Good morning and welcome to the second meeting of the Covid-19 22. We've received apologies this morning from Alex Rowley MSP and we are joined by Jackie Baillie MSP, who is attending as a committee substitute. I welcome you to the meeting and invite you to declare any relevant interest to Mr Baillie. Y Llywyddyn Amser, rydyn ni wedi ei wneud yn ymwetod at dyn nhw, ond rydyn ni'n ddechrau. Brian Whittle, as a committee member, is running slightly late and he will be joining us later on in the morning. The morning will be taking evidence from the Scottish Government on the latest ministerial statement on Covid-19, the ordinate legislation and other matters I would like to welcome to the meeting John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, Professor Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director, Penelope Cooper, Director of Covid Coordination and Elizabeth Blair, Covid Coordination for the Scottish Government. Thank you for your attendance this morning. Would you like to make any remarks before we move on to questions? Thank you, convener. I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to discuss a number of matters, including updates to the Parliament on Covid-19 and I will make a brief opening statement. To set out by the First Minister on Tuesday, while Omicron continues to cause high levels of cases and we must maintain proportionate protective measures, the data that we are seeing gives us confidence that we have turned the corner on the Omicron wave. Although cases remain high, we are continuing to see a reduction in cases across most age groups. Admissions to hospital if people with Covid, although still too high, are now falling. The success of our vaccination programme, the willingness of the public to adapt their behaviour and the temporary protective measures introduced in December have all helped to limit the impact of the Omicron wave. That is positive news, but given how infectious Omicron is and the impact that it is having on our society, we must remain careful and cautious as we continue to lift additional protective measures in a phased approach. The First Minister confirmed that, from Monday 24 January, the remaining statutory measures introduced in response to Omicron will be lifted. Those include the requirement for table services, certain hospitality settings and the closure of nightclubs. Non-professional indoor contact sports can also resume from Monday. Although it remains sensible to stay cautious in our social interactions and prioritise who we meet, the First Minister also confirmed the guidance asking people to limit indoor gatherings to three households that will be lifted. Our advice remains to take a lateral flow test and report the result when ever meeting others. Reporting test results, including when negative, will ensure that we are able to make better assessments of the trends in infection. Certification will remain in place for events and venues previously covered by the scheme, and we are asking event organisers to check the certification status of more people attending events. Cabinet agreed this week not to extend the Covid certification scheme, given the improving situation. By the time being, baseline measures such as wearing face coverings in indoor places and working from home wherever possible will remain in place. The requirement for businesses, service providers and places of worship to take reasonable measures to minimise the spread of Covid on their premises will be retained at this stage to help to keep Covid contained as this wave recedes. The vaccination programme continues, and I would encourage anyone who has not yet had their first, second or booster dose to do so as soon as possible. Getting fully vaccinated is the most important thing that we can do just now to protect ourselves and each other. First Minister noted that, on Tuesday, we are entering a calmer phase of the epidemic. That will allow us to consider the adaptations that we might need to make to build our resilience and manage the virus in a less restrictive way in the future as we move into an endemic phase. However, we have not yet reached the endemic phase and we must remain cautious, given the uncertainties that lie ahead. I am very happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. We are short of time, so I am going to ask questions and answers to be as concise as possible. If I could just ask a question first. With, for example, Omicron is now on the decrease, although we are cautiously aware that in the future there could be new variants. With variants surveillance, how is the integrity of surveillance for new variants being maintained given that the PCR test will not always be required by people getting a positive electoral flow test? Professor Jason Leitch provides some of the epidemiological information in this respect, but there is a huge amount of surveillance data that remains available to the Government. There are still substantial numbers of PCR tests being undertaken. There are wider studies that are undertaken and, of course, there is the exchange of scientific information across a number of jurisdictions to enable us to create a commanding picture of the information that has been available to us. Obviously, the detection of the Omicron wave was made much more practical by the correlation with the S-chain drop-out failure element of assessment, which was undertaken. Of course, there will be a range of scientific interventions that we can make to ensure that there remains the case, but Professor Leitch will provide the details. Good morning, convener. Good morning, everybody else. This is a global problem and not something that Scotland can solve alone. Let's think about how we discovered Omicron. We discovered Omicron because there was a large outbreak in a region of South Africa that looked different from other outbreaks, which seemed to be transmitting very quickly. It then went to Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's genetic sequencing found a variant that looked more transmissible. Back to South Africa, genetic sequencing in South Africa confirmed that pattern and then the WHO announced it to the world. The discovery of variants is not a Scottish problem, it is a WHO problem, and it has a surveillance problem and solution around the whole world. South Africa has some of the best genetic sequencing in the world, so does Scotland, and we will continue to do that on behalf of the world. Finding it is the first challenge, then monitoring it once you know that it exists is your second challenge, and that is what we managed to do with S-chain target failure, and we would do that again. Remember that we still have quite a lot of PCRs. We have PCRs from every hospital case, PCRs from every symptomatic case that turns up, and we have PCRs from the ONS survey. We still have quite a lot of PCR testing that can then proportionately go for genetic sequencing, so I am very comfortable that we can still sequence enough to find what is happening. People, my final point here is that there are thousands of variants, thousands. It changes every day, so what matters is that a variant is causing a new challenge, transmission, serious disease, whatever that might be, and that requires real-time data of monitoring the number of cases you have, the number of hospitalisations you have. That could be in Scotland proportionately and by luck. It is more likely to be in another country, but it could be here, but it is more likely to be somewhere else, so we have to do that globally, not just in Scotland. I am comfortable with our own surveillance system, but I would just put a proviso on that, that we need the whole world to be able to do that. Thanks very much for those others. Just one quick question, as we are encouraged over a lot of isolation, with a new Omicron variant and being encouraged just to do an electrical flow test and not get a CPR and just self-isolate for the time amount. For the people who have been told to self-isolate but not get a PCR test and then try to get the self-isolation grant from the local authority, I have had constituency suite being told that they are not eligible because they need a negative PCR test. The electrical flow test is not enough for them. How are we with the gap between people who are testing positive and then want to need to get a grant just being able to tie up between the electrical flow tests and the PCRs? There should not be an issue there. Individuals who are required to self-isolate will be the case if an individual tests negative in a lateral flow device test. They should be eligible for self-isolation grant support. Obviously, if there is an issue with that, I will look into that carefully with local authorities to make sure that people who require self-isolation grant support are able to obtain that, given the requirement for them to self-isolate in terms of the arrangements that we now have in place. That is great. That is very helpful. Thank you very much. I will move on to the next question. Can I bring in Murdo Fraser, please? Thank you, cabinet secretary and colleagues. I have got two questions. Given that we are short of time, I will just ask them both together if I can. First, cabinet secretary, you said a moment ago that the Scottish Government's view was that Covid had not yet reached endemic status in the Scottish population. Do you have any modelling or projections as to when you think that that will happen? My second question is about the impact of Omicron. We have, as you said, seen a very high number of cases, but we are now seeing hospitalisations tailed off. If we cast our minds back to where we were in December, we were being advised in the committee that Omicron could see thousands of additional deaths. Unfortunately, we have not seen anything like that impact. Given that we are likely to see more variants coming of Covid, is there a risk that, if that happens, the public will say that experts and advisers have been crying wolf over the impact of Omicron and, therefore, will be resistant to measures taken in trying to safeguard the population because the experience of Omicron has been nothing like as serious as was originally being forecast? I will ask Professor Leitch to deal with the question of epidemic and endemic, because there is a very clear scientific basis of judgment that has to be applied in that question. It is appropriate that he provides the committee with that advice. On the second part of Mr Fraser's question, I think that the one point of detail that I would probably part company with Mr Fraser about in his analysis is that, from my recollection, I do not think that the projection or the suggestion was made that Omicron was going to lead to a significantly greater number of deaths. The fear of Omicron was that the huge volume of cases would give rise to a very large volume of hospitalisation, which would place a burden on the national health service, because we recognised that, in the emerging evidence in South Africa, it appeared that Omicron, although generally a milder version by comparison to Delta, would still give rise to a sizable number of cases within the population, which would result in hospitalisation. What I would contend is that the combination of the measures that the Government put in place, the response of members of the public, the change in behaviours that took place in the round to Christmas, essentially enabled us to flatten the Omicron curve. If we look at the numbers, the numbers of cases were of such a magnitude that, in previous variants, would have led to much more acute measures being taken. New levels of cases were much, much higher than the number of cases that resulted in the lockdown on 4 January 2021. However, that position materialised, but the combination of the vaccine strategy, the measures that were put in place by the Government and the change in public behaviour in participation enabled us to flatten the worst effects. We still have huge demands on the national health service as a consequence of Omicron. We have more than 1,500 patients in hospital with Covid just now, which is a very high number. I am putting a new pressure on the national health service. Briefly on question 2, if you will allow me, I will do the endemic one. The advice at the beginning of Omicron was that we simply did not know if the rumors of slightly milder disease were true or not. Nobody knew, but we did know pretty quickly that booster doses of vaccines were crucial. That is why we were able to vaccinate at one point the fastest of any country in the world. Protections, human behaviour and vaccination is why the Omicron wave is not as damaging as it was. With a contribution from the virus, that in the end is milder than the delta version of the virus. Unpicking how much is virus and how much is vaccination will take months, but all of those things together is why we have not seen the absolute worst that we thought Omicron might be. That is a credit to the national health service vaccination teams and to the public who reduced their contacts appropriately, partly because we told them to and partly because it was voluntary. Endemic is a little misunderstood. The disease that everybody suggests is endemic is blue. Endemicity is about predictability. It is defined as a disease that is in an area of the world that is relatively predictable. You know when it is coming and what it is going to do. It does not say anything about severity. Malaria is an endemic disease and kills 600,000 people a year, not here, but in the billions of people who catch it in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Endemicity is not about ease, it is not about making it better, it is about predictability. For now, Covid is unpredictable. We do not know when the next wave is coming, we do not know whether it will be better or worse than the previous wave. The WHO will decide when the disease becomes endemic. Just now, the WHO says that it is a pandemic and the definition of that is that every single person on earth is at risk of it. When they decide that it is more predictable, which I hope will happen in 2022, but nobody knows if it will happen in 2022. Now, how Scotland and other countries choose to deal with the next year of the pandemic is actually the core of your question. What do we do as the disease moves into another year of being a pandemic and how should we react to it? That is what the committee has been asking and the Government has been trying to respond to throughout this whole period, but I am not sure that it is a pandemic versus endemic intellectual conversation. It is about how we manage our pandemic, which, of course, has global implications, just as we have discussed about genetic sequencing, but it also has implications for our strategic framework, which we are refreshing and which the Government will announce in the next two weeks. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the Deputy First Minister and his officials. He will be aware that the Scottish Government stopped fertility treatment for those women who were not fully vaccinated. That was done the day before Christmas Eve, no notice was given, and then I understand that the Scottish Government extended it on the 7 January to include treatments in the private sector. I am sure that you can imagine that the women who were preparing for treatment in early January were, frankly, distraught. The emotional turmoil that they went through was considerable. In some cases, women were indeed vaccinated, but because they caught Covid, they could not get their booster in time and their treatment was cancelled. There was a real feeling that the lack of an individual approach and this blanket ban was not fair on many of the women involved. Other women have since been in touch genuinely confused because the advice from health professionals at the very start of the Covid pandemic was that pregnant women, or indeed those expecting to be pregnant within the next three months, should not be vaccinated. Of course, you and I know that both changed. However, it strikes me that there is genuine confusion, so I have three questions. Can we get clinicians to explain to those women who are undergoing fertility treatment how the guidance has changed and to provide reassurance to them, because currently there is confusion? Two, as cases are starting to decline now, when will the service be resumed and will it be conditional? Thirdly, will women caught up in this and affected by this actually get an extra cycle of IVF to make up for what has been lost? I recognise the significance and the sensitivity of the point that Jackie Baillie raised with me this morning. I will draw an input from Professor Leitch in addition to what I say, but let me try to provide some reassurance here. The advice that emerged from clinicians—I stress that it was clinical advice that led the decisions to pause fertility treatment—was based on overwhelming evidence that indicated that the necessity of vaccination, although pregnant, was critical in those circumstances. I do not have all the detail in front of me, but the research that was undertaken on the proportion of pregnant women who were admitted to critical care as a consequence of Covid and, from my recollection, well over 90 per cent of those cases were amongst women who were unvaccinated. The clinical evidence was overwhelming in that respect, which led to the pause being applied.  There should certainly be good explanation of the rationale, because having looked at the material before, as I have done, I have seen very clear and well-expressed clinical opinion and evidence on the subject. That should be shared with individuals in all circumstances. On the second point that Jackie Baillie raised with me, on the resumption of clinical care, the resumption of fertility treatment will happen as soon as we are in a position to do so when the vaccination programme has delivered the degree of protection that we consider necessary in the context of the Omicron wave. I will seek clarification from Jason Leitch, but I think that the Government has made clear that there will be no disadvantage to any woman who may have been going through fertility treatment, that they will anyway lose out on an opportunity to pursue that fertility treatment because of the pause in arrangements that have been put in place. I would be grateful for Professor Leitch's input on that question as well. The third one is the easiest. There will be no disadvantage to couples who have had to have their IVF treatment paused, so there will be an extension of the time and, if necessary, an extension of the cycles, depending on where they were in the cycles when this clinically-based decision was made. Of course, clinical decisions often are because clinical decisions do not know the calendar. It was completely risk-based, so it was about the safety of women and babies. The decision was made not delightfully but very hard because of the nature of the disease and the nature of what it does, in particular to high-risk individuals, and high-risk individuals, I am afraid, include pregnant women, IVF or not. Those individual cases should be having individual conversations with their care teams in the fertility units around the country, whether they are public or private. I have done some of that at a national level, both in the media and in stakeholder groups. However, I cannot have individual conversations with each couple, and it would be inappropriate. Those individual conversations should be being had with their individual case leaders, and they certainly have the information because the advice came from many of those clinicians. The second part of your question is the hardest question about when we should restart. It is not about case rates, it is about the risk of Covid if you are pregnant. That risk of Covid if you are pregnant will remain whatever the case rate is. The way to restart is to get vaccinated. We know that vaccinated pregnant women are much safer than unvaccinated pregnant women. Your point about vaccination at the very beginning of the pandemic, for what was literally a few weeks of advice, was all about the fact that we hadn't vaccinated pregnant women. Therefore, the research could not be done because we couldn't say that this is what you should do if you are pregnant, because we hadn't vaccinated pregnant women in the research trials. It was just a precautionary measure to say that while we are doing the rest of the research in pregnant women and kidney transplant patients, we have to tell you not to have your vaccine yet. However, as soon as the pregnant women trials were done and it was proved safe, we told pregnant women to get their vaccine. I understand why that might be confusing to some, but pregnant women have now been vaccinated in their hundreds of thousands around the world safely, and that is what we have been doing in Scotland for a long time. The way to restart your IVF is to get vaccinated. John Mason, if we have time at the end, I will come back to members for supplementary questions. Thank you very much, convener. In yesterday's Herald newspaper, there was a column by Stuart Patrick, who is a member of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce. He is arguing that this is the time to move, within the four harms, to take direct health, give it less priority and give more priority to other health, social and economic impacts. Obviously, he is particularly interested in the economic side. I wonder how the cabinet secretary would respond to that. The framework that we put in place in the summer of 2020, which is the four harms framework to which Mr Mason refers, has, in my view, been an essential guide to the decision-making that ministers have undertaken. It has enabled there to be a transparent and open conversation with the public, the range of interested parties about the nature of the decisions that have had to be considered. At all times, if I go back to March and April 2020, I would say that direct Covid health harms were exclusively determining the decision-making that was being undertaken, because we were in such an acute moment of crisis. From the summer of 2020 onwards, we have sought to strike a balance across the four harms to try to ensure that—and that is reflected in the strategic purpose of the Government's agenda—to try to manage the Covid pandemic in a way that enables people to appreciate and enjoy as many aspects of normal life as we can possibly do so. That, to me, remains the rational and considered approach that the Government should take. I think that if we disregard direct health harm, then before we know it, the health service will be overwhelmed. That would have been the case in December around normal life. If the Government had just ignored the direct health harm, then the health service would have been overwhelmed. I have no doubt about that at all. The degree of direct health suffering to members of the public would have been much greater. I do not think that there would be many people in society who would have thought that that was a rational approach that the Government would have taken. The strategy that we have adopted has been to take difficult but evidenced and considered decisions on the balance of the four harms to protect public health but to enable people to appreciate and to enjoy as much of normal life as we could hope to achieve in the context of a global pandemic. I have a second area that I wanted to touch on. There was some coverage in the media yesterday about compulsory vaccinations.  I wonder what the Government's current thinking on that is. Obviously, you have no control over what an oil company might do, but are we relaxed about organisations insisting on vaccination? Up till now, I do not think that the NHS in Scotland is insisting on vaccination. The Government's position is that we will not mandate people to have vaccination if there is a voluntary programme, and that is the Government's position. Obviously, if an individual organisation takes an approach of that nature, it is obviously free to do so, but I would counsel that it needs to engage constructively with its employees on such questions because the issues and approaches of that type will undoubtedly have an effect on whether people will be eligible and available for employment in such a context, and it is up to individual employers to undertake those discussions. If I can have one final question—just a factual one—there has been talk about charging for the test LFT tests. Can you tell us what the cost of an LFT test is? The last cost that I saw was of the order of £3 per test, but I may stand to be corrected by one of my officials on that question. That is my understanding, too. I think that you saw the same briefing as I. It was about £3 a test. That is a calculation from many hundreds of millions of tests divided by the cost, so I am not sure that it is entirely accurate, but it is about £3 a go. That is great. Thanks, convener. Thanks very much. Can I bring in Brian Whittle, please? Thank you, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. I will continue with some of the questions that we have discussed before. I was looking at the instances of lung cancer over the piece, and the report back says that half of lung cancer diagnoses are being diagnosed at stage 4. During Covid, there has been a 25 per cent reduction in diagnosis and a 25 per cent reduction in treatment. They were asking that there should be a lung cancer screening programme required specifically for over 50s and smokers. Understanding the balance that you are having to make, cabinet secretary, and the decisions that the Government is having to make, where are we with consideration of those kinds of statistics and gathering those kinds of statistics and making decisions on that basis? The data that is relevant here is clearly available, because Mr Whittle has just recounted that data to me. The collection of data enables us to see comparative levels of referrals for individual cancer treatments and for a variety of other treatments, the number of cases that will have been handled and the period at which they have materialised. There has been a sustained effort that has been put in to maintaining cancer services throughout the challenges of the pandemic. When other services were paused, cancer services were maintained. However, I would have to acknowledge that individuals will have been more reluctant to come forward for wider health treatment during the pandemic and the evidence and the data reinforces that point. What is important is that we reiterate the necessity for individuals to come forward for treatment of this type, where they have concerns about their health and the national health service is open and available to deliver treatment to individuals. It is important that all-stages individuals hear that message and that the health service does all that it can to deliver on that. Obviously, the health service capacity to deliver that respect depends on the degree to which we can suppress the impact of Covid on the health service. Obviously, the Omicron wave has essentially reinvigorated the number of patients in hospital with Covid. We go back to a period just before Omicron. We were down at about 900 patients in hospital with Covid. We are now in excess of 1,500. The necessity of suppressing the prevalence of Covid enables the health service to be able to devote more resources to addressing the type of conditions that Mr Puddle fairly proves to me as being important to the members of the public. I understand the balance of a lot of different factors that the Government has to make. If we look at the number of people who are in hospital or who have tragically lost their life to Covid, it is usually because of the predominance of people with other issues, as well as Covid exacerbates that. I think that, again, because this is the recovery committee, I am trying to look ahead. It is really important that we do not lose sight of that particular fact that those who are in hospital usually have some other issues. It might seem a mute point here, Cabinet Secretary, but one of the other things that I looked at, for example, was that health boards are missing the spoken cessation targets through Covid. How do we balance that? How do we pull that back together? It is almost a chicken and egg situation here. If we could reduce causing significant health impacts by treating other issues, perhaps we could reduce the impact of Covid itself. How does the Government make those decisions and balance those things out? Essentially, that is reconciled through the four harms framework that I discussed in my earlier answers with John Mason. The Government has assessed the relationship between direct health harm from Covid. Although Mr Whittle has correct, some people will have lost their lives to Covid with other conditions, but other people have lost their lives because of Covid directly. There is then non-Covid health harm, economic and social harms. The Government essentially has been trying to enable people to experience as much of normal life as we can hope for whilst we wrestle with a global pandemic. That is a bearing on the extent and the nature of health treatments that are available and can be delivered. On all the preventative health interventions that the Government supports, for example, the smoking cessation programme that Mr Whittle puts to me, those all need to be part and parcel of what we argue and put forward to members of the public as vital elements of the health protection that individuals need to pursue to lead a healthy life. That should be sustained during Covid, and any treatment as a consequence of that needs to be sustained in that context as well. It is important that we focus on additional health harms that are different from Covid, but inevitably—this is the hard reality of all this—the capacity of the national health service to address those issues will be greatly enhanced if we can see a lesser impact on the health service as a consequence of Covid. Deputy First Minister, we are seeing lots of reports in the newspapers this morning that the Scottish Government is now coming under pressure because of something that the English Government has done in removing the requirement for face masks in schools. I find that quite frustrating because England has done it, but Scotland seems to be asking to follow on. Can I ask you what the position of the Scottish Government's position is in terms of face masks in schools? The second question in the interests of time is about medical exemptions. I understand that there are four categories of medical exemptions, but for someone who has an underlying health risk, would anxiety about their underlying health be considered part of an exemption right for them not to be vaccinated? It is not that I am advocating that they do not get the vaccine. That is a specific constituent question. On Mr Fairlie's first point in relation to face Governments, the Scottish Government's position has not changed in the light of the announcements that were made by the Prime Minister yesterday, either in relation to the wearing of face coverings in crowded public places or on public transport or in relation to schools. There is absolutely no change in the Scottish Government's position and the Parliament was advised on Tuesday of the Government's position, and if there was to be any change in that position, the Parliament would be advised. As things stand just now, the Scottish Government is absolutely crystal clear that the requirement to wear face coverings in public spaces, in public transport and in secondary schools remains absolute. I am struck by the comments that were made yesterday by the chair of the British Medical Association Council, Dr Chand Nagpal, who said that it is vital that the UK Government acts according to the data and takes a measured approach. Removing effective infection control measures such as mask wearing on public transport and indoor crowded spaces will inevitably increase transmission and raise the public at greater risk, especially for those who are wrong with them. Those are very significant words of warning and they are words that are taken seriously by the Scottish Government. I invite Professor Leitch to address the fairly second question that relates to my advice. We have enormous sympathy for those who are anxious about vaccination and those who are anxious about their underlying condition making them anxious about vaccination, but neither are an appropriate exemption to not be clinically vaccinated. That is why we have systems in place to help with that. The first thing that I would suggest those individuals do is speak to their care team if they have such a thing, if they have a disease that requires them to have a regular clinical team, they should speak to them and then they should speak to a vaccinator. We have tiered levels of vaccinators, so the first vaccinator that you meet may not be able to answer every question that you have, but in every clinic we have team leaders, trained individuals who can then talk you through. Nobody will force you to be vaccinated, nobody will inject you without your consent, but the best place to have those conversations are inside your clinical team but in the vaccination centre. I will bring in a little bit of time on our hands and bring back Murdo Fraser, who has a constituency question. Thank you, convener. I have one question that has come to me from a constituent, and I wonder if Jason Leitch is best placed to respond to it. The situation in this constituent is that he has been double vaccinated and then caught Covid, so he has not yet had a booster. Of course, under the vaccination certification scheme, he requires to get a booster, but the point that he is making is that having had Covid now, he would have natural immunity, and therefore it is not necessary for him to get a booster. What is the science behind that requirement? I do not know if Jason Leitch can help with that point. I can. It is necessary for him to get his booster just as soon as he possibly can. We have discussed in this group before the nature of immunity. It is not a light switch, it is a dimmer switch, and both natural and vaccine immunity do slightly different things at slightly different times, so the more the better. You should absolutely get his booster just as fast as he can. We leave a gap, principally, to recover from symptoms, just so that people feel well enough to then have the vaccine and to be able to separate side effects if there are any, which are rare and unusual, from the disease itself. The advice to that individual is that they should absolutely get the booster just as soon as they can and it will do them good, not harm. That is very helpful. Thank you very much. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item, and I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for their evidence today. Moving on to the second agenda item, which is consideration of the motion on the made affirmative instruments considered during the previous agenda item. Deputy First Minister, would you like to make any further remarks on the SSIs listed under agenda item 2, before we take the motions? In the interests of time, convener, I will not add any further points to the record. Members are content for the motions on the agenda to be moved on block. I am content to move on block. I want to make a point in relation to the SSI 475, because we have been advised that the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered that on 11 January, on the grounds that they were dissatisfied with the made affirmative procedure. We should note that, convener, as it happens, that the measures in the instrument are now historic, and, on the basis of the announcements made earlier this week, they will be removed from next week. I do not have any points as to voting against it, but we should note the concerns of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Members are agreed to move all the motions on block. I now invite the Deputy First Minister to move on block motions S6M-02594, S6M-2602, S6M-02698, S6M-02699, S6M-02760, S6M-02733 and S6M-02799. I move on block, convener. Thank you. Is there any other comments from members? I wish that no member has wished to speak, so I will now put the questions on the motions. The question is that motions S6M-02594, S6M-02602, S6M-02698, S6M-02699, S6M-02760, S6M-02733 and S6M-02799 be agreed? Do members agree? If anybody doesn't agree, please put an in the chat. There is nothing in the chat, so the motions are agreed to. The committee will publish a report to the Parliament setting out our decision on the statutory instruments that are considered at this meeting in due course. That concludes our consideration of this agenda item and our time with the Deputy First Minister. I would like to thank the Deputy First Minister and his supporting officials for their attendance this morning. The committee's next meeting will be on 27 January, when we will consider the coronavirus discretionary compensation for self-isolations Scotland Bill at stage 2. That concludes the public part of our meeting this morning. I suspend the meeting to allow witnesses to leave and for our meeting to move it into the private session. Thank you.


And welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This show is the state of the state of Hawaii. And I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. During the Honolulu Mayor's campaign, this show interviewed many, most of the candidates. And the primary election happened, and that gave us two finalists for the executive position in the state. I guess it's the third highest executive position, or maybe it's the second, but it's a high executive position. So the primary election gave us those people that we now can examine. Now that it's just those two, we're going to take time in this show to examine what competencies and skills the mayoral leadership role requires. And that can help us think about what's required, mandated almost by what's presented, and help decide our votes for one of these fine candidates if you haven't voted already. I think some of us have already received a ballot, but things are going on right now. So this is a good time to get a little more insight into what it takes to do these things from an expert on governing and policy that we're going to talk with today. And he is an associate. And that guest today is Dr. Colin Moore, and he is an associate professor at the UH Manila, and he directs there the public policy center. So Dr. Moore is here with us to do this discussion because he has scholarly expertise in the areas that are challenging the whole nation. And he's also looked closely at Hawaii's situation too.  I was going to say little picture, but we're little in size, but our picture is big. So welcome, Professor Colin Moore. Thanks, Stephanie. Great to be here. I'm so glad that you can come and share with us from your point of view and your expertise more about what city county is facing, what we're all going through. I mean, we're all involved in this process, mostly to vote. And hopefully, everybody is in that. But even if they're not, we're all on the receiving end of who's going to be in this role. So what does it take and what are they going to do? So I assume, of course, that COVID-19 has added another layer to your study about governing public policy. But given the mayors that the mayors must cope with all current and any new challenge that arises, even one as big as COVID-19, can you say if you think or anybody thinks that the mayor's role is the most stressful governing role in the state? I mean, in other words, like more than the governor.  So being mayor of a city like Honolulu, and obviously, I've never been mayor, but I know people have worked in those offices. And the thing about being mayor is that it's a nonstop job. In other words, you really are constantly just solving problems. If not an ideological job usually, no one looks to you to make broad policy statements and certainly take ideological positions in the way they might in the US Congress or even as governor. There are potholes to be filled, and there are city services that need to be provided. And I think most mayors just think of themselves as solving this string of problems constantly. But COVID adds a new level of complexity to that. So it may not be the most stressful job. I think in a post-COVID environment, probably being the governor's the most stressful job, because ultimately you're the one who's going to be, who has to deal with the more immediate tax issues, trying to interface with the federal government and our congressional delegation and handle the state legislature. But certainly, being mayor of the biggest city would be the second most stressful job. And they're going to have to confront a number of challenges. First will be the huge drop-off in revenue. Although the city is primarily financed by property taxes, there's going to be a lot of people in businesses who aren't able to pay those property taxes. So there's going to be a big drop-off in revenue. At the same time, there's need for more city services, emergency services, and things of that nature. So it's going to be a real challenge. And then on top of all of that, of course, is the perennial issue for the mayor of the city and county, which is rail. Now, technically, the city is that rail is managed by heart, but the city is a major partner with this. And exactly what will happen to heart is going to be one of the biggest questions for whoever becomes mayor or who's elected mayor in a few weeks. I did hear that rail was the number two problem after the number one problem, which was homelessness. But evidently, most believe that the COVID-19 has superseded that. And it is now number one. The others still, I guess, stay in train. But speaking of these two people, we have in alphabetical order, we have got Amma Mia, Mr. Amma Mia, former litigator who's working now in insurance. And then we have Rick Blangiardi, who's got a lot of experience in leadership, in media, actually, right? And as a former football player and coach at the UH. So my interest in what they have in common is, of course, that they're inexperienced and they have no record. They have no political record yet, okay? They're making it now. And of course, Rick Blangiardi got ahead of Amma Mia by a chunk of votes. But the other part that they share, the other commonality they share is that they both come out of athletics. They're at different points in their careers, but there is an age difference. But who knows? They might have been doing the same thing at the same time, athletically. But anyway, I was just wondering, since that is seen to be a feature, and I think that's attractive to the state because of the interest here, especially in high school football, as well as the UH. Anyway, I think that I wanted to know if you thought that makes sense that athletics is the basis for skill sets or competencies that they're gonna need in this job. And in other words, what does it have to do with being mayor, anything? Sure, that's an interesting question. I've wondered the same thing myself. I mean, that is the one common thread that ties them together, that Rick Blangiardi was a football coach at the UH years and years ago. And of course, Keith Elmameo ran the High School Athletics League. You know, partially I think their orientation to athletics and what it brings to their candidacy are two somewhat different things. I mean, Rick Blangiardi is really running on his experience as a businessman, but also his experience as someone who gets things done. And he often uses, he often talks about himself like a coach, although he doesn't coach football anymore. He coaches employees. He turns businesses around. I mean, that's sort of even the way he presents himself. He still looks like a football coach. He kind of talks like one. And I think he's trying to use that message to say, you know, I'm the guy who can give you some tough love. I can organize people and motivate them and turn things around. Keith Elmameo does not present himself so much as a coach, I think, as use his experience in athletics in Hawaii to show that he has deep connections in the community, that he can go and talk to people and find kind of mutually beneficial solutions to their problems, that he is a close listener and he is not going to tell you what to do but maybe to try to lead you along a path where everyone can get along. So they have very different approaches to leadership both tied into athletics, but for Elmameo, it's much more based in his knowledge in the community and his listening skills. And I think for Rick Blangearty, it's much more about being a coach and trying to motivate employees or maybe to some extent all the residents of the city and county. So this seems that then Rick Blangearty is doing more of a process thing, a relationship building thing, the things that you do to make these teams happen. And that's very compelling it would seem. And so I see now what you're saying is bringing that out of his athletic world into the businessman's role that he's had. And that's what he talks about it being. And so... That's absolutely right. I mean, he's really running on his experience and he has some very significant business experience. I mean, more outside of Hawaii than inside of Hawaii. Although he always says he thinks of this as his home but he's run some very, very large companies. And I think that's something voters find attractive. Well, I think that taking on Telemundo, that Spanish language station across the country, which is very important to many, many, hundreds, thousands of people. And he doesn't even speak Spanish. So that was very interesting It shows you what's important, kind of what we're getting to in the talk here is what is it down under there? I mean, on the surface it looks like it's one way but underneath it, it's more complicated. And there are other kinds of things that are in play in terms of capacity and skills. I mean, like Rick's not knowing Spanish did not inhibit in any way his being a huge success for Telemundo. So now we have Keith and he's doing his work with the, he's bringing, how do you see, can you talk about Keith a little bit and how he might be using it and his insurance as a businessman in the areas he's working in, Keith? Sure, I mean, I think that, I mean, I think, again, this is, he's never been an executive in the same way but I think he has always been someone who listens carefully, who's respectful of people and their problems. And I think that's probably been a part of his success in business and in insurance. He's also done a couple of other unique things in the campaign that differ a little bit from how Blangiardi is running it, which maybe I'll mention briefly, which is the first thing is, and this always happens in the Honolulu mayor's race. Although this is a nonpartisan race, it always becomes a little bit partisan. This is just politics. And Keith has been very quick to remind voters that he's a Democrat, that he's always been a Democrat. He's really wrapped himself in the flag of the Democratic Party, which is probably wise in good politics because there are always suspicions that Blangiardi was a Republican or more conservative. And this goes to his businessman image. And the OMEA campaign actually ran some negative ads that made this direct comparison to Rick Blangiardi and President Trump, trying to take Blangiardi, I think reputation for being kind of aggressive, kind of outspoken and turn what Blangiardi has tried to present as a strength, his coach-like leadership abilities as a possible liability by comparing him to someone like President Trump, who doesn't seem to listen to anyone and kind of take a my-way or the highway approach. I don't actually think that's been all that successful for the OMEA campaign. I can't fault them for trying. This is politics. And as an old-time politician once said, politics ain't beanbag, but it's still, I don't think it's worked. I think that people have not found this comparison compelling. What would be an example of that, that you know? An example of this comparison to Trump? Yeah, and yeah. Well, I mean, they ran an ad that made that comparison directly, basically saying that we don't need a media mogul coming into the city and county and telling people what to do. So that was an ad they ran where they've made that explicit comparison. Well, and then that, okay. So that was the Keith Omea side coming on against him like that. Right. And then, I mean, Rick went out on the limb. Rick Blangiardi kind of went out by revealing who he voted for in the presidential election. I thought that was interesting. And he's kind of pulled it back now, but do you see that as playing any role in his run-up? Potentially, potentially. I mean, he is, you know, one of the things that makes this race unique too in a different non-COVID environment, I think Omea would probably be doing better than I expect that he is. But I think that there is this desperate need in a time of crisis for someone who looks authoritative. And I think Blangiardi projects that image in a stronger fashion than Omea who has run a campaign based around, you know, empathy and showing that he understands problems. He understands the community. He's there to listen closely. I think that this environment favors someone, a candidate a little more like Blangiardi. And so I think whatever the people have questions about his political affiliations, that has not ended up being important as it might have been in a different political environment. Well, do you see much difference between their positions on rail?  They're almost exactly the same. I mean, Blangiardi used to be far more critical of rail. He has somehow become much less critical. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that he's endorsed by the Carpenters Union. But a lot of his criticism about rail has sort of fallen off. I mean, he's moved pretty aggressively to the center in this race. And so I don't really think there's really any difference. Not that I can see in their two positions on rail. I mean, this campaign isn't really about policy. And so you can try to look at their different policy positions, but that's not what voters are thinking about. You know, they're not reading detailed policy briefs. And so they're voting based on who they trust. And that's what this campaign has been about. I mean, it's really about who these people are rather than what they're saying they're going to do. And I think partly this is because of COVID, partly because the sort of coverage we normally get for the mayor's race has just been crowded out. So it's much more about personality than policy for both candidates. And in this environment, I think that benefits Rick Blangerty who does not have as many developed policy positions as Keith Alamia. Okay, so they have put, in fact, Rick had to be pressed to get his plan up there. And it's short on, yeah, but the Keith plan, Keith Alamia's plan was also short on details, but he did have it up there, which it has a name. Yeah, well, do you agree with, given that do you agree that that Rick Blangerty is a more independent thinker? He's been praised for coming up with novel or creative approaches to issues that have the city council's been dealing with and he's shared ideas with them. And I've seen some statements that were praising his ability to do the kind of out of the box thinking about how to solve problems, is that? Potentially, I think that, I mean, I think that he also has almost no experience in government. And so that, I mean, I'm not sure there's always a full realization of what is possible and what might not be possible. And I think that if he wins this election, he's gonna have to get up to speed really quickly because you're not, because running a government agency or a city is not like running a business. And it doesn't matter how many people say that they think it should be, it just isn't. You're dealing with unions, you're dealing with a city council. If you go in there and you try to just, and you try to lead, you know, lead from the top without the sort of careful consultation that you would do normally in government, you're not gonna get very far. You know, you might be able to make a lot of noise but you're not gonna make a whole lot happen. What, in the case of then making structural changes, I know there's been some suggestions that there need to be some structural change. And of course, I'm sure there are many of them that need to be done after the COVID, but especially one that's come up is that it's only Honolulu that has like no health department and no office of health recommendation, what have you. So to make some kind of a structural change, I'm sure there are other areas where it's the same too. Does Rick Langearty's style make that a more process oriented change rather than a top down, speaking of a top down kind of thing? I mean, so how do you think they'll do under the press to make structural changes in the government? It's gonna be very, very difficult for either of them. I mean, those sort of changes in an environment of scarce resources, I mean, it would really test anyone's leadership abilities.  I mean, Mayor Caldwell, who didn't until the very end of his term face COVID had a terrible relationship with the city council until very recently, I mean, they were constantly at war which meant a lot of what he wanted to do, he wasn't able to do. And so part of whether Amami or Langearty is elected, part of their success will be who else is gonna sit on this council and their relationship with them and whether it's supportive or antagonistic and that will really dictate what they're able to do. And I think a smart mayor will go in there and try to immediately work with the city council and try to allow them to take credit for some of these changes. But it's tough to lead at a time of resource scarcity because you don't have much to work with. You're probably going to have to implement pay cuts which will anger unions. In a real crisis, sometimes that can work if very, very talented leaders can make that work for them. But I think the jury's out. I think either Amami or Langearty have had some real leadership successes in their careers. So I think it's hard to tell until they're there because they've never held political office before. So like you said at the beginning of this, we don't really have any way to judge their success. And these executive positions can be unique to even, there's many cases where you have very talented legislators who have a lot of government experience, who move into an executive position and just are no good at it. They're much better at fighting the good fight in the legislature than in the executive where it's really far more important to compromise, to try to understand what various sides want. And that can be a very different skill set. Well, yeah, and in fact, for instance, they're both talking about public-private partnerships and all that sort of thing. But one of my questions is, how can they work with the state? I mean, there's a particular governor there now, but, and that's been an interesting performance of their relationship. But now it might get really down to scratch because if we do, I mean, obviously we're not getting any money right now, but eventually the fed's gonna probably have to do something about supporting states. And so when that happens, the state's desperate, so what is it that the mayor's gonna have to do? What does it take to get that relationship in place to be able to really work some deals? Or is it possible or not possible? How do those two roles match? Well, this potentially could be a problem with electing someone with no government experience, although I'm sure Rick Langeardi would say he has experienced making deals just not in government. It'll require the mayor to have a close relationship with our congressional delegation. Governor Ege is so unpopular now that I expect that he is going to almost be cut out of a lot of this. I mean, you can only do that to a certain extent, but I would say for the mayor, the more important relationship is their relationship with the Speaker of the House, the House Finance Chair, Sylvia Luke, the Senate and the Senate Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz, those actually will probably be more important relationships going forward because the governor has put himself in a position where he's so unpopular that he doesn't have the ability to really move public opinion. He certainly doesn't have any influence in the legislature. So I'm not sure how much, even if they did have a close relationship with the governor, I'm not sure how much of an ally he would be. I would actually at this point look to their relationship with the legislature. That's really interesting. Now, is that a decent question about the mayor and the governor as I asked it? I mean, was or was that a naive? No, no, I think normally that would be a very important relationship to have. I mean, someone who was very close to the governor, but although Kirk Caldwell is very close to Governor Ege, that wasn't always necessarily true, but it became true when they were mayor and governor had mayor Caldwell helped him a lot in his reelection campaign. I don't know how much that's really helped the mayor so far. And he has a much more contentious relationship with the leadership in the legislature. So normally that would be a key role, but governors, much like presidents, when they have terrible approval ratings as Governor Ege does, that means they lose a lot of their political power. And it means that they're just not in a good position to advocate for the things the city will need, which eventually will have to come from the legislature in terms of appropriations. And then also our congressional delegation is gonna play a big role here. And I don't know the relationship Blangiarity has. I know that Amamiya has a very close relationship with Senator Schatz. So that would be a real point in his favor. Yeah, the senior senator, yeah. Okay, that's really interesting. Well, you know, both of them are going on and on about not raising taxes, and that includes their goals for rail. They're both saying should go to Manoa, but it's only gonna probably get to wherever it's gonna get to. And for that, and maybe it's gonna be wherever it's gonna get to because they're very reluctant to raise any tax or to say that they're gonna raise any taxes that's gonna help us get that rail here into midtown. But what I wanted to ask you from your studies, what are the pressures that come in to drive politicals and people in these elected offices to do something they said they wouldn't do? I mean, George Bush did this, not gonna raise taxes. And then of course he was up against it. So with these two, it's very likely that they're gonna be up against it too in that role. So what is it that makes them go against what they said, especially in our community, which is relatively small, comparatively? Part of it's just need. I mean, part of it is that they sometimes don't even have a choice. I mean, no politician wants to raise taxes. That's rarely a popular position, especially at the city and county level. They may be in a position where they have no choice. If the city simply can't survive, it doesn't have the revenue without that. Now they'd have to do it in a very careful way. I mean, property taxes, raising property taxes is the third rail of Hawaii politics. And we have some of the lowest property tax rates in the country, although the, because property values are so high, people actually pay quite a bit in property taxes, but as a percentage it's very low. But raising that would be the last thing the mayor would wanna do. I honestly think that they really are both banking on a big bailout from the federal government for both the rail and for the city.  I think it will be, they will be in a very, very tough position. I'm honestly not sure what they will do without that. I mean, there's only so much revenue the city can raise and increasing property taxes or increasing taxes generally in an environment like this is a terrible, a fiscal decision. Well, do you see them acting differently with regard to being compassionate and more generous with cultural communities that are minority? Do you see, maybe we're getting close to time, Andy, here, but maybe if you can say anything about helping these communities that are so hit hard by COVID and without resources. No, I think they both will share tremendous compassion. They both care deeply about this community. I don't think there's really a distinction there you can draw, but I think they do have different approaches. And I think Blangiarity's approach is more kind of coach, direct leadership and Amamia really is more about close listening. Well, okay, we're at a low time here and means we'll have to wrap it up, Colin. So I'm Stephanie Stull Dalton. This is the Think Tech show of the state of Hawaii. And we've been talking with Dr. Colin Moore from UH Manoa, the director of Public Policy Center. And I'll see you again in two weeks on the next state of the state of Hawaii. So mahalo to Colin Moore and also for all of your attention in the audience. Thank you, aloha.


through the various social media platforms, what I think of them, and which ones you might want to consider using. So this was asked by one of my viewers. He asked, George, there's Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, et cetera, which ones should we use? And so I've gone ahead and written a blog post about it. I'm gonna post this later. After I finish this video, I'll post a link to this here. But let me just kind of talk you through the various ones that I use that I recommend. The first and most important one in my opinion, you might not, hopefully doesn't surprise you, but it's Facebook. Couple reasons, one, Facebook is still the largest social media platform by far. It's way larger. I mean, the next one, so Facebook is at about 2.2 billion users. So I think it's the majority of the people who are on the internet on planet Earth are active on Facebook, not just to have an account, have an account, that's even more people, but active at least once a month. And most of the people who are active once a month are active daily on Facebook. So it doesn't matter who you're trying to reach. It doesn't matter if you're trying to reach executives, corporate executives, or you're trying to reach moms of toddlers, any demographic you're trying to reach, the easiest place to reach them is through Facebook. And particularly, I wanna say Facebook ads, okay? So because you're gonna start posting on Facebook and no one's gonna see what you post. I mean, if you post on your timeline, on your personal timeline, your friends and family will see it. But to really reach the people who are going to hire you, who are going to buy your services and your programs, you've got to use Facebook ads. The other thing, the other way to do it is just to network using Facebook groups, but that's a lot of work.  So the easiest way is to learn how to use Facebook ads so that you can reach exactly the corporate executives, the moms with children, the people with mindfulness interest, the people who are interested in, who are divorced or are particular relationship status. I mean, you can detail things exactly. And this Facebook is the world's, where the world gathers on the internet basically. And so you can reach them through ads and it's the easiest way to do it. More than any other social media platform, Facebook is the easiest to reach the people you need to reach to grow your business basically. So I'm a big fan of Facebook because it's been amazing for my business and for my clients who are using my methodologies. So anyway, biggest platform by far and easiest. And also the other thing I like about Facebook is that it allows multiple types of media. I mean, you could do video and Facebook makes video so easy with Facebook Live, which is how I'm making this video. Facebook Live is great because it's one take, you know, it will cure you of perfectionism because if you record video just by yourself and try to upload it later, how many takes are you gonna do? You're gonna be per, oh no, I started that wrong. Let me start over. I mean, I do that, you know, I do multiple takes, but when I'm on Facebook Live, I know that I've got one take. Just gonna go ahead and make it right now. That's it and you'll learn over time that it's always okay. No matter how poor your delivery is, no matter how stumbling like I am right now, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine.   Think about this. Are you trying to be perfect? Are you trying to be good? Then you're only gonna build an audience where people require you to be good or to be perfect. I show up as I am. We're in the same thing every day, you know, not being perfect, not even being good. I don't even try to be good. I don't even try to be good. I just try to show up. That's all I try to do. I just show up. Okay. That's a whole other talk, but anyway, I'm gonna keep going with the social media platform. So Facebook allows video. It allows text only, you know, I do text only all the time. So writing articles, it allows obviously images. If you wanted to do audio only, you can use a tool called tunes to tube. That's not part of Facebook, just Google tunes like iTunes or music. Tunes to T-O, Tube, T-U-B-E like YouTube. Tunes to Tube will transform any audio into a video with some image or something you want, you want. And then you can upload that to Facebook as well. Anyway, so Facebook is the most flexible and the biggest and the easiest to reach anybody you wanna reach. So why are you using anything other than Facebook? Honestly, I'm baffled. Now, the thing is people go, well, I don't like Facebook because of their privacy issues. Facebook has privacy issues because they make it easy to reach people. That's why they have privacy issues, right? You know what I mean? Like Facebook knows so much about each of us that they then sell the information they know about us to advertisers like me, so I can reach you. So I'm like, I wanna reach people who, Facebook, please give me people who you have seen are into, they click on links that are related to mindfulness or they click on links that are related to entrepreneurship or they, based on their posts, they seem like they're probably mothers of children of this age. Based on their posts, they seem like they're corporate executives. Facebook logs all that data and go, what we're gonna do with this data? We're not gonna expose any individuals. We're not gonna do that, but we're gonna take this aggregate data and we're gonna sell it to advertisers like George Cowell and of course, bigger corporations too so that people like George Cowell can reach exactly the kind of people they're trying to reach. And advertisers like me can't know literally the names of the people I'm reaching, Facebook keeps that private, but I can know that I'm basically reaching these types of people. So that's why Facebook has privacy issues because they make the advertisers happy like me and like you by being able to reach the people we need to reach for our businesses to grow. So let's stop giving Facebook flak for the privacy stuff because they're not selling any of our individual data, anybody, they don't care. They just want to make advertisers like me happy and to be able to grow our businesses. Come on, let's give it a break here. Like nobody has ever suffered privacy issues on Facebook. I mean, of course there's always exceptions with 2.2 billion people. There's always a few exceptions, but vast majority of people, it's only helping people to match people who have certain interests with advertisers who wanna reach them with a certain product or service or message. And Facebook is trying to say, how can we make that match better? Because nobody likes advertising only when advertising is irrelevant.  Why are you trying to reach me with a car advertisement? I'm not in the market for a car. Well, it's because the advertiser doesn't know enough about me. If I revealed more of myself to the advertiser, oh, yeah, that guy's not in the market for a car. He's much more interested in a pillow. Okay, let's reach him with a pillow ad. Oh, oh, I didn't know that there was this kind of pillow. I'm so glad I saw this ad. Otherwise I wouldn't have known, right? Do you see what I mean? So what Facebook is trying to do is like, we don't care about trying to expose individuals, like individual people. We're trying to aggregate data from individuals. Sure, but aggregate data is to sell it to advertisers so that we can make the advertising a better match so that everybody's happier. The advertiser's happier and you, the consumer, are happier because you're not seeing random ads. You're seeing ads that are like, well, I didn't know that. That's really cool. I'm so glad I know this product because that's exactly what I need right now. That's all. And of course, Facebook is also getting criticized for political advertising. That's Russian meddling in U.S. election, that kind of stuff. Well, again, that's because of the power of the advertising platform.  And that's, of course, on the consumer themselves to be more mindful that, okay, I'm being stoked into anger here. Is that a good thing or not? It's called liberty. It's called freedom. That's why it's like, we can't just blame the corporations for everything. We have to look at ourselves and go, be mindful and go, hmm, am I being manipulated here towards anger? Well, I could, you know, let me check myself and go, hmm, yeah, I'm not gonna, I can, and you could block any advertiser you want on Facebook. That's the other thing. Anyway, I'm a big fan of Facebook, as you can see, but if you have any objections, please comment below and we can talk about it. But I think all, every objection I've seen to Facebook has been questionable. It's like, have you thought it through? Have you really thought it through what they're trying to do here? Well, let's talk about it. I'm very happy to talk about it because I've thought it through for years. So anyway, and I've seen it grow many, many small businesses like mine. So I'm like, Facebook has only done so much good and the other, but the other thing is, some people say, well, I don't wanna use Facebook because I don't wanna be online all the time. I don't wanna be nervous about checking. Look at me, I'm so calm. Well, except here, I'm very passionate about a topic, but I work in such a calm way. I'm never nervous. I don't check my phone all the time. I'm not like, whoa, I better respond to here. I don't respond to any of you, as you could probably tell. I just try to like or love your comments to me and occasionally I might respond to you, but boundaries people stop blaming Facebook for everything. You're getting an opportunity to practice better boundaries for yourself. It's like everybody's blaming big corporations and yes, we need to blame them for certain things like being so profit driven, but we also need to look at our own behavior and go, am I allowing this tool to destroy my brown boundaries with technology? You have to look at your own mindfulness. It's an opportunity for you. A very addictive tool is an opportunity for you to practice mindfulness. That's all it is. So you gotta check yourself, right? So anyway, anyway, so let me keep going here. 10 minutes just on Facebook. This can't be too long of a video. So Facebook is my first and go to social media platform for text, video, audio if you wish, and images and easiest way to reach the kinds of people you need to reach. Number one, number two is YouTube. YouTube is the second largest social media, yes, it is a social media platform. They've been emphasizing those friend features now for a few years and people go there, it's content platform at the very least, okay? So people go there to look for information, to learn, to be entertained, to be uplifted, to be curious about things. So similar to Facebook, you know? So YouTube has 1.9 billion active users. Facebook has 2.2 billion, YouTube has 1.9, and YouTube is also the second largest search engine on the internet after Google. So meaning people go to Google first and the secondly, they go to YouTube to search for a topic they're interested in. So I'm on YouTube obviously, many of some of you are seeing this on YouTube. But the thing about YouTube is it's really hard to get traction. Meaning it's hard to get any views on your videos.  Now, no one's gonna watch your videos, nobody. Unless you promote that video yourself through your own email newsletter, through other social media platforms, you have to start the whole engine going. You have to promote your own YouTube video before YouTube will start giving you some benefit. The other thing is you have to learn YouTube SEO, YouTube search engine optimization, which I'll be honest with you, I haven't really learned it. I have learned a little bit of it, but I need to learn a lot more of it myself and that's on my to-do list later in the year to learn about YouTube SEO because if you learn YouTube SEO and how do you learn YouTube SEO? You go to YouTube and you search YouTube SEO and the people whose videos turn up at the top are obviously really good at YouTube SEO and you can learn from them. So if you get good at YouTube SEO then you could potentially get a lot more views. But the reason why I've uploaded my videos to YouTube even though I get a lot less views than on Facebook. Facebook is way, Facebook Live particularly is way easy to get a lot more views. I get 10, I get 10 times as many views on Facebook than I do on YouTube. Let that sink in. However, in the long term, YouTube is a search engine. So people keep searching the topics that you're talking about and let it be years that your video made five years ago can suddenly go viral or can suddenly get at least a couple hundred views that it didn't get before. So let YouTube be a long-term thing, okay? Look at YouTube as a long-term thing where your videos are kept then where you try to learn SEO to try to get the keywords right, all that stuff. And look at Facebook as a short-term thing. People don't really search Facebook, not really. I mean, there's a search bar but relatively, people just kind of look at what's new on Facebook. So Facebook is good for short-term engagement. YouTube is much better and YouTube is better for long-term engagement. Okay, so that's how I would separate that. The third platform I'll talk about is looking at my notes here, Instagram. Okay, so Instagram has been an up-and-coming social media platform for years now and it's still the third darling of the social media marketer world. And Instagram is at one billion users that would it be. So Facebook is at 2.2 billion. YouTube is at 1.9. And these are numbers from January of 2019. So a few months ago but still the latest numbers that we can credibly have. Facebook 2.2 billion, YouTube 1.9 billion, Instagram 1 billion.  So Instagram is at 1 billion users now and it is a different demographic. I'd say Instagram users tend to be more like yuppies, young urban professionals. Yeah, of course there's some rural people. There's always exceptions but if you wanna reach people who are a little bit younger, not that they're in their 20s only but I would say 20s to early 50s and they tend to be more professional people and kind of entrepreneurial people and more style-driven people. More image, obviously Instagram is about images. So if you have to be comfortable posting images and I am not a photographer, I don't like to post even photos of my dog or whatever, I don't like to post photos. So I just create, I create like image quotes or image ideas and post that to Instagram with the caption being a short article that people can read if they want, you know, to kind of get my message more. So I use Canva, C-A-N-V-A to create my Instagram images. When I give you the blog post associated with this video, you'll get more details and you'll get another video where I talk about how to use, how I use Canva. So okay, so Instagram I think is, and also Instagram makes advertising really easy and Instagram ads are actually even cheaper than Facebook ads. So you definitely should consider using Instagram ads as well to reach the kinds of people you wanna reach. Okay, definitely, definitely, definitely consider that.  Instagram also has live video. So after I make Facebook videos, I go and make an Instagram live video and so my Instagram feed is basically my live Instagram videos, which I recommend up to 10 minutes only, 10 minute cap, whereas Facebook, I can go as long as I want. Instagram, please cap it at 10 minutes if you want it to show up in your Instagram feed. Okay, so Instagram live, Instagram feed, video and also images. So that's what I recommend for Instagram if you wanna use that platform. And then fourth, let me talk about Medium.com. Medium.com is where bloggers go to put their blogs in addition to their own website. So of course you should have a blog on your own website, ideally, but if you wanna do writing, you should probably also start a Medium.com account and just copy and paste your blog post there. Put it on your website first, okay? And let Google index it, just give it a week or so and then put that on Medium.com. Now, Medium.com is not where you're gonna get a lot of traction either. You're gonna post articles to Medium.com. You're like, George, no one is viewing my Medium.com articles. Just like YouTube, you have to start promoting your Medium.com articles first. So if you notice my email newsletters, I give you snippets and then I send you to my Medium.com articles. So that's my email newsletters I send you to my Medium.com, not even to my own website. I send you to my Medium.com articles because Medium.com I think is a good place to potentially get viral traffic if people clap up your articles there and they might share it then more people from Medium.com might see it. So I think there's something like, there's only like about a hundred million active users on Medium. So look at this, Facebook 2.2 billion, you know, YouTube almost 2 billion, Instagram 1 billion, Medium.com is something like a hundred million users. I could be wrong, it could be like getting close to 150 million. So it's relatively small, but Medium.com users are much more, yeah, much more professional because they are writers, they are thinkers, they're more thoughtful people, okay, leaders, executives, so culture creators, culture leaders, Medium.com, so you have to learn how to promote your articles on Medium.com also. Otherwise no one's gonna look at it. Next one I'll talk about is LinkedIn. So LinkedIn, here, let me just give you a shortcut on LinkedIn because I don't want to keep this video too long. LinkedIn is basically a professional resume directory. So do not stop being concerned about posting content to LinkedIn. Unless you are a career coach or a career consultant or unless you are a recruiter or in your HR or you're an IT, LinkedIn is not a great use of time to post content there. I do it because I'm in marketing and I should know LinkedIn, so that's why I still post content there. But the content I post there is basically a duplicate of what I post to Twitter. And it's basically an image quote in my YouTube videos. It literally takes me another two minute, one minute to also post to LinkedIn, but I don't think it's worth most people's time. I think LinkedIn should just be, you go there once a year to update your profile there with anything, and any big news professionally, you can post it as a post on LinkedIn. I think that's all you should be doing. The most productive use of LinkedIn really is one-on-one contact with other LinkedIn users. Thoughtfully, don't mass message people, but study people's profiles who could be a potential client or potential referral source and message them in a way that is a win for them, not just for you. So message them in a way where you're like, you have to be clever at this. I don't have time to go into this on this video, but you have to be thoughtful and clever and message one person at a time after having studied their profile. That is productive use of LinkedIn, not by posting content, hoping, hoping, hoping, people will like and find your content. That's ridiculous on LinkedIn, okay? And then Twitter. Twitter is also kind of a waste of time for most people. It's great for politics, right? But if you go to Twitter and start trying to hope you get famous and get seen, use hashtags, it's a waste of time because Twitter is, it's hard to compose a good tweet. A tweet is only up to 280 characters now. It's hard to make something that people go, ooh, that's so interesting. And plus, you have to promote your own Twitter profile. You could use hashtags, but a lot of bots, bots will follow you, not real people, but bots. So Twitter, I think, is a waste of time. Don't even do Twitter unless you're really fascinated by it. You love using it for your own as a consumer and you said, well, I might as well try to use it professionally. You gotta learn that. You gotta engage with other people on Twitter, comment on their tweets. That's really how you start getting traction, but I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of trying to use Twitter professionally as a business. Eventually, I'll learn Twitter advertising too, but that's me.  I tried all of them. I just don't find a reason to use it besides what I've already described. Oh, Reddit also, I use Reddit as a consumer, but it's really hard to get traction there because people on Reddit are very critical. So Quora is another one where you can post answers to people's questions and that could be a good thing, but I just rather use my own blog and I have a newsletter, I have an audience already, but if you don't have an audience, maybe consider answering some questions on Quora because that does get a lot of traffic. Bottom line, if you're gonna choose one, just go from the top of this video. Just go from the top of this video or the blog post associated and just go from there. So start with Facebook ads. That's number one.  I just think it's a smartest business decision. If you're not using Facebook ads, I don't understand what you're doing on social media marketing, honestly. I don't get it. $30 a month is all you need to spend. Even $10 a month is better than most businesses. Do you have $10 a month? If so, please try to spend $30 a month on Facebook ads. You'll get more traction than on any other social media platform. I just don't get it if you're not doing it. I really don't understand why. You probably don't understand it. That's why you're not doing it. Learn it. I have a course, of course. I sell an online course about Facebook ads so you can learn it from me or learn it from anybody else if you wanna try that. But I think my course is unique because it does talk about more authentic marketing on Facebook and more quality-driven Facebook ads rather than quantity, just the numbers. So anyway, let me thank those of you who are here. Shelley, hopefully I answered your question about Medium.com. I think it takes a lot of work to make Medium.com worthwhile. I think it's better to use Facebook if you're gonna choose between Facebook and Medium. Just use Facebook for your articles, for your written content, and use Facebook ads. Medium is a tough road to home, honestly. It's not easy. It's really not easy. All right, so thank you, Gudrun, for your comment and Alejandra. Great to see you here. Let's see here. Gudrun says, I found you on YouTube looking for info about Zoom. Yeah, so YouTube, sometimes some of my videos go wild, like my Zoom tutorial went wild, but usually most of my videos only get 30 views on YouTube, whereas on Facebook, it gets about 300 views. So let's see here. So yeah, no, don't worry about posting articles on both your blog and on Medium. It is a myth. There is no such thing. Okay, now, there is such a thing as duplicate content penalty, but it's not how most of us think of it. It's not duplicate content. This is called syndication. You put it on your blog first, you wait a week, and then you put it on mean.com. Google looks at places like Medium and LinkedIn and any other credible places as syndication, not duplicate content. That's not the same idea that people are so scared of getting punished by Google. That's webpages, that's spammers who create hundreds of websites that all duplicate the same content. That's not the same idea. So please stop talking about duplicate content. That's people are getting it wrong. This is called syndication. Google loves that, so don't worry about it, basically. Yeah, Douglas, it's not, duplicate content is not the same. Medium.com, Google understands Medium.com as a place where people syndicate content from their own blogs. That's not the same thing. LinkedIn article, same thing. Google sees that as, okay, you're syndicating content or other places like entrepreneur.com, Inc.com. Yeah, you're syndicating content there. Google understands that. That's not duplicate content, people. It's not that you're not being penalized by Google. Look it up, okay? Just Google is putting your stuff on Medium and LinkedIn duplicate content penalty? Google it. I've read the articles. I haven't seen an evidence for that. It's only a benefit, okay? So let's see here, any other interest? Douglas says Pinterest is great way to get viral. 50% of my web traffic comes from there. You know, I've also seen that to be the case, but Douglas, that's hit and run traffic.  I think Pinterest is good for fashion. It's good for food. It's good for art, but I don't think most of us are in those industries and I just don't, I don't see a case for using Pinterest. Because again, any traffic you get from there is just organic image-based traffic. They're just trying to take your images. That's all they care about. They're not really there to, oh my gosh, I'm so interested in your content now. I'm gonna hire you. I'm gonna read more. Now, not really, in my view also. So let's see here. Thank you, Shweta, for your endorsement on the Facebook ad course. And okay, so anyway, I think that's all for now. I hope this is helpful. Any other questions or comments, please add below. And yes, you might know something, obviously. Some of you will have read something that I haven't read. So please go ahead and put that information in there and feel free to disagree with me because I don't have all the answers. Of course, I'm giving you what I have seen from my own experience and what I've seen from clients, but you may have additional experience or other experience. And please feel free to put that in there. And thank you, people like Douglas and for giving their experience as well. So all right, everybody, that's all for now. Hope this helps and I'll see you later.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with something that looks really, really cool. 2020 Leaf Best of Multisport Premium Edition. Yeah, it better be premium. Look at that price point right there. There's a lot of stuff that we can chase here. You know, some stuff is probably under that price point, but some stuff is gonna be way over that price point. And they're giving away this too. Somewhere in, someone's gonna have, maybe us. That's gonna be awesome. So I'm a good looking sell sheet. So hey, fingers crossed. Good luck to Jack, Debra, Chris, who's watching live right now, and Jason.  Jack, Debra, and Jason, congrats to you. You won those spots. So luck on your side. We're gonna pop open this little case first. There it is right there. And then in the order that the hits are pulled, I'm gonna type those in. And then we'll roll the dice, we'll randomize your names, randomize the hits. We'll match you up and see what you get. Pretty exciting. I'm a little nervous for you guys. There it is. I don't know how many they made, but at that price point and the kind of hits they're giving away, I don't think they made very many. Is my guess. We only have, we only got one more. So there's one more case in the shop right now, jaskyscasebreaks.com. You know how this is configured. Oh, okay, so it looks like that. Four buybacks per box, just one big box. So four buybacks per box. There it is, premium edition. My assumption is they did not squeeze the four boxes of NT in here, it's probably a redemption. And my hope is that all four cards are just extremely solid so everyone gets something good, you know? That's always my hope in these random hit breaks. All right, first one out of the gate, Gemmint 10. That's a good sign. Oh, Jammarant. I've heard of this guy. This guy's pretty good. From Donner's Optic Basketball, not a hollow, just a base version, but that's pretty nice. All right, so that's the first one I'll type in. Second one is 1974 Tops Baseball. And it's Dave Winfield. We've been seeing some of these, this 74 design in archives, which is on jaskyscasebreaks.com right now with a SGC grade of nine. All right, next one we have 1989 score football. Troy Aikman, PSA 10, Gemmint 10 Troy Aikman. These are excellent grades here. Look how young he looks there. All right, and the final one is another, it's a basketball card, 2007, Tops Chrome Basketball. It's a mint nine, PSA nine, and it's Kevin Durant, nice. That is awesome. Rookie, Kevin Durant. I always forget that he had like a year or two. A year, two years maybe? In Seattle, before they went to OKC. So that's kind of cool seeing him in that Supersonics logo. Bring that back. Nothing hidden underneath. All right. All right, like I said, we've got one more in the store. So check it out. I'll leave the recording running. There's only a couple hits here, or four hits here. So we have the Jama Rant, PSA 10. We got the Dave Winfield, 1974 edition, SGC grade number nine. We got Troy Aikman, 89 score, NFL, PSA 10, actually specify the product here too. And the fourth and final one, Kevin Durant. Rookie, Kevin Durant from Tops Chrome, basketball. Mint nine. Four excellent cards right here. So good luck to the four right here. Let's roll it, let's randomize it. One and a four, five times for each list, your names first and the hits. Five times, one, two, three, four, and fifth and final time. After five times, we got Jason, Chris, Jack and Deborah. Five times, one and a four for the hits. Good luck, nervous. One, two, three, four, and fifth and final time. After five times, we got Jha, Dave, Troy and Kevin. Nice, so there you go. Excellent hits. Jason with the Jama Rant, PSA 10, Chris Erickson with the Dave Winfield, 1974, Tops Baseball, SGC nine, Jack B with the Troy Eggman, 89 score, PSA 10, and Deborah with the Kevin Durant, 0-7, Tops Chrome, basketball, PSA nine. All excellent stuff. Thanks for watching everybody. I'm Joe for jaskyscasebreaks.com. We got one more in the store, you know, and if this is a hint of the quality of these cases, I think well worth chasing. And if you don't want to buy a full spot straight up, you do have a chance to try to win spots in those mini breaks. So check that out on jaskyscasebreaks.com as well. I'm Joe, I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


I know, isn't that awesome? I hope these cameras are picking up that color. Mine's not justifying that color at all.  Yeah. That is enough. Next time you stay, I'm on it. The phone is not focusing. I think it's something really special. Yeah.


Do you remember a time when people used to say gay or use the R-word to describe things and people that they did not like? Autism and the many phrases that tend to come with it such as sped or acoustic are now taking this place. I think many of us are partial to an autism joke here and there, but only if it has some substance and sense to it. But it's being thrown about willy-nilly and in a lot of cases used as a flat out insult. Look, I'm all for tasteful comedy and freedom of speech, but there comes a point at which creators, people who have large platforms out there, need to stop stigmatising autism as a negative term. Normalising such a trend in language can have very real effects on the way that people treat autistic people. The truth is, autistic people are a protected group, and many of us have experienced disproportionate levels of bullying and harassment in our lives, both at school and in the workplace. So I implore you, please don't add to this further. What are your thoughts? Let me know down in the comments.


What's up guys it's Josh and we're back again with another video. Today we're going to take a look at another one of my college essays. For any of you out there that are interested in studying engineering or applying to one of the engineering schools of the Ivy League colleges, this is the essay and this is the prompt that you will have to write. So here's the essay that is submitted to Princeton and Yale when applying to their engineering schools. As our team gathered around the launch pad all focus was on the rocket. Five. Four. Would it launch? What if the igniter wasn't connected? Three. Two. Was the padding for the egg sufficient? What if our coupler was too tight? Would the parachute deploy? One. There was silence. Suddenly with a puff of gray smoke and a piercing screech our rocket shot hundreds of feet into the clouds. We waited. It slowly descended and softly hit the ground. The egg was intact and we had succeeded.  I grew up surrounded by math, science, and aviation. My father was a pilot in the Air Force and he would often tell me war stories of his sorties in the B1 bomber. I was enthralled. He sparked my interest in engineering which has continued to shape my goals in life. I had an affinity for numbers from a very young age. I would fill out blank multiplication tables and find new mathematical patterns in the Fibonacci sequence or Pascal's triangle. My father would often challenge me to paper airplane contests, always explaining the aerodynamics behind his winning plan. When living in Alabama we would upset the neighbors and shoot model rockets from our backyard. Dreams of flight consumed my consciousness. High school marked a transition in my life. I took the hardest courses offered. With basic calculus and physics in my repertoire, I now viewed the world through the optics of a physicist. Constantly trying to reconcile what I had experienced outside of the classroom with what I had learned within. Whether it was optimizing my baseball swing or trying to get the best sound of my violin, I saw physics everywhere. My studies were put into practice with an end-of-the-year AP Physics project. I was tasked with designing and constructing a rocket that would meet specific altitude and flight time performance requirements while safely carrying an egg as a payload. This allowed me the opportunity to apply the concepts and formulas I'd worked so hard to learn. The project was a success, leading my physics teacher to gather students for a new rocketry competition team. As president, I am leading the team to this year's Team America Rocketry Challenge. My team and I are designing and testing a new rocket to the competition specifications for our qualification flights this spring. Although I want to pursue a career in aerospace, my goals are more ambitious. I want to change the world with my research. My generation will lead the resurgence of manned space travel, and I'm determined to use the lessons I have learned in the classroom to bring success to that program. I want to be the Warner Von Braun of the aerospace engineering effort that rejuvenates our nation's space program and puts a man on Mars. And I believe Yale's engineering program is the best way to get there. Alright guys, that was my essay. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I really enjoyed writing this essay for myself because I got to talk about one of my favorite extracurriculars, rocketry team. I think anyone that's pursuing engineering enjoys writing this essay because they get to talk about their own personal experiences in physics and engineering. If you guys are wondering why I haven't been responding to any of your comments or engaging with you guys at all, it's because I'm probably hiking through the mountains in Massachusetts right now. I'm on a pre-orientation trip before I show up to Yale in a couple days, so I'll be back online soon. If you guys enjoyed the video, drop a like and hit that big red subscribe button to support more content for me in the future, especially as I began my transition into college life at Yale. Comment down below any questions or concerns and I'll get to them as soon as possible when I get back. As always, I'll be back again tomorrow at 3 p.m. with another video.