Well, I notice I'm the only speaker so far not including Dr. Wolf last night who is not wearing a tie but The instructions I received from Dr. Sandra Klein were that the dress code is business casual And as you can imagine when Dr. Klein gives a command I am quick to quick to comply. So here I am I'm gonna talk about US dollar hegemony the end of dollar hegemony and what that means for the for for the business landscape in other words for the Individual entrepreneur for the business person for industries So a move from the macroeconomic discussion that we've mainly mainly been having up to now to a more microeconomic Discussion now what exactly does dollar hegemony mean for purposes of this talk, right? I mean something like the system we have now Right, so a government-issued fiat US dollar which also serves as the world's reserve currency Giving the US monetary authorities the ability to influence not only, you know business conditions Economic conditions at home, but also to have vast influence in the economies of the world to intervene in foreign policy and you know effect Governance and all sorts of issues around the world. That's what I mean by dollar hegemony So I want us to sort of think through what would it be like? What would be the implications for entrepreneurs for business people if that system were to be replaced by something else? You know not by a government-issued digital currency, which would be even worse But imagine that it were replaced, you know by something much better, you know commodity money, of course Would be great. There's not much appetite for returning to the gold standard in the west Maybe it would be the gold dinar or something else But you know imagine a world in which the the US monetary authority does not have the influence that it has now Okay, so either a commodity standard, you know, maybe it's maybe it's competing fiat currencies Who knows but let's start by thinking through, you know how you know What are the basic decisions that businesses entrepreneurs investors make sort of under conditions of of real money and then we'll address how dollar hegemony Makes those decisions much more difficult. Okay, so let's start, you know as as Economics teachers like to do with Robinson Crusoe I'm not sure if that's exactly what he looked like, but you know imagine Crusoe on his island and You know, he's he's you know pulling fish out of the sea with his hands and eating them on the spot Or he's eating coconuts that just sort of fall from the trees, right? So there's not much There's there's not much planning. There's not much He doesn't have capital capital goods. He doesn't have tools. He doesn't have a complex economy He just has a sort of an immediate consumption-based economy, but now imagine that he has the idea, right? You know, hey, I could catch more fish with a fishing net rather than you you know, just using my bare hands Now, of course, he's got a there's some forward thinking that's required some planning required now, right? You know, he has to refrain from consumption Maybe, you know, several days in advance to build up a stock of fish He can eat on the day in which he's building a net gathering the materials and assembling them, you know instead of Grabbing fish out of the ocean and eating them or maybe he has to go a few days He has to fast for a few days Of course, the reason he would do that is because he imagines that once he has the net He'll be able to catch more fish And have a higher standard of living than he did before but but he's got it and you know engage in a period of sort of You know thoughtful economic planning to figure out if he wants to do this at all and if so What's the best way to do it? He has to engage in production in other words as Murray Rothbard describes it in man economy and state Production is the use by man of available elements of his environment as indirect means as cooperating factors with his labor to arrive eventually at a consumer's good that he can use directly To arrive at his end in other words production is purposeful human action to create intermediate goods Capital goods so-called that are not consumed directly, but can be used to produce things that can be consumed in the future So once Crusoe begins thinking about production, right? He's what he's really doing is transforming You know features of the natural environment like a bamboo stick Right into something that he can actually use as a net or a spear or whatever kind of Equipment he would now have available for catching fish. So production is about transformation of goods into other goods It involves it implies human purpose right purposeful human action in Mises terminology It also implies the passage of time Right, he's got to put in some effort today in building that net so that he can consume You know the bounty of the ocean in the future so his hey He has some sort of a time perspective here and it also involves some uncertainty Right, I mean it's possible the net won't work the net will fail It won't actually allow him to consume more fish than he did before and his effort will have been wasted So the decision-maker Crusoe in this case, you know, he needs some kind of a tool Some some mechanism some algorithm some means of thinking, you know for deciding if if building a net is a good idea And if so, how should he build the net he needs some way to compare the value of present means In other words the labor that he will devote to making a net as opposed to eating fish catching fish and eating them with the value of the future ends I Eat all the fish that he'll enjoy once he has this fishing net Okay, no, I mean Crusoe himself, you know the literal Crusoe I mean it's Tom Hanks, so he can do anything but the literal Crusoe, you know, he can just sort of He can wing it, right? I mean he just sort of thinks through well with a net I could probably get you know ten fish and here's how much I like fish I mean it's not that difficult for him to make a reasonable estimate of Whether it's a good idea to build a net or not, but in a modern industrial advanced economy with all of its complexity Right with you know an almost infinite array of possible means that could be used to produce an end You know like this little slide clicker I'm holding in my hand think of all the different materials that could be used to make it the different kinds of Technologies that could be embedded inside different production methods production location You know factory type should the firm that's producing these things be organized as a corporation or a proprietorship or whatever I mean there's an almost infinite array of possibilities How in the world could a purposeful human actor figure out is it a good idea to take time and effort to make these things today? You know in anticipation of selling them in the future and getting some money for selling them and if so What's the most the most effective way to produce this good or service? Well, we do have a planning tool Entrepreneurs do have a technique for figuring this out It's what Ludwig von Mises called economic calculation Now economic calculation is familiar to most of us in the context in which Mises first introduced it I eat the socialist calculation debate So Mises introduced the concept of economic calculation to explain why socialism would fail because under socialism All goods and services are owned by the state So there's no exchange of inputs like labor or bamboo sticks Or you know whatever so there are no prices for those intermediate goods no prices for factors And therefore no way for entrepreneurs to calculate to compare the value of future ends With the value of present means expressed in sort of a common unit because there are no market prices in that economy But Mises argument is much more general. It's not just about socialism It's about what production is and what entrepreneurs do and the importance Indeed the the necessity of having prices expressed in a common monetary unit In order to compare across time and across space So let me illustrate with what I mean. This is a picture that I use in my entrepreneurship classes and It's it's it's a little sort of graphical depiction of what the entrepreneur does what entrepreneurship is Right, so, you know, the entrepreneur begins with if you look in the blue box there The entrepreneur has some subjective attributes beliefs preferences Expectations right, you know, what do I want to do? How important is commercial success for me? What how do I feel about work-life balance, etc, etc I have some beliefs about possible future states of the world if I create a company and build these little clickers I can sell them and make a lot of money and live a nice, you know, lifestyle, whatever The entrepreneur does have access to information about the past and present In other words, I know the current prices of plastic and aluminum and the laser and all the stuff that's in here, right?  Can you make one based on those? Beliefs on the part of the entrepreneur based on that knowledge based on my interpretation of the world I as the entrepreneur then I then decide whether to act or not, right? So acting could be creating a company or producing these gadgets or Producing a new version of the gadget or creating a new sort of, you know, marketing campaign to try to sell the gadget Now the entrepreneur is acting in order to bring about what he imagines the future will look like, you know prosperity success I'm on the cover of ink magazine with my little clicker and so forth, right? I act, if my action is to try to bring about that state of the world I, you know, I act in reality, but of course my ability to bring about my desired ends depends not only on my own actions, but also on the actions of other people consumers and other companies and You know potential partners and rivals and so forth So the the actual future may be different from the imagined future, right? It may be that I produce maybe I try to make these things and it's a flop You know, they don't even work you press the button and it doesn't advance the slide or you press the little laser button And it doesn't allow you to blind somebody in the audience, right? It could be that it works from a technical point of view, but consumers don't really like these things They're not willing to pay as much as I imagined or another company rushes to market with an even better product before I get mine out the door So it may be that the imagined future is is not as good. Sorry the actual future falls short of my expectations You know, I earn losses. I got to go back to the drawing board and figure it out Maybe the imagined future the actual future is even better than I imagined I've got more profits and now I can decide whether to reinvest them and so forth But this is sort of an idea of the process that entrepreneurs go through, you know Sort of you know time and time again now in order to do this in a complicated economy Right to be able to figure out. Did did reality meet my expectations? I can't do it just like Crusoe I just sort of think about it in my mind. I need numbers Right. I need I need prices of Goods and services that exist now. Well, I need prices for plastic and aluminum and glass and You know computer chips and so forth Right, I need to have beliefs about what prices will be in the future and I need to have actual prices as they materialize to know whether my beliefs were accurate or not in other words I need some system of calculation where I can compare heterogeneous items in a common unit That's exactly what the price system does Okay, just you know again some classroom examples I use you know I show something like this to my students and I say okay suppose you were going to build in this example Building a railroad. It's an example from Mises, right? No, should you should you should the tracks be made out of steel or titanium? Which is the cheapest way to lay a railroad and I show the students some information like this and they look at it They scratch their head they try to puzzle it out and a lot of times they'll say well, you know It looks like method 2 is cheaper Because you know method 1 uses 1500 1500 stuff and method 2 uses 1,100 stuff and 1,100 is less than 1,500 but but of course it doesn't make sense to add you know units of a physical material and labor into You know, there's no common denominator Now this is an easy problem to solve of course if you have the prices of these inputs Then you say how much would I have to spend to use method 1 or method 2 and I can easily see which is cheaper Likewise, you know should I use a more capital intensive or more labor intensive method of production without access to prices It's impossible to compare those but with prices it's a relatively easy almost a trivial calculation and the entrepreneur needs prices to estimate the value of his capital stock and To figure out whether he should invest in replacing used capital equipment and so forth now This is just looking at things in the present now imagine that I've got to anticipate the prices in the future How much will consumers be willing to pay for this thing? How much will I earn in sales? From the output once I've produced it how long is the production gonna take I got to take that into consideration What will be the consumer demand for my product? What will my competitors do? Will there be you know changes in the weather or or you know other Unanticipated factors that will impact the profitability of my action and this is you know not a trivial task Now imagine the monetary system is what it is today So now you know we've got cheap credit We've got the printing presses turned on at full speed We've got interest rates that are different from the natural interest rates Walter Block was talking about this in his lecture We've got constant changes in the value of money associated with monetary policy Not just the demand for money by users by people who want money, but changes in the supply of money as under the control of the central bank increases in sort of the The variability of prices the noise Associated with the price system price system and of course You know trying to figure out what the monetary authority will do meaning that business people have to be you know arm chair Psychologists as well. What what color tie did Greenspan have on and you know, what was Bernanke's Janet Yellen? You know what was her expression in the press conference trying to figure out what she's really thinking? Well actual psychologists have not had a good time lately There's been a huge attack on a lot of the academic literature and psychology doesn't replicate There have been several scandals involving data manipulation by prominent social psychologists Think about how much money entrepreneurs spend on macroeconomic forecasting Okay, this is not trying to forecast will consumers like my gadget But what will the Fed be doing between now and when my gadget hits the market? There are lots of companies that offer, you know, Fed watching kind of tools and services Of course think about all the people who are employed in the business of depreciating the currency The the federal government is one of the look well about depending on how you measure About a third to a half of all economists in the United States are employed by a government agency of one sort At least a few of those might be able to do something, you know that actually adds value Instead Okay, so so what happens in an economy like the one we have now with fiat currency a boom bus cycle You know other speakers have spoken and we'll speak more about the macro side But on the micro side think about what this means for firms for entrepreneurs and investors, right? So with artificially low interest rates and implicit government guarantees against failure, right? Lenders are incentivized to make riskier loans to less valuable projects These low interest rates also encourage entry By entrepreneurs who might be less capable than entrepreneurs who would enter if interest rates were at their natural levels You know even even you know sort of high quality entrepreneurs may be tempted to take the cheap credit Even if they know the boom is unsustainable So you get a lot of snake oil salesmen, you know who can operate in the fiat money economy who would not be able to operate as well If we had natural money, you've got so-called zombie firms. You've got zombie credit, right? So high quality entrepreneurs those who have good products and services who can satisfy the consumer have to devote Extra effort time energy resources not just to producing their product, but somehow, you know convincing market participants that they are not zombies Right, whether that's additional marketing product development Whether that's some kind of a contracting thing where they have to give up more decision rights to investors because investors are worried That this might be a potential zombie company, you know, there's their spillover negative negative spillover harms from zombie firms They negatively impact the industry and so forth So entrepreneurs have to spend their effort Figuring out how to navigate all of these other things in addition to just doing the stuff that entrepreneurs normally do Okay, there's an interesting book that was published by Liberty fund back in the 80s called economic calculation under inflation That describes from the firm's point of view Some of these additional challenges that are introduced by a world like the one that we have now a Quick comment This relates to something doctors dr. Salerno said the claim here is not that we need quote-unquote stable money Whatever that means, but only we need a monetary system that is not subject to government interference as this gentleman whom you all know Put it economic calculation Does not require stability in the sense in which that term is used It what it what it requires is a monetary system whose functioning is not sabotaged by government interference Okay, this is in chapter 15. I'll let you read the rest of the sorry chapter 12 section 5 He says economic calculation doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough Okay, so to conclude if by the end of dollar hegemony we mean a monetary unit that is less subject to political control You know price changes that reflect Changes in the value of the commodity and relative price changes for entrepreneurs that reflect changes in the relative values of goods and services They buy or sell rather than the whims of government officials and a reduced scope for government intervention more generally In other words fewer obstacles in the way of economic calculation by entrepreneurs than I say bring it


And really thank you so much to Professor Kingston Mills from Trinity College Dublin for stepping in at the last minute. Kingston is a professor of experimental immunology in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology in TCD. He's head of the Centre for the Study of Immunology at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute and he's the theme champion for immunology, inflammation and infection in TCD. Not content with being one of Ireland's best known and leading scientists. Kingston, a lot of you will also know him from his athletics career. He has a marathon PB of 213, says here 213.55, but we say 213. A half marathon PB of 63 minutes and he is also represented Ireland in the marathon at the 1987 World Championships in Rome. So thank you very much, Kingston. Thanks very much, Brian, for the introduction and thanks to Merck for the invitation also to Greta Hickey and Eamon Tierney who recommended me to Merck. So thanks to all of you. And also to Jerry Kearn and Jerry was running around the same time as myself and we ran together in many, many races. I actually roomed with Jerry in a couple of international competitions with Ireland. So Jerry was a great friend and also always the centre of attention and the hub of the party. And he's sadly lost and it's great that the foundation has been set up now in his memory and I wish it great success. So if you're coming to hear me and expect to hear how to run faster, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I know little about the science of running. I'm an immunologist and what I'm going to talk to you about is some of the sort of risks you like around running and but also some of the benefits in terms of issues related to immunology and infection in particular. And I think I'd start this by telling you how wonderful it is that you're runners and the benefit this is having on your health. This is some statistics that I dug out from a paper which showed the risk reduction in various diseases all mortality for people who exercise, especially who have exercised with objective measures of fitness that would include running of course. 45% reduction in risk of all case mortality, cardiovascular in particular, but also things like cancer. And type two diabetes, which is a very much a obesity related disorder and on an exponential increase globally. It is, you know, you don't see too many of these runners. So runners are much less instance of all type two diabetes than the general population. But other effects, benefits as well, including neurological, psychological wellbeing and also cognitive function. It's known that this is influenced by the anti inflammatory effect of exercise. So helping to fight infection is something I'm going to come back to. But that's the sort of the good side of exercise. And it's well known that as your, you know, exercise training volume increases, the benefit is actually greater. But it comes, there's a law of the finishing returns. So when you go past a particular level, especially for cardiovascular diseases, overtraining can result in loss of benefit of the exercise or reduced benefit of the exercise. And there's a number of reasons for this. Excessive exercise can result in cardiovascular problems, arrhythmias in particular. And even sudden cardiac deaths on syndrome have been associated with extreme exercise. So this is a cautionary note about over exercising infectious diseases. You've heard of sudden adult death syndrome and you've heard of athletes and sports people dying on the playing fields without any known cause with no underlying health condition. Sometimes these can be caused by underlying infections that haven't been diagnosed. So that is really important that if you do have an infection that you don't compete in, especially something like a marathon. Also, most of us, 60% of people in this room have a virus called Epstein-Barr virus in their circulation. It causes infectious mononucleosis or glandular fever. Mostly it doesn't cause us any problem. But if we're stressed and that stress can include working for examinations, it's very common in undergraduates leading up to exam time to get glandular fever, but also athletes. I suffered from myself from glandular fever when I was in my final year of my undergraduate and I was a runner at the time. And I tell you, for three months I really couldn't run. So exercise exacerbates chronic viral syndrome. Herpes is another one as well. The immune system is there to fight infection. And luckily we get infected, but luckily the immune system can deal with it. And these include viruses, bacteria, fungi, and not so much in iron but parasitic diseases. We've got an array of immune mechanisms, cells immune system, antibodies of the immune system that deal with these infections. So in a normal course of events, if we get infected with one of these microbes, we can deal with it if we're healthy. And exercise helps that. So exercise, frequent exercise can enhance the immune surveillance against pathogens, against disease-causing bacteria and viruses. And this is partly due to the redistribution of immune cells from the central reservoirs in the lymph nodes and the spleen into the circulation, making them into the tissues where the infections occur. So there's a reduced incidence of viral and bacterial infections or reduced effect of them in people who exercise. It also heightens your response to vaccination. And it limits the aging of the immune system or our bodies, all parts of our bodies age with time, including the immune system. But regular exercise has a huge impact on many aspects of aging, reducing aging in terms of neurological diseases in particular, but also the immune system. So it's really beneficial, the effect of exercise. But excessive exercise, and in particular, people who run marathons or ultramarathons, they very often get infections. And I know myself from the time I was a runner that at times of extreme training leading up to a competition before tapering down, I would often get sore throats and colds. And this is as a consequence of stressing the immune system and producing, and it's explained by the production of hormones, in particular cortisol, which suppresses the immune response. So overtraining and going into sort of a state of stress as a result can affect the immune system and our ability to deal with infection. So that's the sort of cautionary note. Listen to your body is the key thing to remember. I'm going to talk now about COVID, which is an area that I know a little bit about. And I think it's important for you to maybe think a bit about what has happened and also to say that it's not all over yet, and the effects of it are not all over. And that's what I want to say in the next couple of slides. First of all, a little bit about the disease. A lot of people get infected, don't have any symptoms, about 50%, in fact. But these people can transmit it. So that's one of the issues that we had when the COVID pandemic was at its peak. People didn't know they were infected. They weren't being tested and they were passing it on to others. And that resulted in the escalation of numbers of cases, et cetera. During the early stages of disease, it's not so much the case now because the Omricon and other variants that we have at the moment are not as pathogenic disease causing as the original ones. But the original ones, we had very serious symptoms of fever, fatigue, coughing, muscle aches and pains, and then severe disease. And I'll come back to this in the last slide. I want to talk about long COVID, you know, multi-organ damage, not just in the lungs where the infection occurs, but the kidneys and even the brain can be affected. And one of the big issues is you get the immune system responding to the virus is what's calling the problem. So the hyperinflammation and these what I call these cytokine storms are what can cause severe damage to the system or indeed can result in death. And 20% of people early on that were hospitalized with the early variants and 2% ended up in ICU and around 1% of these people died. But Omricon is 1% hospitalization and less than 0.2% in ICU and 0.06 have died. It's a little bit different now that was January statistics. The risks factor are aged, people over 70, underlying medical conditions. And I would include in that obesity, which is a medical condition, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So normal healthy runners are unlikely to be affected by the severe effects of COVID-19. That's not to say there are risks which I will come back to. Just a few statistics now, we think it's all over. But this is the world map taking from the New York Times of yesterday of where we're at worldwide with COVID right now. I mean, Ireland is a pretty good place. We're at the lower level of it, still some countries in Europe, Italy, for example, Greece in particular, but it's still pretty high levels in Russia. In Australia and New Zealand, two countries that adopted a zero COVID policy, which I have to say I was always skeptical about. And they're now paying the penalty for this in that they're having a surge that they didn't have in the first two years of the pandemic. So trying to keep it out by closing the borders didn't really work. It was almost impossible to do it. North America is still raging in the US. The US has had sort of ambivalent, a very good person Tony Fauci in charge of advising government, but the measures in place weren't nearly as effective as they were in Europe or Ireland and other countries. In terms of Ireland, we're pretty low levels now. This is the number of cases, although the case numbers now don't really reflect the real case numbers PCR testing has more or less been abandoned and antigen testing, which is very effective. And I was one of the advocates for it early. But the thing is people are not reporting the tests results. So these levels are probably a little bit higher, but the bottom line is we're in pretty good place right now. And the debt rate, of course, is much lower. It was a severe problem early in the year, which was even more problematic than the middle of 2021. Of course, the debts occurred with the early variants, even though the numbers were smaller. And now the debt rate is still there. I mean, we can't trivialize this. There are still up to 50 people a week dying from COVID, which is extraordinary. And it sort of seems to be forgotten about. Currently in hospital, we have quite low numbers, about 200. A lot of these are people who are admitted with other indications and then get tested when they go into hospital. And so they're what are called incidental cases of COVID-19. And it's around 200 to 300 at the moment. The number in ICU is also pretty small now. I think it's around 20 people in ICU throughout the country. So the problem, the acute problem we had is at least for now resolved. But look at the age profile of those who are infected. You see that in terms of case numbers, it's the middle age group between 15 and 44. Are the dominant numbers of cases? This is cumulative throughout the whole pandemic in Ireland. If you look at the number of hospitalized, it's very much due to the end at the older end. So over 65, over 75 are the dominant ones. But I point out to you that 2,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24 were hospitalized in Ireland. So it is younger people are not, were not immune to getting severe disease. So it's not just the older people. In terms of deaths, it very much was in the older cohort. But having said that, there were 100 people between the ages of 25 and 44 that died from COVID-19 in Ireland, which is quite extraordinary. What has changed everything is the emergence of these variants. So we originally had the Wuhan strain and then we had the Alpha strain and then the Delta strain, Omicron and then sublinages of Omicron, BA2, BA4 and BA5. Right now the dominant strain is BA5. This is very distinct from even from Omicron and incredibly different from Delta. And also there is no resemblance to Alpha. This is a very variable virus, much more variable than influenza. The good news is that these variants are less pathogenic. This is natural selection. They're more transmissible. And the upper respiratory tract infection is dominant over the lower respiratory tract. And that is natural selection where a virus is surviving that can transmit more effectively, but doesn't kill its host. A good pathogen doesn't want to kill its host because then it can survive longer to transmit to the next host. So this variant now, one of the big issues with even though it's less pathogenic is that the vaccines don't work as well against it. This is the some statistics from the US and I think Qatar show it's a little bit out of date now, but it can give you the general picture. So these are unvaccinated people, the number of cases compared with vaccinated. So you can see the benefits of vaccination, but it's still a significant number of people that are vaccinated are getting infected. But if you look at deaths, the unvaccinated make up the vast majority of people that have died from COVID-19, but those that have a vaccinated very few have died from the infection. One of the problems because of the change of the virus is that the effectiveness of the vaccines is dropping off. So this was the effectiveness against Delta over time. This is months after vaccination. Even after two doses with against Delta is pretty good against Omicron. It's not great. So bottom line here is the vaccines are good at preventing deaths and serious illness, but not at preventing disease infection. And what is happening now is that the two major companies that are leading the vaccine market, Moderna and Pfizer, have a new strain of the vaccine in regulatory approval at the moment. And it's already approved in the UK and expect to be approved in Europe in the coming weeks. And that will be available. I don't know when Ireland will get its share of the allocation, but if you're going to get a booster, this is really what I would recommend. So I'm just going to finish on this because this is a particularly important for athletes and runners. 30 to 70% of people with COVID report symptoms of between 12 and 24 weeks. Now that was largely on statistics based on pre Omicron. It might be quite as high as that with Omicron because this is a very mild infection in most people, especially younger people. In terms of exercise after COVID, this is just taken from the UCLA website and the advice is that people should wait at least two weeks after the cessation of symptoms before they start exercising again. And I think that's very, very, very good advice. I wouldn't go out and run the day your symptoms if you have COVID disappear. COVID pneumonia is a big issue and this occurs in some people. You can see that the red spots on this long are areas of inflammation caused usually by secondary bacterial infections that occur in some people that get COVID-19. In terms of long COVID, the instances are reckoned to be about 10%. So 10% of all people who get COVID-19 have longer term symptoms. In Ireland, the statistics from the HSC in January put this at 100,000 people in Ireland. Now, since then, we've probably had another maybe 2.5 to 3 million people infected since January. So that estimate is a serious underestimate. It's probably excess of a quarter of a million. The main symptoms of long COVID are fatigue, weakness, tiredness, 60% of people showing this, shortness of breath, muscle aches, all the sort of things you don't want to hear about if you're a runner because if you run with those symptoms, you're going to exacerbate them. More severe complications including cardiac dysrhythmias, heart attacks, pneumonia, and reduced lung function. It's not clear what's the cause of long COVID. There is tissue damage from the residual infection. Actually, the immune response against the virus may be partly responsible causing excess and prolonged chronic inflammation. In terms of treatments, treatments for COVID that work very effectively and we only found this out sort of into the middle of the first year of the epidemic was simple cork of steroids, dexamethasone, antitrombotic agents are very good in severe COVID. These are not indicative of people with long COVID and there's no real specific treatment for long COVID other than rest, unfortunately, and managing the symptoms. Indications for runners, excessive exercise may exacerbate the symptoms of long COVID, but slowly introduced mild exercise can be beneficial. So the real take home message from my talk and I'm going to finish now is that exercise but listen to your body and if you have infection, wait for it to recover before you start exercising again. Thanks very much. Thanks very much, Kingston. I think we may have time for a couple of questions. If there are any, I know, I know I have one. Just, I mean, I'm in the age category that's allowed get the third booster or is it the second booster? I can't remember what one we're on now. So I was almost first in queue, but it seems like we have a lot of booster fatigue at the moment. Is that possibly related to what you're showing about the fact that it may? Yeah, I have to be very careful answering this question because I put my foot on it with the HSC a few times already, but I'll battle on anyway. So personally, I've had two vaccines and then a booster and I've had COVID. So I'm well immune and I didn't get a second booster. I'm going to wait until the new vaccine is available to get my second booster and I'm not saying that's advice for everybody. If you're over 65, you should certainly get the fourth booster because the second booster, the fourth dose, because it will reduce your risks of getting a very severe disease or hospitalisation, but it won't stop you getting infected. Whereas the new vaccine is a good chance it will stop you getting infected. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Another question here. You'll have to shout. That was a fantastic lecture. Thank you. You mentioned about going back to the health effects and running. There's a co-optic thing going on in excess of running. Is that what you're suggesting? I'm afraid so, yeah, and I'm no expert on this now, but I think when I was a runner, I was obsessed with training and I couldn't bear to miss a day. I thought it was going to have detrimental effects on my performance. Looking back now, if I'd taken more rest days, I think I would have been a pressure performer. So that's not really answering your question, but it's all about listening to the body.  I know all of us that are, well, I'm not a runner anymore. I haven't run for years. I cycle these days. But I know that when I was running, if I was tired before I started my run, I knew there was something wrong. So this is not very scientific answer. I'm sure the scientists will find a better way of answering it, but listen to the body. If you're tired and you're exhausted before you start your run, you shouldn't be running. Thank you. I think that's what you always say to us, Murt. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Hi, I'm Jack Endler and this is Brewing for Dummies. I'm here to talk about Radler today. Radler is a style of beer that you can find in Germany, particularly in Bavaria, that is a combination essentially of beer and soda or beer and juice. So they tend to be fruity, they tend to be light. It theoretically goes back to a time when there was a big bike race and the race ended and there wasn't enough beer. The bar keep decided to cut all the beer with lemonade and then have twice as much product to sell the cyclist. Whether or not this story is true, I don't know. The style certainly lives on and they tend to be ideal for, I guess, biking.


On the 11th of March, 2023, residents of Lagos will troop out to vote for their governor. That's one of their choice. As the date of this election inches nearer, candidates from several parties, including the ruling of Progressive Congress and the People's Democratic Party, as they prepare for a showdown. Now another party that is gearing up for the contest for the highest seat in the state is the African Democratic Congress ADC. Now an aspirant for the Lagos State Gravanteo election at King Braithwaite joins us to discuss his plans for the state. It's good to have you join us Mr Braithwaite. Thank you very much. Great. We had a little chit chat before we came on and I asked you a few questions but I think the question that every person who meets with you would ask is why do you want to be governor of Lagos State and what made you decide, I mean because you had to take a lot of things for you to say, well I want to run this very chaotic state. Because I'd like to stop it from being chaotic. I'd love for these states to be the kind of place that I grew up in, a nice, wonderful city of Lagos, my Lagos. But the real push came as a result of what happened in October 2020, which anybody who was in Lagos then, that was an experience and a half. And I just, at that point, that was a watershed moment for my life. Because everybody around me, in my households, friends, neighbors, were all similarly affected and traumatized. And the question now was, so what are we going to do about it? What's up as usual, you know, had lots of different comments and people saying one thing or the other. Lots of opinions flying up and down the place. Then it just came down to, you know, is this what we're going to do? Just talk, talk, talk, talk. No action. And I just decided at that point that it just, things have to change. Things just can't remain the way they are. And with people like me, I thought, look, we just got to get involved in the political scene. And I hadn't really decided at that time that I wanted to run. That was a recent decision. But right then I decided I needed to get into politics. So it was a choice, either revolution or the ballot box, and I opted for the ballot box.  It's not necessarily come on, come on. It's something that a lot of people are apprehensive of getting involved in, but great position. But why do you think that Lagos got to where it got to? I mean, of course, it didn't. NSAS was a ripple effect of something. That's why we had the NSAS. But like you said, it's your Lagos. How have you contributed to either the positive parts of Lagos or the roles? What roles have you played in making Lagos either better or where it is? I don't want to say worse, but where we find it right now. Suddenly I would count myself as one of the persons who has played a positive role. If you're either using an Airtel line or an MTN line. We're going to take a, we're going to send you an invoice for mentioning those brands on our show. Point of fact. Mm-hmm. A fun fact. You would definitely have benefited from my involvement. I was one of the pioneer people that was involved in bringing telecoms into the Nigerian space. It was a very, very interesting period. And certainly I would like to think that by ensuring that we had modern telecommunications, very, very great customer services, that we were able to do something that brought Nigeria and Lagos into the modern age. From that point onward, you would definitely expect that we would now just be moving on a forward trajectory. Today, I'm one of the co-founders of a cloud telephony organization called KASUKU. And I continue to contribute. In terms of the grassroots, I also had an, I do write children's books incidentally, yes. So I don't know if, when you were growing up, whether you came across the tortoise stories. You didn't? I'm a bit too old. I don't remember. Well, you know, we used to, you know, be taught stories about the wise tortoise. Oh. Yes, that. And so I've written some kind of nostalgic story books. But I now use that as a leverage to get into poverty alleviation for children. And we had a program that was running with the approval of SUBEB, which is the State Universal Basic Education Board, and UNICEF, where we went through all the local governments of the state, picking some champion schools, public schools for that matter, and just really helping children to make sense of their world and to understand how they can really get into self-development and help themselves to avoid the poverty trap by learning how to earn, doing various things, simple things that can earn, and through that process we were able to get children to start saving money in the bank. We took children on experiences to banks, and it's been a very, very worthwhile experience. So I see this is very interesting, but if you were to be given the opportunity to be governor of Lagos, there's always that blueprint. You'll have 10 points, 20-point agenda being rolled out. What would be your core? What would be at the core of your strategy for turning around Lagos and making it what you call my Lagos? Okay. There are a number of key critical aspects, and they're multifaceted. Only at the core layer would be the civil service. If I had my way, I'd call it the civil partnership, because the concept of civil servant I think is an old, archaic one. We really need these guys in the civil service to become our partners. If you've ever had to do anything in government circles, it can be a real pain. Sometimes you might leave there crying. What can be done in a day? They might take you around the circles, and six months later, you still haven't achieved. You try to get the title to land and property and all that kind of stuff, you know, horrendous. So we need a civil service that really is for the people. And clearly, one of the things that they need badly is a change and a review of their remuneration structure, because I can just imagine that if somebody is earning a wage when the bag of rice was at 3,000 Naira, and they're still earning the same wage with bag of rice now at 30 or something, or do you go to the market at all? I do. I do. So I think you can bear witness that rice has gone up like 10 times since years back. But then when you talk about wages, you're looking also at the wage bill. Don't forget that maybe states like Vegas might be comfortable with raising that. But then there are also states across the federation that cannot... I mean, we've been here before with the labor, you know, asking for an increase in their wages, and that's been a drag. But there are also people who are saying the civil service is bloated. It needs to be reduced, and there has to be some re-strategizing for it to not be gulping as much money as it is gulping. So that's also a whole kettle of fish to deal with on the other hand. I think we have to be careful how we compare Lagos to other places. You know, in the UK, there's such a thing as London waiting, which means that if you live in London and you work in London, you would have an increased package because it takes account of the high cost of living in London as compared to maybe Manchester. So we would look at Lagos waiting, you know, and make this thing very realistic. I mean, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore really did something wonderful when he decided that, look, in order to move the country forward, which rests a lot on what the civil service does, they actually were able to get people into the civil service who were your A-grade people, and they paid them at the private commercial rates so that what you then get is that you get people who are energized, motivated, and who are going to be doing things, you know, the way they should. If you don't pay the civil service properly, what you're creating is an environment for graft, all right, because they will have to make up that difference. You know, you can imagine the civil servant, his wife at home saying, you know, he gives her the allowance and she says, this is not going to do, this won't cut it. So the poor chap has nothing else, no other option but to kind of fleece any and everybody, you know, that he can. So whatever it is that we want to achieve in the state, if we don't have the civil service partnering with us, we're just going to be spinning wheels. So that would be a major and a core thing. Security would definitely be another core plank and pillar. And it so happens that I've had some police training. Yes, I've had three months. You'd be surprised that the Nigerian Police College is actually very, very sound. I mean, the people there are so... So Nigerian Police College, not Scotland Yard. But of course it's a vestige of Scotland Yard and the British colonial, you know, hand down. So that training really kind of gave one and prepared one to understand, you know, the issues around security, around policing and whatever. And there's a combination of things that we will do, you know, in our government, which essentially will be about... It's a multi-layered approach. You have your neighborhood watch scheme, which we'll plug into. So you're advocating for state police? Let me put it this way. I'm advocating for local policing, okay? So local policing, which will definitely incorporate the neighborhood. For the life of me, it's sad that the police are not using walkie-talkies, you know, something as basic as walkie-talkies and communication gadgets. That certainly will have to be introduced when you have your police carrying the walkie-talkies. So communication is key. Down to the neighborhood, you know, layer. The neighborhood watch would be taught about intelligence gathering and proactive intelligence, which is going to now help because you can then identify where the different spots are that are creating nuisances. And then you layer that with these lovely things called drones. Because given the size of Lagos, there is no way that you're going to police it with lots of boots on the ground. So you need that kind of cover from the sky, okay? And the drones can, we can have a blanket of kind of what I would call a security blanket of drones, which will be able to pinpoint the action where it's happening in real time and then help the security guys to get to the spot and deal with things and nip the situation. These are very interesting points, but I want to bring you back into the party politics. Two-pronged question. Why the ADC and not the bigger parties? Again, how do you... I'm glad you didn't mention those names, because they give me nightmares. And how do you intend to defeat or upstage the opposition knowing that there is a certain party that has a stronghold on Lagos State? And of course, 2023 is a year where lots of people are expecting that the game, the game will change, but how hopeful are you and do you stand the chance? Absolutely, my dear, absolutely. The power lies in this simple anatomy called the thumb, just by getting people to believe that the power lies in the thumb. And how do you intend to get the people to believe? Because we hear this all the time, that the power lies with us, the voter and his card to get your PVC, but how do you plan to defeat these parties who will tell you they have more structures, they've been in power for so long and they know the politics of Lagos. How do you intend to break through and why did you, again, choose the ADC? Okay, simple. Give people what they want and they'll do what they need to do. Which is, what do you think that Lagosians want? People say, look, I don't have... Who am I going to vote for? That's a very, very simple question that we've not been able to answer, that we have refused to answer up to now, because the voter isn't done, all right? The voter has already shown that they do not like what is on offer. You don't go to a restaurant and they shove something, they only tell you that there's two items on the menu. You walk out of there, right? But if you go into the restaurant and then they wise up and they realize that they need to give you a very nice entree, then you choose what fits you. Lagosians have not had the opportunity to really look at what they want. So I'm presenting myself as that nice, caring guy next door who really wants to see Lagosians get what they truly deserve and what they want. Well, on that note, I want to say thank you. Unfortunately, time is not on our side. I want to say thank you, Mr. Braytrace, for being part of the conversation. You are the ADC, Governorship Aspirant, for Lagos. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me, and we will upstage them. OK, well, that's all for tonight, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for being part of the conversation. Plus, politics returns tomorrow evening, same time, and have a great evening. We'll be back tomorrow talking for development. I am Mary Annacon. Have a good evening.


Hey everybody welcome back to another episode of Retro Tech and today I've got a new restoration project I've just finished up and I thought I'd walk you through the entire process of me buying this PVM off of eBay first off and it was sold to me as is and pretty much untested so I was expecting to use it for parts but I wanted to start by showing you this incredibly bad packing job that was done on this. I had never really seen anybody pack one like this. This was probably the equivalent of about five or six boxes that were just kind of stapled together or stacked on top of each other. Now thankfully there was a little bit of foam on the front and the back once I finally got through all the layers of cardboard so the cardboard though was was pretty tough to work through and to get the PVM out of it. But anyway this was the PVM. It's a 14M4U and again I bought it thinking I would use it for possibly parts but again this this packing was just pretty much unbelievable. Sometimes you get really lucky and the bad thing is is this seller would probably sell this another one of these PVMs if they come across it and think that this was a good packing job and I think that maybe half the time this wouldn't really make it especially across the country or something but this was the only bit of styrofoam in it or packing soft materials everything else was loads and loads of just cut up pieces of cardboard recycled cardboard boxes that were stapled together and they did write this side up and fragile on the outside so the good news was it was delivered to me with the right side up and thankfully I think it just was a lot of luck more than anything it actually survived the trip. This one did come with Saran wrap around the whole monitor so at least that was nice maybe that prevented something from getting scratched or damaged but overall I was not really impressed with the shipping job and it was another thing I didn't this one had a component SDI input in the back and I'll look at more at this in a second that's the board I took the shell off here but this is the board this is not usually in these monitors but this is a component SDI board and that's just a different type of input that's not really useful unless you're doing some kind of video editing or something but I wanted to just get it kind of turned on and tested initially and also you know see what kind of shape the screen was in so I like to start it up and run a couple tests and this one like I said thankfully it survived the trip and appeared to be working fine so now in the restoration process I've already removed all the boards here and I just saved that step I've made lots and lots of restoration videos in the past and I've definitely shown how to take a part of PVM I think that's pretty self-explanatory but they're modular boards you pull them out and I know there's a lot of cables in there but if you keep them kind of relatively in the place where they came out of they're easy to get back in extreme close-up look here of this electron gun this is an 800 line tube so this is what that electron gun looks like this is the CRT gun for a trinitron where it has all three colors in one single gun as opposed to if you saw a which I'll show in a future video when I break down the difference between shadow mask and trinitron tubes kind of what the guns look like in there they're different so there's the yoke and here's a look at the boards just sprawled out on my workshop area floor I do have some extra boards here from other projects but there's a power board and this is the first thing I'm going to restore and it's one of the things I always recommend to do if you have the ability to is to recap this board this is your power supply and most of the time when there's an issue with your monitor not turning on properly or something with sometimes you'll get some screen effects but that's it's usually got to do with powering on and not staying turned on completely this is one of the first things to check are these capacitors but I honestly will do this to monitors that I get in that even when they do work good I'll go in and remove the capacitors and replace them all simply because it's a preventative thing that this particular monitor was from 1997 so that's over 20 years and rather than have this pvm working for a year or two and then possibly develop a problem because these capacitors finally go bad I'll take the preventive measure of go ahead and replace them so this is just showing the procedure that I use this is my capacitor kit for this power supply but I always try to use an issue cone caps so if you make your own cap kit you know you can pick whatever you want but that's the ones I use and this is just some close-up of my soldering and this this board it's easier to solder on than the a board which is the geometry cap kit so I recommend starting with this one because you could really get your confidence up you know and feel good about quality work on this board because again there's not all the little resistors and other smaller capacitors and things that you'll see on the other board that's a two-sided board with parts on each side so again I just like to use that flux paste and I've done a video about that too what types of materials they use but that's pretty much it you go through and clean up afterwards with some alcohol and I recede this board back in the plastic shell this one has a shield that goes back on top of it and a screw and it's pretty easy so the second one is again the trickier board and the one you really have to be cautious while you're doing and the capacitor kit I've made for this particular pvm has about 19 caps in it so you got to start off by removing this board and this is the one with your flyback transformer on it and this one was particularly dirty as well so it needed to be cleaned I mean the the dust on this is just disgusting almost but there are four screws holding that plastic plate in into the a board there so I've marked the capacitors over in this area that I'll be changing so that's what I like to do ahead of time so I just go back and mark them with a sharpie on top the ones I'm changing and yeah just check out this dust on this board here it's just super thick so I'll just go through and also clean a lot of that off before I get this thing working again I just going to use some compressed air but I'll pull these capacitors before that and you know I wouldn't recommend doing this job with anything less than probably this type of a tool that I have this HACCO desoldering tool this does a good job of getting the capacitors out but I wouldn't recommend this if you're trying to do it with say like something really low end like just plastic manual suckers that's really going to be tricky and again you'll risk damaging something because you do have to get a couple capacitors that are right next to one of the chips for this cap kit so again it's pretty self-explanatory getting in here and removing all these caps it's always easier to remove the caps at one time and then come back in and again give it a good cleaning which I've done you can see the pads are well they're about to be cleaned so but this is what the area looks like afterwards there's also about six or seven capacitors around the flyback that are removed and changed out and that's just because that's a really hot area of the board so it's better to change those caps too on something this old but you could see how many capacitors there are on this board completely I did I mean this is afterwards and I've replaced those caps and that was 19 caps and there's still probably six times that on the entire board but once you get them in just double check that your capacitors are all facing the right direction you can even go back and make sure that your solder art points all look really nice nothing's bridged over and just like the other board I'm going to just slip it right back in the plastic here and get it ready to reinstall in the monitor and so we've rebuilt now the power supply and then we've replaced the caps for geometry on the main board now I don't recommend you recap in anything on the input boards you're rarely going to have any troubles with that and sometimes as is with this monitor this board only have one cap in it but all these boards right here go to this monitor and again this is the sdi board which is not normally in these all the time but this monitor came with it so that board requires this mini board to connect to the motherboard and then it'll communicate with the motherboard and the buttons on the front so since it was a nice day outside I decided to go out and get some sun and also the lighting is so much better outside that I could show you just what the simple process is of reassembling this monitor I've obviously cleaned the inside completely now this is after I've used compressed air I'll put in the aboard first and we'll get the anode cap pushed back into place properly and secured as you always want to make sure that's connected never forget to reinsert your anode cap and then turn on the monitor says you could really get damaged something or hurt yourself that way so the first board's already in there and the first connections are at the very front of that board so make those before you push that aboard all the way in and then the next board is the power supply and that's pretty easy just hook it up the way you undisconnected it this particular board did have an extra ground connection and so I plugged that in and there is a cable that connects to the power supply that's not usually used and that extra cable actually goes empowers the sdi board which I'll show you here in a second because I'll be installing that on the other side of the monitor because I just wanted to keep it with this monitor rather than taking the board out and then not reinstalling it so power supply is it sits in there nicely fits well and again really important to make sure that your power supply is working well that way you won't have any issues when you're trying to run your pvm all right so after you put that board in the next board to come in is going to be the input board there's a couple connections that you need to put in the back with the cables right in the back of this area on the main board there's just a couple that will connect there and then what I'm screwing in here is a ground plate where you'll notice you get a lot of ground connections just loop it back and forth between the front of the monitor and the back of the monitor and the boards and that's just so this monitor will have a good ground loop and be as grounded as possible next I'll install the neck board here that has three connection points on this monitor you may notice a fourth but just be very careful when you line this up you don't really want to bend those pins so just get right behind the middle of this board right here and push so if we go back here and zoom in on the a board for a second this little board that says bb on it it's seated in one of the sockets in the very center of the a board right next to the flyback you see over here this large area and then next to this other circuit board that's protected this circuit board connects in there and there's a um cabling that comes out underneath the monitor and that loops around to the sdi card which a lot like the power supply just screws right into the side there's a couple of slots on the side of these monitors and you just slide the plastic in and then secure it with the screws now I do have to warn you if you if you ever do come across one of those be careful because the weight on the monitor can be really heavy once you install that sdi board because remember the pvm shell is mostly plastic so if you put too much pressure on the bezel and the shell and I'll show you what I mean like back here when I'm installing all this it started to put a lot of weight towards the back of the monitor and a lot of pressure on the l part right here of this plastic because there's just a couple screws that hold that into place so the more weight was up top it started to pull the monitor backwards a little bit so I immediately wanted to get the shell back on there so it would hold it up and then secure with the screws it was very important on this one just to keep it safe so just be aware that make sure all your boards are screwed in that just goes for even if you've only got the power supply you don't want any of those boards coming loose and so once I after I got this adjusted I did put a little bit of caulk on the tube to secure the neck board as well though this is just what the screen looks like afterwards again this is an 800 tv line monitor and I will have a cool little video like I did with the jvc that shows you just the features with a lot of close-up pictures at different games today I used splatterhouse 2 for sega genesis or mega drive we get a real close up here of rick you can see the color depth and just the overall sharpness I was really impressed with this 800 line tube I know I've done 450 250 600 line monitors a lot more in the past and I rarely come across a pvm obviously with 800 plus lines and it looked incredibly noticeable I couldn't believe it was really noticeable I want to show you something here I'm going to pause this if you take a look at the background of this scene here you know it's a brick wall and if you watch this on say a lower line count monitor you're not going to see as much color depth especially between the blacks on here and so this this would even show up more pronounced on a bvm that had a higher line count than even this and uh was even better monitor but this is just again the pvm with 800 lines and at 14 inch and you could see just how sharp and clear again I have played this game a few times on some other monitors and it wasn't really this one that I noticed especially in these black sections how there was a different shade in there so definitely we'll see that more in this 800 line monitor so that's an impressive feature that I know some people are really going to get excited about when they try to compare this so something that's just 600 lines or even less now you won't I don't think there's much difference on the scan line overall it's just maybe the sharpness of what is actually produced on screen and again the darks and it looks really really great just a little close up here this is about as close as I could get on this on this screen without getting any kind of focus problems this is about as clear as I could get so just a really great tube for using 240p again this one's only going to do 240p and 480i but it does have that 800 tv lines and like I said that that really does make a difference so finish out here and I wanted just to show a couple of screenshots of some 480i and I was running this through component on a dvd player I wanted to show it because it'll even show up more here on the recording back you'll notice just maybe you could see it easier there there is some differences in the transitions of the seeds of course this is a cartoon so it's maybe not the greatest example but you could see maybe an example what people think that 800 tv lines is too much for some 480i content on Trinitron screens so I mean what do you guys think do you think that that's a good case to be made that that it doesn't look as good because on this one I do notice how for example when he transitions you kind of see you know the the jumpiness of the flickering on the screen back and forth and it's easier to catch now on this recorded playback than it really is when you're watching it with your naked eyes so I think it's a little pronounced still but if anybody else has any opinions on that I will be doing some more comparisons between this monitor and the other 750 tv line monitor that one was the JVC I got so now we've got good photos and some statistics to compare on the tube but that's going to be pretty much hit for this restoration after this whole process I do clean up the monitor and I'm not going to go through and show you the whole calibration process on this particular pvm because it's really the same as the m2 video I did a long about a year ago and I'll put a link to that in this video but that shows you exactly how to use the service menu and calibrate with the 240p test suite so you just get it calibrated get it cleaned up and it's sharp and it's already ready to go so a great little monitor if you find yourself again in the opportunity to get one they are definitely worth it if you're looking for an analog video monitor they're good they're sharp they're do RGB you really aren't going to have any issues with sync and get with a nice tube in it it's definitely worth you know a few hundred dollars for sure I mean this one think about if you want to know I mean this one is this one had I bought it off ebay and then I invested in both those boards and all the cleaning and all the calibration time I will show you one more thing in another video that I did to it I did a CRT convergence I used a new tool called a CRT convergence lens and I checked the convergence on there and I actually adjusted that to sharpen up the picture even more and now and I'll explain some more on that in future videos but again I will do another video with just some more details on the 14m for you that'll be shorter than this one but that's going to be pretty much it for this restoration so that's that's the process that I'll go through on all these pvms is the recap those boards and then clean it and put it back together and recalibrate it and test it and then it's ready to go and pretty much I feel like this one will be good for the next 20 years for just use as someone's personal monitor so again thanks for watching today I'm Steve and please let me know what you think of this restoration and let me know if you have any opinions on the 480i resolution and how it looks on these 800 line and above monitors because I feel it's like it might be something that's dependent to on whether it's a Trinitron or a shadow mask tube so again we'll talk about that more in the future and I'll see you guys next time with some more retro content