, is because the burden is so hard on the user. The user is doing all of the work, right? It's very confusing, and especially in multitasking situations, this becomes a big problem. Now, humans have working memory, just like our computers do. Oh, oh, there we go. Humans have working memory just like our computers do, and we only have so much of it, okay. It's your short-term or your task-based memory, and it's what you hold in your mind just to get the test done that you're doing. And when that gets interrupted or overloaded, we fail. Especially as humans are horrible at multitasking, we all think we're good at it, we're not. We're all awful at it. And the reason for that is very simple. So I know all of you have had this experience.  And you walk into the other room, and you go, why am I here? What am I doing here? And you have to go back to the original room to remember. Well, that's because your brain only holds that short-term or task-based memory in the context of which it's being used. And when I switch into a different room, suddenly I've wiped the context, and my brain says, oh, good news, we don't need this stuff anymore. And it wipes my working memory or my short-term memory, freeing it up to do new things. But of course, that causes a glitch in our memory. Now, our UI, I'm giving up on this clicker. Our UI is a multitasking nightmare. It is completely all about constantly loading your short-term memory with different contextual switches. Here I am trying to put an image into this presentation that I'm working on right now. As you can see, I'm focusing on the slide itself. And then I say, oh, I want to go find that image. And so I have to do a task switch. So I have to look at the interface to find the new application that I want, and then I have to go searching. Now, every single time I'm touching my UI, every time that I'm switching between something that I'm focused on and switching to try to find this thing, I'm creating a doorway that I have to walk through. So every interaction with my interface is basically walking through a door and wiping my memory about what I was doing before. This is called an interruption. And interruptions can cost us anywhere from three seconds to 30 minutes to get back on task. So every time you're touching your UI or asking your users to touch their UI, you're causing a major cost to them. So much so that in an eight-hour workday, we waste about 3.5 hours of that day messing with our interface. That's astronomical amount of wasted time that we could be getting stuff done and accomplishing a lot more interesting things than playing with my UI. And that's because, essentially, our computers are dumb. They have no understanding of the context of use. They only know what they know, which is a lot.  So while I was at Microsoft working on HoloLens, I made my friends wear go-pros on their head, which sounds like it would be an easy task, but it wasn't. I had to beg, trust me. And I had them record every single thing that they saw. My computer is super-having. Go to the next slide. My computer's frozen. I don't know what's happened. Sorry, guys. All right. Well, let's hope this can continue. Sorry. Ha, computer interaction cost. All right, so I made my friends wear go-pros.  And you'd be surprised at what things they kept private and which things they felt were perfectly reasonable for me to watch them do. But even that became very predictable because the fact of the matter is, you're boring. You are very boring people. You do the exact same things at the exact same time with the exact same people every single day. Within two or three days, I could predict very easily what you were most likely doing, given a given context with specific people. It was not that difficult, based on understanding your context. And that's especially true when it comes to interacting with your technology.  In fact, you check your phone about 2,600 times a day. Can you understand how many interruptions that might introduce into your world? And every time you touch your phone, you're most likely doing Facebook email Twitter. Facebook email Twitter, or some derivation of that. I know I'm older, so I do those things. But, you know, it's why you have quick routes to certain applications, like your most recent applications or your favorite applications, because device manufacturers have known your habitual users of your technology for years. It's just that we couldn't get very specific, because it was adapted to, you know, you and 2 million people like you. So right now, in our human-machine interface, in our HMI, what we do is that we train humans how to push the right buttons in the right order to get the technology to respond in the way that we need in the context. And as I've shown, that creates a huge cognitive burden on the user, because they're constantly having to tell the interface to be quiet. It's kind of like a little petulant child that's trying to tell you every single thing that it knows, regardless of the fact that you're trying to talk to an audience of people, right? It's telling you every single thing that it knows, everything's a single thing that it can do at any given time without ever understanding that it's inappropriate to tell me those things at that time. For example, I love to watch British murder mysteries when I'm falling asleep. It's something that I do every single night. Regardless of what time I go to sleep, that's what I'm going to do. Yet somehow, this is the recommendations that I get from Netflix. Yeah. I don't want to watch any of that stuff when I'm falling asleep. Maybe when I'm sitting down to have some fun, but I can guarantee I'm never going to watch any do-over. That's not going to happen. Anyways, so it's telling me every single thing that it knows just in case I might want to know about it, but I don't. I only want to know this one thing, but it's up to me to shift through all this stuff and find the one thing that I'm looking for. And the computer is smart enough to understand the one thing that I'm looking for if it was given the right context. Now, in my early days of the design career, I was working for somebody named Fred Stafford. He was an advertising guy, and he used to train bodyguards how to prevent kidnappings. Really, nobody can say peanut. Trained bodyguards, right? And he told me that if I messed up, within two to three days, he'd had me in the trunk of his car because he could figure out exactly what I was doing and why. And I trust me. I think he was joking, but maybe not. But anyways, if Fred can predict my patterns, why can't supercomputers? It seems like they should be smart enough to be able to figure things out. If only there was some way to train at context, maybe we could do that. The good news is, slide missing, the good news is that a bunch of exponential technologies are finally converging to make that happen. We have the portable handheld computer, a.k.a. your phone, which tracks your every single move. And if you don't believe me, check out Google Timeline. It knows everything about you. We have wearable sensors that are going to tell you every little detail about your physical state beyond the amount of information you want. I mean, I have a Fitbit. It sits in a drawer at home because I don't know how to deal with all the data. It's just too much data. It doesn't do me any good. Which is tracking all of your interactions with your space and your objects in the space. We have self-driving cars who have dramatically advanced machine vision. So we have really accurate computer vision now so it can understand what it's seeing.  And then we have a really rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. And what's most exciting about that in regards to our conversation today is things like YAMLON, which are unstructured machine learning, which means that they can take all that raw data that I'm throwing at it through all these other means, and it can determine the patterns of me specifically.  It will find out your particular patterns. And then, just as the self-driving car takes action on our behalf before we even know it or are aware of it, the technology can start to do that for us. So it can start to reduce the number of interruptions, the number of choices on my screen, the number of hoops that I have to jump through in order to get things done. So that is basically when tech starts speaking tech. So the technology already knows how to speak tech. I don't have to learn it. The technology can learn to talk to each other. We're seeing a lot of that happening right now. But I think we can do better. And we're going to have to if we want to make superhumans. As Clarke said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right? And that's exactly what we're about to be able to do. Now, any good magician will tell you that magic is skipping the right steps, right? If I was a magician and I came up here on stage and had a rabbit next to me and shoved it in the hat and showed you guys it all in the hat and then showed the false bottom in the hat, you wouldn't care about me pulling the rabbit back out of the hat. You'd be like, of course it was in the bottom. What? Right? So the magician is only effective if it skips the right steps. He goes up on stage with the rabbit already in the false bottom and pulls the rabbit out. That's the magic. Not all those steps in between. Not all that cognitive burden that we're currently experiencing. Now, our brains do exactly that same thing. Our brains skip the right steps through innate cognitive functions. So what it does is it offloads things from your short-term working memory into these innate cognitive functions that you're not even conscious of happening. Some of those might be like proprioception. I know where my hand is. Most of you know where your bag is right now without having to look. You just know where they are. These aren't things that are in your short-term memory. These are innate cognitive abilities. And our brain is very effective at using them to reduce the burden on our short-term memory. So just as ergonomics work to help optimize systems to create the most human productivity, we can do the same thing with cognitive ergonomics. So now we can start to adapt our technology to communicate to us and use our innate cognitive functions to activate a lot of technology without us having to be actively conscious of it, without it having to create an interruption. I know that sounds a little bit crazy, but let me tell you, when we do that, when tech finally learns how to speak human and communicate directly to our brains the way that the rest of the world we've adapted to use the rest of the world, suddenly we start to get some superpowers. And that's when it gets really magical. Let me give you an example. Spatial cognition. Spatial cognition is really important to humans. There's a reason for that.  That's the size of your spatial cortex. That's a huge part of your brain. Go ahead, do it. Nobody's going to laugh at you, I promise. Okay, I'm laughing at you. No, just kidding. Right, so that's about the size of your spatial cortex. That's a big part of your brain. And over 200,000 years, we as humans have evolved to use that very effectively for all kinds of really important tasks. So much so that we call spatial memory free. Spatial memory is free, right? Because you're not really thinking about it. It just is there. We're constantly creating a spatial map of our world and our surroundings. And we use our vision just to update that occasionally, to see the changes, indicate the changes in that environment. So we use it for all kinds of things. First of all, dimension. I can tell the difference between two objects because of their size and shape.  I can remember things. If I put a note to buy milk on my refrigerator, it helps me to remember that. Next time I leave my keys, next time I leave my house, I'm going to remember to grab that thing because it's next to my keys. It's also really good for things like spatial semantics. We have timelines, we have alphabetical lists, we do whiteboard sessions, and we group ideas together to kind of help us to understand all the bits and pieces as a whole, sure? But more importantly, we use it for multitasking. Space is incredibly beneficial to multitasking. So that... But if you look at the way that our current UI works, it's a magic piece of paper UI. That's what I call it. Magic piece of paper UI, because it's completely flat. And it has boundaries. It has edges, right? Just like a piece of paper does. And basically just loading pieces of paper, one on top of the other, there's no z-depth, really. There's like a very narrow z-depth. That's it. That's all the space you get. The rest is linguistic, which is not innate. That's a different tool. Okay? So this thing is really a lot of cognitive burden. But we know that by adding space to technology, we improve productivity up to 40%. So we can reduce that 3.5 hours wasted on your interface by 40%, just by giving you multiple monitors. So when I was working on this presentation, if I had the luxury of having three monitors, I could have the slide that I was working on, the image search that I was doing, and say the emails with Bruno trying to coordinate the event on the other, right? And so rather than having to go through the doorway of my UI to move between those tasks, I could simply move my head. And it reduces, astronomically, the time taken wasted on those interruptions, just by using my head. And we've known this, by the way, since 1993. This is not new information. We've known this for a very long time. The good news is that synthetic reality adds space to computing. That's what it's all about, right? AR, VR, mixed reality. All of those technologies are basically giving us infinite canvas to put our content. Because not only do we have the Euclidean space that we live in, but we also have an nth dimension, where we can put all kinds of other things. And the really interesting thing is that humans create spatial memories in synthetic reality. We create spatial memories just like we do in the real world. So we can use it very effectively. So basically what we're doing here is we're taking that multi-mon situation and turning it up to 11. It's amazingly helpful. And because AR both sees everything that I see as opposed to my current screens, which only see what I put into them, right? This is an input and output device. You can see everything I see. So not only can it spatially orient my task, but it can spatially orient my task exactly where I'm standing in relationship to what's there, right? So this is a fulfillment house, and this guy's walking around fulfilling his thing. And it's telling him directions exactly where he needs to go within that space. And it's also recording whatever he picks up so that he doesn't have to go through and manually input the fact that he's picked up that box that he needed. So it's putting the task exactly in the context of use that it's needed while recognizing the spatial aspects. I use this all the time. I told you about the key trick, right? This is where I put my keys. If I don't put my keys here, I will never remember where my keys are. It happens every single time. I forget to put them there, and then I'm screaming at my husband as I'm trying to leave the house because I can't find them, right? So... And, you know, we all have really effective abilities to use these spatial memories. For example, if I asked you right now to close your eyes and picture sitting on your bed at home, I bet you could tell me exactly where the door was in relationship to where you're sitting or what's on your nightstand to a relative degree anyways, right? So... because we are using these augmented and synthetic realities that can understand that space, we can use that exact skill, as we use in the real world, where I put stuff next to my key box to remember, well, now I can do a virtual object next to my key box as well as the real world objects, so I get the benefit of my spatial memory in my virtual space. With the added benefit that if I forget to put my keys there, I can just push a button, and the synthetic reality will put whatever was supposed to be there there. Or maybe I don't even have to push a button. It just knows that something's supposed to be there and puts it there. All right.  It's about the sciss of your hand back here. It communicates to both sides of your brain, not just one side, but both sides of your brain. And it's also about... it's the majority sense in humans. It's the primary sense that we take in, and it provides about 70% of our sensory input when we include sound. It's the sense that we use to color all of our other senses. So when we use synthetic reality to hijack it, we're basically using that synthetic reality site vision in the same exact way that we use real-world vision. We're basically processing it exactly the same. This is kind of why you fall over.   I kind of want to laugh, but... All right, that was... So spatial interface... So now we can start to build things using that spatial cortex, ways of interacting with our devices. So this is the GE digital twin. I don't know if you've heard of this, but it's a really interesting thing. What they're doing is, as you may know, GE has spent the past few years looking up this Internet of Things business where they're really starting to understand the objects themselves. They're putting sensors in them. They're doing all kinds of things to understand objects and interact with objects. And then in addition to that, they have all these plants that they've been working on where they have CAD models of the plants, but there's really no daily insight into the wear and tear on the machinery or things like that. So what they thought they would do is take all that digital data that they have and rather than looking at it in ones and zeros like somebody from The Matrix, they decided to turn it into basically a reflection of the real world situation. So now they have virtual models of the real world that they can overlay together and start to really understand what's happening on the plant level here in the digital space. So they're creating basically spatial models of data so that they can navigate through that data just as they do in the real world and make it easier to understand the relationships between the data that they're seeing and the actual physical object that they have to deal with. Now, that's one way to do it, so creating just a twin of the real world. Another way to do it is like this company here. This is ProtectWise, and they're working on creating these dimensional interfaces for things like cybersecurity. So this is a big corporation's data and what they've done is rather than using ones and zeros or spreadsheets to understand it, they've created this dynamic spatial interface. Now they can tell where their data flow is coming because the buildings are bigger. They're using dimension here, and you navigate it as if you're walking through a physical space and on top of it, people are able to jump quickly to the areas that they want to pay attention to because they know which neighborhoods they have to go to. It creates a whole different model of interacting with our devices, and it's incredibly more effective to determining the health of the overall system as well as individual nodes on that system because they can see it and they can interact with it and remember and process it as if it's spatial information. So it's reducing the cognitive burden not only of interacting with the interface, but of understanding and using the data that they're developing. So great. What does this have to do with big super-humans, right? Sounds interesting.  What are you going to do at that time?  You don't have to look at your screens anymore.  Thank God, right? You're not going to have to be distracted all the time by interacting with your devices with the buttons in the person's right order. We can put that petulant child to bed and actually enjoy some grown-up time in the world. In addition to that, we're not even going to have to remember where we left our keys. There's this pattern coming out from Microsoft. It's going to track even your real-world objects. It'll track your virtual objects as well as your real world and be able to tell you, oh, your keys are right over there. Yeah, you forgot to put them in the box again, but they're right there. Don't miss them. But already we're seeing that we can develop superhuman healing factor, just like Wolverine. And I don't mean in the way that surgery or pharmaceuticals help you to heal, but through these technologies, your own body becomes the thing that heals yourself, just like Wolverine. So this is Diplopia. This is developed by my friend here, James Blaha, and he has what's called the lazy eye. That's what Diplopia means. It means one of his eyes is not fully functional. It's only seeing two. So he only sees 2D data in the real world because he's only seeing fully out of one eye. His brain has decided he no longer wants the information from that second eye because it doesn't focus properly. So he ignores it. So he only has stereo vision in real world. What he did was he created a VR application, and the doctor said basically after age 12, you're done. That's it.   Well, he didn't buy that. So what he did was he created this VR game that sends a different signal to one eye than the other, especially the lazy eye. And by doing that, the brain started to pay attention to that eye again. And it reconnected the synapses between the brain and the eye. So not only does he have full 3D vision in VR, but it also works in the real world. No medication, no surgery, just by retraining the synapses to this eye. In fact, this was such a big deal that it's been proven that VR rehydrates neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to rewire itself, which we thought was something that you really couldn't do once you became an adult. Okay. So then there's also these things called like mental rehearsal and visualization. I'm sure maybe some of you have heard about this basketball trick. They took two different groups of kids learning to play basketball. One, they had Ashley throw hoops over and over again so they could try to sink free throws. And the other group, they had visualized half of their time throwing free throws, not actually doing the activity, just sitting there and visualizing making a successful basket over and over again. And what they found was that the kids that did visualization actually did much better than the kids that practice physically over and over again. Now, you have to have that ability to visualize things in order to use this. So it leaves out a lot of the population who aren't really visual thinkers, who can't really picture things, right? But VR can do that for everyone. It democratizes that ability. So recently, there was a group of people working with paraplegics. They created exosuits to help the person retrain the leg movements, the muscles in the legs. But they thought, you know what? Let's also put a VR component on there where the patient can actually see their legs moving. And something really magical happened. After about a year of this physical therapy, the patients went back to their bed and were able to voluntarily move their foot. So paraplegics, we used to think, that's it, you're paraplegic, you're never gonna get your legs back. And here, we prove that with VR, no surgical invasion, people were actually able to rehydrate the synapses between their brain and their leg muscles. And hopefully that means that they'll eventually be able to walk again. All right, but remember how I said that your visual sense colors all your other senses? Oh, yeah, I'm not done with you yet. Wait, there's more. Well, because of that, what happens is, let's say you're touching something hot and it looks to your brain to be cold. What your brain does is say, no, that's not hot, that's cold.  And so the researchers at Washington's HIT Lab decided to use this. Burn patients, people with burns over 60% of their body, they're in excruciating pain 24 hours a day, but especially when they're getting treatments. And morphine only does about 20% to reduce the pain. That's like, forget it, don't even give it to me, right? But what they found is that by giving people this VR, this thing here is called Snow World, where it looks like they're throwing snowballs at snowmen and poor little penguins, but it looks like a really icy world. So first they're distracting the brain, and secondly they're telling with their visual sense that what they're feeling is cold instead of burning. Now this reduced pain by 60% without morphine. Okay, so that's incredibly powerful. And all this is being done just by paying attention to cognitive ergonomics. You're getting, you're by working directly with the brain's innate cognitive abilities, we're giving people superhuman strength to heal themselves. So let's go ahead and create ourselves a league of superhuman, shall we? There's all kinds of stuff that we can do. It's up to you. What kind of superhuman strength do you want? Do you want to be like Gene Gray or the Phoenix and have some telekinesis? Well, we can do that. We have the MIT city home, which is a whole space that reconfigures based on robotics. We have the void, which is a mixed reality space that the space and the AR works together to create this whole another world that you couldn't have any other one alone. We have thermosets that pay attention to you and life that changed dynamically. So I could stand across the room from my MIT city bed and pull it out while the room turns into a nice dark space to watch my mystery movie that has started on my computer without me even saying so. I can have precognition. I can use that GE digital twin network, along with daiquiri, which is an AR industrial grade helmet. It has infrared sensors, so it gives you spidey sense, right? It gives you additional sensory abilities. And then I can understand what's happening within the system before it even happens in the system. And in addition to that, I can use VR and synthetic training tools to train my workers on how to fix those things before we even recognize that there's a problem. So they're training in the lab, fixing it before they actually ever have to be deployed, which means they make the mistakes there and not in the field, right? So now I have precognition. A precognition that I can train before, which is pretty cool. I can be like Trinity Day for reels. For reels! I can have super cognition. Oh, Colonel's missing up there. Colonel's pretty cool. It's a neural implant for cognitive abilities. It's kind of scary, but also kind of cool. But I don't really need something embedded in my head. This is Google Translate, which works with a phone. Basically, I just hold it up in front of something and it translates it. I've been using it all over Lisbon. It's very helpful. There's also Stryver, which is from Jeremy Balenson and team at Stanford. And what they're doing is they're creating a football training program so that the quarterback can play this American football. So the quarterback can practice plays over and over again with the team he's about to play before he ever gets there. So he can try out all kinds of different strategies and be perfect at them so that when he hits the field, he knows exactly how to defeat them. Or we can have Augmenta. Augmenta is an AR tool. It's looking at this guy, trying to solve this Rubik's Cube. And rather than, like me, where it has to take apart the Rubik's Cube and put it back together properly, it shows him how to move it in real time just through his AR. So you can augment your cognition already. Imagine what can do when we can streamline the interface with him. Superhuman strength. Of course, we can already make Iron Man, right? We've got self-driving cars, right? We have NASA's GM robot glove. Do you guys know about this? It's one of my favorite things ever. Okay, so what they did was they created an inflatable glove, a robotic glove. And so with the effort, it takes me to lift, like, a pound. I can lift, like, 20 pounds because the robot arm augments my physical strength. So, basically, it's reducing the amount of burden on the user by adding robotics to my existing physical strength. And that's exactly what Lowe's is doing with their exosuits for their employees. So they have these exosuits now. It's a hardware store. And the exosuit kicks in and augments their physical strength so they can carry, like, massive plates of whatever hardware they need to. But I think more importantly is this brain gate thing. And let me replay that because it's that awesome. Yeah. So brain gate, this one's the quadriplegic. That means that she has no function below her head, right? No arms or anything. And they've put a chip on the M1 neuron. That's the neuron that you use to move your arm. Okay, but because her brain no longer talks to her arm, she can use that now with the amount of effort that it takes us to do this. She can move that robot arm. And she was able to feed herself for the first time in 17 years by using that robot arm, just by thinking about moving her own arm. So when these types of technologies start to become easier and less creepy to embed into your brain, you'll be able to just think and operate the room full of objects. Imagine what that does to telekinesis. So frankly, we are exiting the era of supercomputers. Sure, they're going to continue to get smarter, faster, smaller, cheaper, which is great for our needs because we need them to be really tiny and something that can just kind of disappear, right? And now we are entering the era of superhumans where we teach technology to speak human. And as a result, all kinds of things become possible. You can get started by envisioning your role in it. What is your driving need? What is that superpower that you want? Keep in mind that this new HMI is going to affect every single aspect of your life. Not just work, not just home life, but every single thing from all aspects of your life. So my question to you is, what are you going to do with your superpowers? Thank you.


I am confident in the ability of young people to make the years till 2047 the most important in our history. Great poet Bharati Dasan said, Udiador Ulgam Seviyam, this is also your university motto.  Indian scientists help us shift vaccines to the world during COVID-19. Indian scientists on the world map through missions like Chandrayaan. Our innovators took the numbers of patents from around 4,000 in 2014 to almost 50,000 now. Our humanity scholars are showcasing the Indian stories to the world like they were before. Our musicians and artists are continuously bringing international awards to our country. Our athletes won a record number of medals in Asian Games, Asian Paragames and other tournaments. You are stepping into the world at a time when everyone is looking at you with new hope in every sector.


what is up everyone today we're here on no strings attached it is made by the same developer is that technician games which is the guy that created man from the windows so let's go ahead and begin with this I'm not sure what this is about it seems like we're in some sort of a town we're probably gonna have to solve like some puzzles I believe you know these games always have like that crazy stuff going on oh my god she got big bazookas heck was that hey yo she knocked over what okay what's making all that dank racket huh okay so her name is Maggie she has three eyes what that is insane keep it up and I'll put you out on the street don't go thinking I won't now making all that noise and I'm trying to nap who in the right mind wait there ain't no guests in here tonight what's okay so there's no one in the hotel bro that is so distracting okay back to the game all right whoever or whatever's in here you better listen up and listen good to I'm going to bed you can stay you can leave don't matter much to me hey she rapping bro she got bars okay but wake me up again I'm working to have problems got it she does him like an angry lady I mean I would be angry too if I was a disturb from my nap open me what kind of a darn fool would you take me for I ain't opening that okay why is there what the hell what was that to the arm just came from the ceiling and open the box shoot okay find the clue we just say find the clue open your gift it's dark outside okay that kind of sounds like it's a broom closet that that kind of sounds like there might be a window open or something okay now it's not dark in here I think there's like boxes okay there's boxes in every room so each room has like something different that another room does not have so we got to keep it in mind okay there's oranges there oh my god oh hello there missy big girly alright uh okay I don't see anything dark okay let's look for like an open window or something okay what is that bread okay coming up a slice buddy okay oh there it is dark window and there's a box okay let's open this this has to be the right one but hurry for at midnight I will come to find you last signal okay so last signal that would obviously be a TV a TV with no signal it should be playing like static or something okay I don't see anything wrong here okay let's look for a room with the TV signal that is gone oh okay that one has a shattered mirror okay no I don't see a TV last signal there's got to be a room maybe I passed it okay no there's a candle here bro it's 11 it's 11 14 and I'm wasting time okay we need to find the TV with no signal okay oh there it is the static one okay open the box time let's say eight missing legs okay wait there's a table and two chairs so two chairs is eight legs so I'm assume we're looking for a table with no chairs I don't know if I seen a table with no chairs okay they all seem to have the chairs where the frick okay a chairs here chairs here okay this one has no chairs that has to be eight legs right it has to be this one a second box okay there has to be a room with two boxes which I did not see but there has to be a room with two boxes somewhere out here um where do we go okay we already opened this one dude move trying to survive trying to do this before 12 p.m. it's already 12 22 we're gonna die man okay what did I close this no room with two boxes dude I don't see any two boxes here okay maybe oh wait no that's bread okay open that box oh two boxes gotta be this one dude I'm such a genius man losing track of time okay so that correlates to the time which is a stopwatch or alarm clock there should be something going on with one of the alarm clocks okay that's normal did I check this one that's where I came from okay 11 29 nope okay that one's fine dude it's 11 30 we only have like 30 more minutes okay that one just turned so it's working 12 p.m. okay 11 31 that one's working perfectly fine dude okay I think I might be wrong here 11 32 so what is this a room no okay so what would I miss there has to be something going on here has to be with the stopwatch I mean the alarm clock okay I'm I just heard something okay 11 35 it's not flickering or anything oh what okay I did not see that the first time okay open wait it's a 12 think I'm dead unheeded food okay so microwave one of the rooms has to be missing a microwave microwave in here I don't see a microwave has to be on the on the fridge burn it at both ends that has to be the candle we seen a candle earlier I don't know where it was I think it was like somewhere up ahead dude what time is it 11 31 wait is it okay 11 39 bro okay we're actually getting close to 12 p.m. where is the candle the candles not here dude I swear I seen a candle somewhere I'm going insane man I'm just getting so nervous you know it's getting closer to 12 and we we're gonna die okay I don't see a candle anywhere dude I know I seen a candle in one of these rooms sit in here no dude I'm going insane this is insanity candle candle can open open okay vitamin C that has to be the room with oranges oh my god what what is going on the lights are off okay where the freaking oranges bro it's 1144 I'm about to die I don't see any oranges anywhere I'm gonna die no that's a box oranges oranges open the box 1147 come on I remain unmade is that the bread oh no wait I remain a man unmade it has to be the the bed there you go that's to be the bed not the bread seven years of bad luck that's the room with the broken glass where the heck was that at I don't freaking know there's too many rooms last room with the bread dude I'm gonna die it's 11 1150 no I did so much I can't I can't die just yet come on we're like so close I feel like we're so close we can't go out like this can I open this box oh there was someone in the shower the best thing in the same slice is a slice of bread the slice of bread okay the bread is right here no it's not it's right here to open the box come on 1154 open the closet okay that has to be the the broom closet that we seen here what the the freak is this guy bro why is he buff I got you now I hey wait a minute you're not Jimmy what you're not Jimmy he was supposed to be here and you're not him he lives right here at 9189 is zero Lane but this is 16 there Lane crap I'm at the wrong house boy you better start explaining what the hex is going on before I decided to knock you upside in the head that's right sister get it man so who the freak is this guy why is it buff I'm wearing a Santa Claus outfit and it's so strange so yeah I live down the down at moon water the commune with my brothers and sisters at the moon water okay yesterday this guy shows up and he's all like I want to cut this tree down and take it home to use for decoration and we tell him no that's one of our sacred trees don't take that one but then he starts chopping it down anyway now and now I'm here and I'm there you know I'm a hundred percent ready to start throwing punches right then and there but then the Grand Elder shows up and goes no Philip you mustn't do that so I wait until everyone left and then track that guy down turns out his names Jimmy like mr. Beast Jimmy my plan was to scare him a little bit you know but I wasn't gonna hurt him or anything but then I went to the wrong address yeah that explains a lot so yeah sorry about that is that a mask is he wearing I think it is right he said he's trying to scare the guy anyways I got to go find Jimmy now are you crazy or something you can't go doing that huh you just can't go barging into folks homes boy you could get hurt or worse but what about Jimmy forget about him I know you're too young and headstrong and stupid to realize it now but you can't just take matters into your own hands like that there's a right way to go down about these things and then there's a wrong way to I shouldn't have to tell you that all breaking and entering definitely ain't the right way but enough of that I've had enough of dealing with you and you're not since for tonight so get lost and let me sleep in peace and don't you let me catch you doing something stupid like this again you hear okay thanks miss that is so random why is it built like they're like okay I don't know man that was just super random and she got a big trunk too oh man all right um all right well there we have it no strings attached I did read about the game about like the description apparently it took the developer like it took him 10 days to put the game together together so that's why it's not as long as his other games that he's produced or released whatever you want to call it so there we have it no strings attached I got the one star that means we did awesome we did an awesome job all right you guys well leave the link down in the description if you guys want to play it out for yourselves it did release like 17 hours ago something like that it's it's fresh man it's brand new so if you want to go try it go ahead click the link in the description it'll take you to the game itself shout out to the devs for the cool strange game and yeah see you guys in the next one and happy holiday


أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والصلاة والسلام على أشرف الأنبياء والمرسلين حبيبي إله العالمين أبل القاسم المصطفى محمد وعلى آلبيته الطيبين الطاهرين الذين أذهب عنهم الرجسة وطهرهم تطهيرا ولا أنوا الدائم الأبدي والسرمدي وعلى عدائهم أجمعين من الآن إلى قيام يوم الدين أمين رب العالمين نDCاد ن � name of Allah the most beneficent to the most merciful he prays, be to him everlasting and omniscient she's and we send him our peace and blessings upon Muhammed and his holy household and everlasting damnation and curses upon Arrow enemies أمين رب العالمين we congratulate Saheb العصری female on the auspicious occasion that marks the birth of our acknowledge وقال بكم بأخي my dear brothers and sisters as we continue our discussion concerning the beautiful names of عالمحمد and we looked at the last narration now we looked at is the name of course the narration of جابر بن يزيدن الجعفي ووتيان الباقر عليه السلام tells one of his companions ابن صغير about how how then just the mentioning of the name محمد or the name علي and by that of course if you by when you say محمدن علي in a sense as well the name is فاتم حسنة حسينة also names in with satan when he hears will not be so happy now this next narration is very very beautiful and it really really shows you that love that the imams عليهم السلام carried for their grandfather رسول الله محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم and it really puts me in a state of trance and I was I was both in a state of joy and happiness as well in a state of sadness and distress because the imams عليهم السلام know that that pain that their grandfather رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم وانتره this duration really manifest that love that they have for their grandfather this narration is narrated by a man by the name of Abu Haroon and he said I used to sit by Abu عبد الله مام صادق بيبخانهم in his gatherings in مدينة and I and he had not seen me for days when I came to him and when I came to him he said Oh Abu Haroon I have not seen you in days Abu Haroon said I was blessed with a child the Imam said may God bless him what did you name him he said سميته محمدا فأقبل بخده نحو الارض وهو يقول محمد محمد محمد حتى كاد يلسق خده بالارض so Abu Haroon told the Imam عليهم السلام that I had named my child محمد as soon as the Imam heard the name محمد the hadith said he suddenly fell and placed his cheeks on the ground whilst uttering محمد محمد محمد 3 times the Abu Haroon says to the point where it seemed like he had glued his cheeks to the ground he sat to me listen to what the Imam says بنفسي و بولدي و بأهلي و بأبوي و بأهل لأرض كلهم جميعا لفداء لرسول الله صلى الله عليه و آله لا تسبه ولا تضربه ولا تسيئ إليه و أعلم إنه ليس في الارض دار فيها اسم محمد إلا وهي تقدس كل يوم it says my soul my children family fathers and the inhabitants of the earth all of them may they be sacrificed for the messengers of Allah صلى الله عليه و آله لا تضربه ولا تضربه ولا تضربه ولا تضربه ولا تضربه اعلم هذا لا يوجد محاولة في الارض أنه فيها لا يوجد محمد إلا أنه يحب every single day هذا هو العالم الإمام so be wary that if you do give your name your child the name محمد أنك تتبقى فرصة الإمام و أي نام علي فاطمة you'll see as well for فاطمة عليه السلام لأن فاطمة as well the mother of the imams also has a very the name فاطمة when it comes to the imams it's something that they interact with all the time the name فاطمة is a name that really puts the imams always in a state of complete distress and sadness I do have one narration here and I have it written here in Arabic and inshallah I'll translate it as it goes on as we go on to it please pay attention to this especially those who have children with names that with their children with the names of محمد or فاطمة or these names of محمد these are pure names be careful if you wish to just listen to these words just listen to the words of the imam عليه السلام السكوني says دخلت على أبي عبدالله عليه السلام و أنا مغموم مكروب he says أنت لفانا بي عبدالله جعفر ابن محمد صادق عليه السلام والهي كانت في محاولة محاولة و كانت محاولة و قالت to me او سكوني why are you depressed why are you distressed فقلت I said ولدت ليه ابنته ولدت ليه ابنته I was I was blessed with a daughter he said the imam said to a سكوني يا سكوني and what did you call her ما سميتها قلت فاطمة he said I called her فاطمة the imam then said آه آه آه ثم وضع يده على جبهته إلى أن قال أما إذ سميتها فاطمة فلا تسبها ولا تلعنها ولا تضربها the imam when he heard the name فاطمة ده لسكوني called his daughter فاطمة he took his hand and he pulled on his head and he began to in in a distressed and sad manner say if you called her فاطمة you should never insult her never hit her never curse her if you named her فاطمة he also said and before that I skipped a portion I said I apologize he said يا سكوني because you were blessed a daughter على الأرض يتقلها وعلى الله يرسقها تعيش في غير أجلك وتأكل من غير رسقك فسر والله عني he says يا سكوني a daughter if you're blessed with a daughter know that the earth will take care of her the earth will take care of her and الله سبحانه وتعالى will bestow his sustenance upon her so do not worry and then the hadith continues the part where he asks him what did you name her I apologize that I skipped that portion I was reading it straight from the Arabic text and the translation I had not typed it up but we can see from this duration and the narration before and we can also extrapolate and expand and say that those who give their children names of all Muhammad be very careful when speaking to your children do not let that anger that anger which is the root of all evil take over to the point where you throw an insult at your child and first of all you're insulting your child in the first place it's not acceptable and secondly when you're insulting your child especially if they're carrying these blessed and name these blessed names that الله سبحانه وتعالى has given to the imams that you may somehow disrespect these names now I wish to conclude with the following hadith which is the beautiful hadith which explains the name of the now we know many narrations we've heard many narrations on on why فاطمة عليه السلام was called zahra for example that when she used to stand in her محراب in prayer she would radiate and illuminate and the nur from her the light that would come from فاطمة عليه السلام would fill the heavens and the earth or the fact that when she was created and she was presented to the angels the angels were blinded and then when they asked الله سبحانه وتعالى oh الله where is this nur where is this light he says this light is the light of فاطمة of الزهراء and she will be the daughter of the final messenger of الله محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم and so on and so forth we've read many narrations and of course we've also read the the ayah of the Qur'an الله نور السموات والارض مثل نوره كمشكات فيها مصباح the ayah of the Qur'an صورة النور where it says an example of الله's نور of the of الله نور السموات والله is the light of the heavens and the earth and the example of his light is like that light in the corner of a lamp and that lamp illuminates the dark room so فاطمة عليه السلام basically if you were to take the perspective of فاطمة نور into if you would like to take الزهراء as an example of how where this name came from basically picture a room that is completely dark and then all of a sudden picture one source of light imagine slightly opening the door and a beam of light comes that beam of light is considered فاطمة الزهراء عليه السلام الزهراء and that was what happened on that day when everything was dark when everything was dark and الله صبحانه وتعالى from his nur created محمد and علي and then حسن حسي and there was no more no more no more no more left and the angels began to go into this array الله صبحانه وتعالى created a specific soul spirit and a specific نور and combined them and from that combination الزهراء فاطمة عليه السلام was created her nur is completely different from the nur of محمد and علي her nur was contained and can only be contained in heaven which is why her nur unlike the nur of محمد and علي عليهم السلام which was transferred from prophet ادم all the way until عبد الله and ابو طالب the nur of فاطمة through the order of الله صبحانه وتعالى the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم had to ascend the heavens and take that apple or in one narration the apple was brought forth to رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم in which when he sliced the apple he found a beaming radiating light illuminating the heavens and the earth and from that in his loins became the light of فاطمة عليه السلام and from that فاطمة عليه السلام was born from خديجة which is why I say the name زهراء is closely connected to the creation of زهراء the creation of our lady فاطمة peace be upon her now let's continue to the narration because our time is limited and I wish to complete this narration to complete our episode إن شاء الله عن سدير الصرايفي عن الصادق جعف ربنا محمد عن ابيه عن جده عليهم السلام قال قال رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم خلق نور فاطمة عليه السلام قبل أن تخلق الأرض والسماء يقول that نور فاطمة عليه السلام was created before الله صبحانه وتعالى had created the heavens and the earth then some people that were sitting around the prophet said يا نبي يا نبي الله فليست هي انسية or prophet of Allah is she not human he then said فاطمة حوراء انسية the prophet said that فاطمة is حوراء انسية that yes she is a human she in this دنيا and on this earth she is in the form of her human but her essence is nothing but a حوراء but of that world of the world of in the universe in the other universe which is paradise hence we can say she is a she is a human but a transcendent human as I like to call it a transcendent mating a lady of light the vessel that she had in this world was that of human form but her essence was light قال يا نبي الله وكيف هي حوراء انسية they asked the prophet and how is she this transcendent maiden how is she not or how is she this transcendent maiden made of نور he said the prophet خلقه الله عز وجل من نوره قبل أن يخلق آدم إذ كانت الأرواح فلما خلق الله عز وجل آدم عرضت على آدم he responds he says to them الله سبحانه وتعالى قرية فاطمة الزهراء from his illuminating light before the creation of آدم in that world of spirits and when الله سبحانه وتعالى had created آدم he presented the نور of فاطمة الزهراء to آدم then they said يا نبي الله وين كانت فاطمة they asked the prophet and where was فاطمة الزهراء عليه أفضل الصلاة و أتم السلام at that time he said كانت في حقة تحت ساق العرش the prophet responds he said she was in a hollow vessel under the throne now they begin to ask the prophet قالوا يا نبي الله فما كانت عامها or prophet of Allah and what was her nourishment what did she eat how did she sustain life under the throne listen to the prophet التسبيح والتحليل والتحميد her glorification her magnification of الله سبحانه وتعالى her to speak her prayers that was her nourishment فلما خلق الله عز وجل آدم وأخرجني من صلبه أحب الله عز وجل أن يخرجها من صلبه جعلها تفاحتا في الجنة وأتاني بها جبريلنا عليه السلام he said and then when الله سبحانه وتعالى had created آدم and from the ruins of آدم i was born الله loved and wanted that فاطمه عليه السلام be born from my loins and for that he placed نور the نور of فاطمه عليه السلام in the apple in which جبرائي the archangel gabriel brought brought forth and he said to me السلام وعليك ورحمة الله وبركاته يا محمد he says to the prophet peace be upon you our prophet of الله he says to him يا محمد وعلي then the prophet responds وعليك السلام ورحمة الله يا حبيبي جبرير my beloved جبرير peace and blessings be upon you they exchange their greetings in their سلام and then the حديث says فقال يا محمد ربك يقرؤك السلام قلت منه السلام وعليه يعود السلام then they like i said they began to exchange greetings in the archangel gabriel tells the prophet محمد that الله سبحانه وتعالى sends his peace and blessings and the prophet says to the archangel gabriel and الله is peace and from him is the peace and the blessings then the archangel gabriel says يا محمد ان هذه تفاحت اهداها الله عز وجل إليك من الجنة the prophet took the apple that was gifted by الله سبحانه وتعالى by the hands of gabriel he took this apple and he placed it close to his heart and then the archangel gabriel tells him يا محمد الله الله يخبرك يأتها so the prophet took the apple and he placed the apple in two and he says as soon as i placed the apple in two i noticed an illuminating radiating light began to began to radiate from this apple and i all of a sudden i was i was scared i was in a state of distress and then the prophet and then the archangel gabriel said to me oh prophet of الله why is it that you do not eat eat it and do not be scared and he ate and then he ate the apple and then the hadith says فإن ذلك النور المنصورة في السماء وهي في الارض فاطمة he says eat this apple for the light that you see is the light of she who in the heavens her name is المنصورة the aided one and on earth her name is فاطمة then the prophet says حبيبي جبرايل my beloved gabriel ولما سميت في السماء المنصورة وفي الارض فاطمة why is it that in the heavens she is called المنصورة and on earth she is called فاطمة he says سميت في الارض فاطمة انها فطمة شيعةها من النار وفطمة اعداءها عن حبها he says that she was called فاطمة because she has weaned her from the fires of hell and weaned her enemies from showing affection and love towards her and then he says وهي في السماء المنصورة pay attention to these words وهي في السماء المنصورة the aided one وليذلك قول الله عز وجل يوم اذن يفرح المؤمنون بنصر الله ينصر من يشاء يعني نصر فاطمة لمحبيها يوم اذن يفرح المؤمن الله سبحانه وتعالى ان صورة الروم says and on that day the believers will be joyful with the aid of God and God aids whom he wants meaning فاطمة will aid those who love her meaning in this ايه ان القرآن المنصورة the aided one is the aid that الله سبحانه وتعالى منشزن القرآن and those who are lovers of فاطمة الزهراء عليها افطل الصلاة والسلام those who serve فاطمة عليه السلام who testify to the rights of فاطمة to the merit of فاطمة عليه السلام who disassociate from the enemies of فاطمة عليه السلام who are complete in their love to فاطمة and don't wish to choose and pick whom to love and whom to hate those are the ones whom الله سبحانه وتعالى says and the Quran will be aided and the منصورة then the title المنصورة the aided one is the title of فاطمة الزهراء عليه السلام now you can see how beautiful this narration is how first of all زهراء refers back to the creation of فاطمة and how the name فاطمة has a connection to the lovers of فاطمة and how المنصورة the aided one whom إن شاء الله we ask الله سبحانه وتعالى that she aids us on the day of judgment and إن شاء الله she accepts our services and accepts our love and i would like to end by saying there is much much more to say especially on the names of فاطمة عليه السلام and the deep connection spiritual as well as physical connection that is connected to this world the names of فاطمة really can are really do connect with the hearts with the believers hearts so إن شاء الله we leave it at that and in the future إن شاء الله if we ever give another opportunity we will expand more on these beautiful names of فاطمة عليه السلام and we only ask الله سبحانه وتعالى and our lady of light our majesty فاطمة الزهراء عليها أفضل الصلاة والسلام to accept these services and i say