Welcome everybody to today's webinar, which is called Chasing the Mosquitoes in the Urban South, Aidas, Egypti, Water and Households. My name is Leneke Knoep. I'm from the Water Channel and this webinar is part of the webinar series IHE Delft Online Seminars for Alumni and Partners in Cooperation with the Water Channel. So a very special welcome to all IHE alumni and partners. And before handing over to the speaker of today, I would like to mention a few things regarding logistics. So this is an interactive webinar and you can see in the bottom right corner a chat panel and this chat panel can be used to ask questions to the speaker. We will compile them throughout the whole presentation and afterwards we will post them one by one. Secondly, I would also like to ask you if you can write in this chat book your name, your expertise and your organization. So we have an idea of who is here in the webinar room. And the webinar and the presentation and references, et cetera will all be shared also at thewaterchannel.tv later on. So our speaker today is Dr. Tatjana Acevedo. She is a geographer with a background in political studies and she holds the position at IHE Delft of lecturer and researcher in politics of sanitation and wastewater governance. Currently, she carries out research to the mosquito called Aidas, Egypti in urban areas in Mozambique and in Colombia. And this mosquito is the one that can transfer diseases like dengue, zika and shikungunya, which we read about in the news frequently. Now, in this webinar, Tatjana will explain how mosquitoes transfer these diseases and also what prevention measures can be taken. She will show the approach of the research, which is a bit different than the conventional research. She shows the comparative cases focusing on households and she will explain how water supply availability, politics, community strategies to store water and much more will have impact on the presence of this mosquito. And with this, I would like to show you just a one minute clip of this most dangerous animal in the air for you to get an idea of what is actually what we're going to discuss about. And after that, I'd be very happy to hand over to Tatjana. Good morning. So my name is Tatjana Acevedo Guerrero. I work here at IHE Delft and I'm going to be talking today about water and households and mosquitoes and about how we can learn more than about the mosquito, about the relationship between communities and mosquitoes in the urban south. In 2014 and 2015, various outbreaks of dengue were reported in Mozambique. In countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Colombia, there have also been outbreaks of dengue, Sica and Chikungunya. Now, high percentages of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that most effectively transmits these diseases, were found in cities such as Pemba in the north of Mozambique, Aputo is capital in the south, Barranquilla, the Caribbean city in Colombia, and Buenaventura in the south east west of the city. Now, dengue, Sica and Chikungunya and their transmission vector, Mosquito Aedes aegypti, are tied to water as this mosquito lays eggs in stored water in or around households. It's important to mention that after they breed, these mosquitoes do not always parade through the city, like other mosquitoes, like for example, Anopheles, the one that transmits malaria, but they hide inside households behind doors and corners. This is a daytime feeder mosquito. Now, it is important to mention that besides being tied to water, Aedes aegypti are also tied to climate change. Why? Because studies have warned of the possibility that climate change might increase the likelihood of diseases spread by insects in new areas, as temperature can affect the distribution of the mosquito, and the effectiveness of the virus transmission and also rainfall can increase surface water, which would provide breeding sites for more and more mosquitoes. Now, the pattern of dengue's spread has changed through the years, as the mosquito, as the Aedes aegypti, has adapted to new processes of economic, political and social change. Now, one of the main characteristics of Aedes aegypti is that it stays close to humans. Like the flying pattern of Aedes aegypti is not very, like it cannot be very long, so they need to stay close to humans. And so they have adapted their biting periods to those of human activities. Now, female mosquitoes can develop and lay eggs in aquatic habitats, easily found in cities. So as the world has been urbanizing, the mosquito has been urbanizing too. Pagnant or stored water, buckets, tanks, drums, cisterns, flower vases, pools, tires, and other human-made containers provide the needed cultivation habitat, where larvae will develop shortly into adult versions of the mosquito. Now, this project that I have been thinking about in recent years uses an ethnographic approach to study households, water supply availability, intermittence, the fact that water comes and goes without a pattern many times, and distribution, and document politics and everyday communities' strategies to obtain and store water. It focuses on the interdependence between intermittent water supply, that is water that will be available throughout some hours of the day, but then will be cut, the efficient solid waste collection, and the IRS Egypty. It also takes into account the different legacies left by civil wars and rural crisis and processes of unequal urbanization. In doing so, what I have wanted to do is to engage with multiple actors, local and national regulators and state officials, water services providers, non-governmental organizations, and, of course, the different communities in the city's neighborhoods. Now, it is important to mention, because I received some emails of the participants in the webinar today, that my focus is not on the mosquito per se, like the biological characteristics of the mosquito, and it is not on, like, epidemiological and statistical factors or models surveying, like, the flights of the mosquito and biting periods, like, in incidents of dengue or the disease itself. Like, this research is more concerned on the relationship, on this dance between communities and mosquitoes, because mosquitoes are there and have been there for many years, so it's this choreographies of biting, of flying, and of people being used to this, and of people of who is getting sick and why. How is this disease affecting cities? Is it affecting everyone the same way? And why? Which are the historical factors that will explain that? Now, since there is no vaccine for dengue, no available vaccine, the only way to reduce transmission has been to control mosquitoes' breeding sites. So this research will ensure that the realities of dengue in cities are taken into account in national policies. The aim is to produce a specific knowledge on the connection between water supply and dengue, between sanitation and dengue, between drainage and dengue, and also analyze the distinct reasons for water storage practices. If there's water that is being stored in the city, to ask ourselves why? And why is it being stored in or around living areas? So what to inform and document policies and practices, not only in what concerns the government treatment of dengue outbreaks or Chikungunya outbreaks or Sika outbreaks, but also regarding water reforms and water supply providers to tell providers and also regulators, hey dengue and Sika and Chikungunya, it is a problem of water. It is a problem of intermittent water supply. In this way the project will contribute or it aims to contribute in coordination with local and international partners to the development of new strategies to fight dengue, which will potentially contribute to the development of new models for water management, especially of the distribution of water and sanitation services in the city. Now again, there are, of course, development outcomes. If you're going to study dengue, some scholars say you need not just to study it, but also to be able to be like pragmatic and talk about what can work or what cannot work, what is perhaps fair to these communities, what they will be more prone to accept or to follow. So firstly, we will try to communicate our findings with people that design policies to fight dengue in cities so that it can be more tailored to the context. All gathered information will contribute to changing public health approaches perhaps to dengue. So like a basic measure that is taken in many cities, which is, for example, giving out nets so that people will sleep with these nets throughout the night. It's just, for example, which is the particularity of dengue is that it bites in the morning, so perhaps the net won't be such a good measure. Secondly, inhabitants will receive improved public health regardless of their gender, age, and socioeconomic class. So it's also this idea to work in the communities to learn what is going on there before intervening. And finally, make this bridge between public health and the realities of dengue and water service providers because it's not a clear link that we do these days. Usually they do not, like they are not invited to the discussion on these epidemics, although they have a lot to do with it. I would like to make this also more interesting and fun, I hope, to talk about the study cases and of the examples of what we are trying to do because that will make all the texts that I have just read way more interesting and useful. So the Barranquilla case, I would like to start with an anecdote. I was invited, when I first arrived, to do fieldwork in Barranquilla to a barbecue in one of the gated communities in the cities, northern neighborhoods, which are mainly inhabited by, this one at least, was mainly inhabited by upper middle class, young couples. And as many gated communities in the urban sunny regions of Colombia, these had apartment buildings. But also it had something that some people called the pool area or the spa area, which has usually a pool, a sauna, a jacuzzi. And of course, these areas always have a set of showers and of toilets for people to change and shower before and after swimming in the pool. So the barbecue was in this area. And everyone was talking, but suddenly the conversation was silent as to Afro-Colombian women who were working as domestic workers because they had a uniform of domestic workers in one of the buildings. They crossed the pool heading towards the showers area. And there was some anxiety among the group of barbecue goers because they thought that perhaps the domestic workers were using the sauna or the jacuzzi. Like there was this out of place anxiety. Until one of the women that was attending the barbecue, she explained that what was going on is that domestic workers would make use of the showers in the spa area to shower before going home after usually their work. They goes from 6 in the morning or 7 in the morning until 6 or 7 in the afternoon. So before going home, they would shower because they explained there was certain intermittence in water services in the areas where these domestic workers worked. So they took advantage of the showers to shower. They discussed that they would talk about this in a formal meeting of homeowners of the building and that they would try to forbid mates from entering the showers, the spa area. Now, this anecdote is very telling both of the inequality situation in Barranquilla, which is the biggest city of the Colombian Caribbean. So the class inequalities, also like historical racial inequalities. But it also talks about the situation that was being experienced in the city in what concerned the distribution of water, of good water services. Now, throughout my field work in Barranquilla, whether I could witness, was where a lot of discussions about water, about the very high tariffs of water, about the frequent and expected costs in water services. But also, people were discussing other issues that had to do with water, such as rain. So there were problems with drainage. Every time it rained in the rainy period, which goes from June to December, they would witness frequent flash flooding. And this had to do also with the problem with solid waste management. But they were also discussing the fact that this flash flooding would affect electricity infrastructure, which would already be not well maintained. And this would cause power outbreaks. So they were discussing the water service, which was not very good quality, but also expensive. They were discussing flash flooding. They called this arroyos, which was affecting normal life, routines, and traffic. But they were also discussing power cuts. Now, every time there were power cuts, electricity cuts, due to flash flooding, communities would also sometimes witness water cuts. Because Barranquilla is a very sloppy city with a topography that will require pumping stations to pump water. So if there's no electricity in some of these pumping stations, they would also experience a power out of this. So I began this quest on Barranquilla and its water distributions by focusing on history. So I first analyzed the World Bank Project that was made in 1985 and that failed. And it was a World Bank Project that aimed to improve water drainage and sanitation infrastructure, especially in lower income neighborhoods in Barranquilla. It failed not only because of political party like corruption and different ideas of the city they wanted, do they want to include the lower income areas or do they want them to go to other cities? But also because of things that were not, but that couldn't be foreseen. So for example, due to the Colombian civil conflict, armed conflict, there were big, like, rural urban migrations throughout the start of the 1990s and the early 2000s. So for those of you that perhaps don't know, the Colombian armed conflict lasted for two decades and it involved left-wing guerrillas, armies, and also paramilitary armies. And especially these paramilitary armies had the technique of doing massacres in rural communities and throughout the war. Barranquilla received a lot of displaced communities. Rural communities that were displaced in the midst of the war and that had to, like, escape from their rural lands or the places where they lived. And go to Barranquilla with not much to start all over. So if you take a look at this graphic, for example, in the year 2000, for example, Barranquilla received 16,612 people. And these displaced communities mainly went to the south of the city, to the low-income areas of the city. Now I have here also the genicoefficient. Now the genicoefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion and it represents income and wealth distribution. So if you have one that is absolute inequality, like wealth is concentrated in one person. And if you have zero, that means that there's a horizontal distribution of income. So you can see that these are under year 2000 where when the genicoefficient starts being 0,5, which is like the inequality becomes higher between people in Barranquilla that are wealthy and communities that have very, very low incomes, that are experiencing poverty, that are experiencing the lack of formal jobs, and, yeah, of course, lack of infrastructure, housing, of education, of health. Not only the war caused migration, rural-rural migrations, but also, like, we had droughts and flooding in rural areas that were where infrastructure was already, in many cases, shattered by the war and by lack of investment. So what I started seeing a lot in Barranquilla throughout my fieldwork was that a lot of water cuts in the south, which was this area, especially the southwest, which was a low-income area that was experiencing the arrival, massive arrival, of these new communities, they were experiencing water cuts that were unexpected. And these water cuts, many times, were caused because of power outages, because there were power outages in the pumping stations. So what I started seeing was a lot of practices of water storage, just in case water would start. And just in case water would be cut. And what I also witnessed was that a lot of people started getting sick. So there had been dengue for a while in Barranquilla and in Colombia in general. But throughout, for example, 2014, a lot of people were becoming sick of chikungunya, which was a disease that was transmitted by the same mosquito, but that was like a little bit different, and the name was funny. There were songs about it. People would only try to deal with it with acetaminophen, with pain killers, ibuprofen, and life would go on. And I started realizing also that it was mainly women in the sector that stayed home and had to lose one day of work because of this chikungunya disease. And by 2015, things got a little bit more complicated because then there was a new disease emerging in the southwest of Barranquilla, which was Zika. Now, the spread of Zika in Colombia was really, really fast. So in 2015, there were 341 cases of Zika. And in less than a year, the cases were 99,721. So the disease causes discomfort, fever, ratchets, and conjunctivitis. But it has a peculiarity, and it is that it can be transmitted prenatally. There were lots of worries because of the case of some mothers that transmitted the virus prenatally in Rio, in Brazil. So the state started being more and more worried, and there were more campaigns to deal with the disease. Now, it is important to mention that also according to Colombian statistics, women were more vulnerable to the disease because for every two-thirds of reported cases of Zika in Colombia were diagnosed in women. Now, some scholars have pointed out the fact that women are the ones that in Colombia sometimes stay home in the morning to cook or to take care of the water storage, and that can make them more vulnerable to the biting of the mosquito because as we discussed at the beginning, this mosquito bites in the morning. It is a daytime feeder. What I want to point out here, and with this quote, is that many of the measures to stop dengue, Zika, and Chikungunya were targeting communities and telling them, hey, you cannot store more water, and if so, you need to cover the tanks of the liquid, change the water. So there was a policing of communities by telling them you need to stop storing water, and many times these communities, which were already doing two or three jobs in the informal market, would not stop storing water because it was necessary due to the unexpected costs and also did not have perhaps time, and when being blamed for the spread of the disease, the answer they had was sometimes to not let the health brigades come in or to think that they would still continue doing the same things they were doing because they didn't have time to change their water storage practices and invest in closed tanks. Also another measure of the government was to ask women to avoid pregnancy, to delay pregnancy throughout a period of time, which was also lived with a lot of anxiety in the community because it implied first that women can decide alone over when to get pregnant, and secondly that women have access to contraceptive measures, and it put a lot of the blame in the women because if the government is asking you, do not store water and do not get pregnant, and you have to continue storing water and you do get pregnant perhaps, then it is a double blame because we told you so. Now, this was the original seed of this inquiry of thinking, how is this disease lived in the neighborhoods, in the barrios, and who is being affected by it, and who is being blamed of it, and how this disease crystallizes only in some conditions of inequality, in some conditions of intermittent water supply. So with that inquiry, with that doubt, I thought that perhaps we should do comparative work between cities that have had to struggle with the same problems, with the same mosquitoes, and to see what the cities had in common and also what the cities could talk to, like how they could discuss and have the dialogue to see if their experiences could help the others. So with this in mind, we started a project, and this was thankfully not me alone, but this is a project with a lot of amazing women. So Professor Sandra Manuel in Mozambique, we are a big team of interdisciplinary researchers. We started trying to understand the way dengue crystallized into cities of Mozambique. Now, the first city we started, which is the city where also the outbreak was stronger, was Pemba. Now, it's important to say that dengue had been inactive in Mozambique for 30 years. Now there are new outbreaks, there were new outbreaks, and there were also little outbreaks of chikungunya. So what was explained in this? So the first thing that I want to say in the Mozambique case, which is a research that is not over, it's on its way, is that at the beginning when we arrived and having the experience that we had in Colombia, we thought that perhaps we were going to find the same pattern of women being more prone to getting sick. But what we found is that women were not the ones staying home in the context of Pemba, of low income neighborhoods in Pemba. What we found was that there were lots of young men staying home watching TV or playing with their smartphones, because these young men had no formal jobs and they would have cash paying jobs during the tourist season, or not a scholarized young man. They would hang out in their homes and wait for the tourist season to work. And elderly women we found in the homes. So what we found perhaps is that here, the pattern of transmission was a little bit different. Young and adult women were out working, and we found mostly young men. Pemba also, it's important to say, it's a city that depends on tourism and on mining. So throughout the years, it has received lots of also rural to urban migrations. Another thing that we found that it's important is that taking into account that the feedback, the enterprise of water, there are water costs that are very daily water costs, daily water rationing in these low income neighborhoods. So they built cement tanks that go, that are done in different shapes and in different sizes. Now families in low income areas that will have more funds will build these rectangular tanks, where they will be able to store more water. And they will later become suppliers selling water where shortages are really bad. And they will sometimes treat this water with chlorine. But yeah, families with lower incomes will have smaller tanks, or will just store water around their houses in different places. Another very important thing, sometimes we think, oh, why do families have tires, car tires, truck tires?  Firstly, and I had seen also that in Barranquilla, sometimes solid waste management is a problem, so communities wouldn't know what to do with their solid waste. And secondly, in the case of Pemba, we found that they use these tires. So the inner part of the tire is removed and it's put into strips. And these strips are used in construction because they put them with bamboo. And with that, they leave the walls that are often coated with cement or clay. That is because other materials such as concrete or stones or adobe are more expensive. And these communities are also migrating from the rural areas to the urban areas in search for job opportunities due to the mining boom or the tourism boom. So after they do that, they remove the inner part. These tires are left in the patios so that kids can play with them. And sometimes they are used also to lock doors so that thieves won't be able to come in the night because they will make noise. And these tires, of course, are the Hilton Hotel for mosquitoes for Aedes aegypti. Because Aedes aegypti also we have found through the work of some of the researchers, they like water at some temperature. They need the water to be at some temperature. So if the water is being a little bit warmer, then you will get more and more mosquitoes. Another researcher did her work in Maputo. And what she found is that there was like a difference in the way that storage happened because while families that had more funds, everyone experiences intermittency. But while some people experiences intermittency and can invest in big tanks that are located in the roofs, so they will be, first, these tanks will be closed, will be far, so they will be less prone to getting, yeah, to having contact with the mosquito. Some other families will have less resources to invest, to make the first investment in these big tanks and will end up storing water in like in different smaller containers. And these containers will be stored inside or outside and these containers will be more prone to harvesting mosquitoes. Or to being a possible habitat of the mosquito. One of the things that it's out there but we haven't been able to fully explore because as I said, this is a project that it's ongoing is the relationship between drainage and solid waste. Solid waste is also a condition of possibility. If there weren't solid waste problems, it would be harder for this mosquito to thrive as she does in low-income areas where any container acts as a habitat for them. But this is a thing that we have not yet tackled also which are the habits of the communities in regards to solid waste. Another thing and with this I want to close and this is the aim of the project in the long run is also to see which are the civilities between Colombia and Mozambique in terms of... So Mozambique also went through a civil war from 77 to 92. It was also a big deadly war that had like I think about one million victims between the war and the famines that war cost. And there was a destruction of much of the rural infrastructure. So hospitals, rail lines, roads, schools that child soldier phenomena which is also what we had in Colombia, land, mine. So that after that, like the targeting of rural populations has been systematic in both Colombia and Mozambique. And there are parts of migration from the rural areas that are devastated from the war to cities. And so we have two things that we see in common which is one, rural poverty and two, big inequality because throughout the war in both Colombia and Mozambique not only people became impoverished but also there were some people that became like that became wealthy. So we see big genicoeficients in both countries. Big, deep inequalities not only between the rural and the urban but we see in the urban areas. And I think and we have been discussing how these inequalities are conditioned for the mosquito to thrive. The fact that there is water but this water is being distributed only in some areas that there is good water but only for some and that there's density but the density is not the sole condition of possibility. It's a density where there's some people that are very poor and some people that are wealthy enough or very wealthy. So with this we have also been doing archival work to understand a little bit the history of Mozambique and with this I would like to end. I want to thank you. I want to remind you that this Mozambique part of the research has been a group endeavor and that I have my colleague Sandra Manuel in the University, Eduardo Montliani, Margarida Paolo and like the team of students, Angela Guayona and two amazing Mozambican anthropologists that have been doing the work mostly in Pemba, Danicia and Amanda. So now I would like to open the floor for questions and comments and ideas. Thank you very much Tatjana for your presentation and for all the insights and this very necessary topic. That's something that I would definitely conclude. And we have a few questions and some of them are a bit related to each other. So I would like to ask you the first question that I have put up here on the left side. So the first question is from somebody from India and he asks, in India there were no dengue outbreaks before 2006 and in 2006 it suddenly appeared and since then it is the biggest public health issue every year. So do you know what might have been the reason for the sudden appearance of you from your knowledge? Thank you. Thank you for the participant from India. I think it's something that also we witnessed in Mozambique. So in Mozambique the epidemic was, they weren't any epidemics registered in 30 years and all of a sudden in 2014 there was an epidemic. So we work also closely with Dr. Paula Vilo from the INS from the Institute of National Health of Mozambique and she told us that when she first went to Pemba from Maputo she took two sets of clothes because she thought it was going to be easy. Like she was going to go there and see another epidemic of malaria and then go back home. She's the head of the epidemiology lab. But when she stayed, when she arrived there she ended up staying I think for two months because she realized this is not a malaria epidemic. This is dengue and for her it was a big surprise and for communities too. I think the causes that interest me the most are the social causes that can, of course, the mosquito evolves with the communities. So the mosquito adapts to new social and economic challenges that perhaps can favor their breeding. Their breeding. So there are some scholars that say that with urbanization perhaps we will see more cases of Ayers-Agypti instead of other mosquitos such as the malaria mosquito because this is a mosquito that thrives in urbanization or in unequal urbanization. The fact that there are some people storing water and there are some people that are experiencing solid waste management problems. But I think, and this is also the case of Sao Paulo, if the conditions that brought the mosquito are there and unchanged, if the social and economic conditions are there the epidemic can come back. So in the case of Sao Paulo, Human Rights Watch have said, yeah, a lot of things were done from the point of view of epidemiology but if you look at the social conditions of Rio de Janeiro and of the big inequalities there it can happen again because everything is the same. The same people that were poor before are poor today. The same people that were experiencing problems with water are experiencing water problems today. So I think I will point to that. But of course I don't know the Indian case. No, thank you very much for the answer. I think that also answers one of the other questions. Well, there is Joshua Aurea asked, like he had a dengue outbreak in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam 2017 and he wants to know, so okay, you just explained about the social factors, but is it in this case, do you know if it could have been due to the flesh floods or how long is the breeding period of this mosquito species he specifically asks? In the case of Barranquilla and in the case of Pemba and Maputo, there are flash flooding events. And I think what is interesting here is that flash flooding is marriage to solid waste management problems. If they were not like, usually cities will have drainage channels, historical ones or natural ones that just form, but what is blocking them, or even they will have very good drainage systems.  And I think also I think that we don't see here in the Netherlands, but we see a lot in the South and everywhere is that cities are not plain. They have like a topography that is sloppy so that also will entail and rapid and equal urbanization. There's your flash flood. And of course, any pool of water will be a possible habitat for the mosquito. So yes, flash flooding is really interlinked with this mosquito. And that is why also we see that rainy seasons in all the three countries are the ones where the mosquito will thrive the most. Okay, then I think you have answered this question. I just want to pose it to show that there are other places where these examples exist. So somebody from Italy mentioned, he was referring back to his own childhood, saying that I'm told that mosquitoes and dengue incidents were reported in Italy when I was a kid and maybe even before, but now it's hardly there. So I think, well, you answered that already because it's mainly because of the social structures. Yeah, like I think sometimes I got, it was really funny when during the epidemic, they will tell people don't go to the Caribbean because they're sick, I don't go to the Caribbean because there's such a gunja, especially Sika have everyone very scared. And of course, you can be very unlucky. And if you go to a resort, perhaps you can, yeah, like perhaps be very unlucky and get bitten. But I really doubt it because like, I was in Puerto Rico during Chikungunya outbreak and like things in the Hilton hotel were perfect. You know, they have pools and clean towels, which means they are washing thousands of towels every day. So all the industry, the hotel industry in the Caribbean is based on water, on the conspicuous consumption of water for some. But of course, then at the same time, you had some neighborhoods, and this was before the hurricane that had absolutely no water. They had been without water for weeks and they were harvesting rainwater.  And it's a very unreported thing because Chikungunya is not as, it's not deadly or anything. So, yeah, like it's a very, it's very much related to class and to the way water is distributed in the city. So yeah, perhaps if you go to the Caribbean, you won't be in the arreos or in the neighborhoods where the mosquitos are having a big fest. But yeah, like here in Amsterdam, because of the canals, there are mosquitos during the summer with the raising temperature that we are witnessing. Perhaps there will be more mosquitos. But for an epidemic to thrive, I think there have to be other, like more social and like complications that will have some people struggling with water and with waste. Yeah, yeah. So you received another question related to this by email, so this person has not joined the webinar and made, I'm not sure if she would ask the same, but maybe we can put it a bit more strong because she asked, okay, so are mosquitos related to diseases, class sensitive? What about Zika? So you keep referring that that's the case. Would you also, would that be one of your statements or would you still be a bit hesitant or would you like to add something to that? Or is this for you a conclusion? I think, like mosquitos per se are not class sensitive, like I don't want to like put mosquitos, like there is no like mosquitos and people, there is a relationship there. And this relationship has to do with socio-economical factors. Now if you take, if you Google Rio Zika Epidemic Babies the pictures you're going to see and I don't need to put them because they are everywhere on the internet are of a certain type of women. And sometimes you will see a little bit her house and sometimes you will see a little bit her patio and sometimes you will even see the stored water behind her. So yeah, like I can say that Zika in Rio de Janeiro affected the certain type of women, affected the certain type of family. And made vulnerable people more vulnerable. So that tells us a lot about not only class, because like in the case of Barranquilla and that's why I started with the fragment of these Afro-Colombian domestic workers. We're also talking about the history of a country. So in the case of the Caribbean or in the case of Rio de Janeiro, we're talking about race, no? Race as a social construction, as a historical construction that will make Afro-Colombian people more prone to let's say lower incomes, real segregation. That makes them live in these neighborhoods, have these incomes or that is interrelated to it. Yeah, well thank you, Tejana. I have two other questions. One is from Abram. He asks, what are the limitations of using gambusia to limit mosquito larvae in locked water bodies? Now I have been told that that's also called the mosquito fish. So is this something that you can elaborate upon? Is this used a lot or is it most effective? Like whenever you go to southern cities where there are epidemics of dengue or in the case of Colombia, Chikungunya and Zika, scientists and public health officers will tell you, oh we have all these new technologies, all these new ideas and I applaud that and the creativity that I see in Colombia and the amount of work that they have done. It's amazing, like genetic modification of the mosquitoes whether they will be sterile, like exercises of hydroinformatics, like and then fishes and a lot of interventions that are there and I think they are very cool and very interesting and amazing. The limitations I see there is that, yeah, like that is going to be funded everywhere that it's going to be, like I think I have some apprehensions. For example, the fact that people will be told, oh use this fish or use this product and if they don't use it, then it will be their fault that the epidemic is being spread or that the state will invest lots and lots of research funds in this like very interesting research which is necessary but at the same time lose sight of something. Hey, this is related to trash, can we deal with that? There's a big landfill, people are living there. So can we discuss this please? So sometimes when we talk about, yeah, like you're in infrastructure or new things that are going on that are very hip and fashionable, it's great that they're happening but at the same time, let's not forget to talk about the basic things, like let's talk about housing, let's talk about water supply, let's talk about why utilities will get, like they will get out, how do you say that? They will still be rationing some neighborhoods and they will still have like a good reputation. That this is normalized, that it's normalized that some communities will not have access to solid waste management. Why? Well I think I love every single new technology and idea and let's not lose sight of a basic discussion on housing, on social housing, on reparations due to the war, on things like that that are related to the mosquito. Now if I were clear, thank you. I have one last question that is maybe a bit difficult to answer. So the question is raised by Flavia. So are there any actions of measures taken between health security and mosquitoes to decrease the impacts of mosquitoes in rural and urban areas? If yes, what kind of actions measures? Of course you just mentioned a lot and that it's a whole range and it's all interrelated. Is there maybe one thing that you would like to address being the last question of this webinar? Is there one final message that you would like to give the people in the room here? Well thank you very much for the question. I think the one that is, even if there's all this new technology and things going on, the basic measure is health brigades. Health brigades will usually tell people to stop storing water or to close to put lids.  Why do not they just cover their water? This is a measure that has been in place for like decades and decades and decades. So people do not do that is because it's impractical because lids get like there's no maintenance of all these things. So in the case of Mozambique, we saw for example in Pemba, lots of wood or zinc placed on the water tanks or people trying to treat their water with chlorine with they call it Certeza, which in certainty in English. That is like the main thing that health brigades will do and they will also try to tell people not to store tires, not to store Checheres, it's called in Spanish, like things that people would store just in case, pieces of bricks and things that can harvest water. This is the main measure that I have seen taken across countries. Yeah, like and of course, like hospitals, prevention campaigns, they will tell people things of how to treat or take care of the water. These are the actions and measures that I have seen mostly. Okay, with that, thank you very much Tatjana for your presentation and thank you all the participants for all the input and the questions. Thank you IHE, I'm Maria and Wim who are in the back organizing the technical facilities also. So I would like to mention that the recording will be there shared on the water channel but also on the YouTube channel of IHE Delft. And with that I would like to wish everybody a very good day. Before finishing it, we have a website and also there you can see all of the members of the team, the amazing researchers that are working on it, it's chasing themosquita.com. We'll put it up here in the chat box. There, no, very good that you say that. And it's also in the references on the page where we put your presentation. So thank you very much Tatjana and... Thank you, thank you very much, Leneke. Bye. And everyone, thank you, gracias. Obrigada.


Hi, Tom Stewart here with cleaning business today. I'm with my partner Liz Trotter. Hello, Liz And it's Friday afternoon Friday afternoon of what seems to be a fairly long week it's kind of weird that I Don't think I've been in the office this week So you think you really wouldn't feel like it you've worked a whole lot It's almost like taking a week off in some regards, you know You think but I'm much tighter Hey, Rosemary. Hi Rosemary. How are you? Happy Friday. Happy Friday to you, too So You know, we've been pretty much on a daily basis We say like a week's worth of stuff happens in a In a day and I don't really think that this This day is a is a whole lot different than the others I Think that when we had this call yesterday at least The the the story was the official story was that we would it's going to be able to apply for the PPP loans starting this morning, although we had Some good information that we shared that a lot of big banks said that they wouldn't be ready and Wake up this morning and sure enough the big banks. No banks were really really ready for that. They some banks are taking the application information, but I'll talk to to a friend of mine who like is an executive for for one of the larger banks and He said that the portal that the banks enter that information into isn't even up yet And they're being told it's going to be up and available by Monday So any information that any of us are giving to our banks, they'll take it but they're really just kind of sitting on it at the moment because There's no no way to to enter that into the Sorry Tom, I do this every time when I try to get up the page on my phone Is that me? That's you. I'd like to have it on my phone so that I can respond to people a little bit of a delay Yeah, there is this a delay on the Visuals too, so I can't look at the phone and I get really confused Especially it's been a really long week Well, I love that Rosemary says she's getting lots done. That's awesome Rosemary. Good for you I know a lot of people right now just sort of spinning. I'm not getting a lot done And so that's great that you're What are you getting done? See and hi Rena. Good to see you That's Sarah is In the background there. Hey Linda. Oh, I didn't see Linda earlier. There she is. Yeah So Tom, did you get any information on? Telling it like it is around that 600 bucks Yeah, there's several I mean numerous websites and treatments and You know pretty much pretty much the consensus from everything that we've been finding all suggests that $600 is on top of other benefit one that they're getting from the state and I mean a number of them explicitly say in some cases they're gonna be getting more money than what they would have been getting at They were working their job The $600 is the way the law is written now is scheduled to go away But yeah, I guess based on the best information we have that's the that's the plan To our knowledge funds are going out yet so You know a lot of a lot of the stuff a lot of the stuff is Changing and evolving so I Guess it behooves is to go ahead and work on in the assumption that that's that's the way that's going to be handled that The unemployment is going to be 600 is going to be above and beyond whatever the normal state would be well, it makes sense to go with that because Anything any decisions we make with that we can always back off of and not getting trouble But if we plan on not having that then we might make completely different decisions. There will be weaker Yep Changes changes things for sure though Does everybody have the application information from the SBA I mean there's a couple of forms that You're gonna need to to complete for that We can go ahead and put those Up on our website up on cleaning booths today, I guess I'm like you're busy Rosemary. Good job Sarah, don't worry. You're right. Next week's a new weekend.  You need a couple of numbers your Average monthly payroll times to times a number of jobs and down here. It shows you How how you want to want to do that calculation? Answer a few questions And there's a couple pieces of supporting Documentation that go in the instructions. Well, I'll post all of this on our resource page on Cleaning business today on the front of our dash downloads page if you don't have it Um, I had some people asking me a couple of questions Tom I didn't know if you would have the answer, but I said I will pass them on um One is do you have any ideas around who might not get approved for these loans? We've been talking about them as if everybody's going to get them But if that was true, then there wouldn't be an approval process, right? It would just be an application Right Have you thought about that? Do you have any information? there's criteria for for all of the programs I guess from a from a loan perspective at a high level you've got the Disaster loan which is kind of bundled with the White yesterday and the days before was called as the $10,000 Grant now they've changed it to calling it the emergency loan I thought they were calling it advanced. That's not an advanced anymore. It's uh I thought it was the advanced on that loan Loan advanced if you click on it They're not calling it grants anymore Yeah, so now it's just a disaster a loan advanced like it's an advanced on a loan as opposed to a grant The loan advance will not have to be repaid Okay, so You know It looks like it's still going to be a grant, but it's interesting because it said grants Yesterday, right so you get in here to the to the eligibility for this And this is this is for the emergency disaster relief and the $10,000 now advance I guess Um, but but but help overcome the program small businesses less than 500 employees. I think that pretty much fits everybody on this call um Certain industries with more than 500 Um, but we're under five so we're good there So it looks like at that criteria is fairly Not as manageable That is there's nothing that's going to disqualify anybody. I had somebody um, the person I was talking to that was asking me about this And what if I am routinely struggling in my business and you know bouncing checks and that kind of stuff Will I be eligible? My initial thought was Probably but then I thought oh, it's still alone Well Can disqualify you um Examples of you know, are we engaged in illegal activities if you say yes, I would presume that would disqualify you I would guess.  You know as a as a principal So there's I mean several questions that they're asking Um, you know potential disqualifiers Do we do you know is a third of our income coming from you know gambling? Oh You know so but you know we are we engaged in lobbying is this a business so I would think that you know everybody on this call would You know answer all those questions and the negative wouldn't check any of those so I guess the the practical answer to to the question is I think almost all of us qualify Yeah, sounds sounds like from what you're saying that the qualifiers are pretty pretty pretty uh Out there It's a low bar to qualify Okay, that's great See I have another question and I don't remember where I watched it. Hey, christa Uh, what does uh rosemary say? Okay her strategy Is that she's waiting until after the stay at home gets lifted. Hopefully She's hoping that'll happen. Hey Heather by may 1st Um, if you get the $10,000 grand and ppp it looks like the grant will not be free unless you can qualify or Qualify to forgive the whole joint dollar amount. Is that right? I don't understand that I'm sorry Huh I don't I don't know I'll I'll go back to uh Their website And Where did we go? It just says here the loan advance will not have to be repaid. It doesn't have any you know Like on ppp for instance and even the eidl it says some of this may not have to be repaid of certain you know conditions are met And they you know rattle them off in terms of having all your your people back to work by the end of june and whatnot This doesn't here say anything other than You don't have to repay it And the way it was initially presented at the beginning of the week was it was a grant And by definition grants don't have to be paid back. I find it odd that they don't call it a grant anymore Yeah Why would they change that do you think what would be the reasoning? you know, maybe there's some obscure Law or something that would preclude them from doing it if they called it a grant, but if they They changed the the the title of it, but Still treat it like a grant they can get what it is that they originally intended to do. I you know, I'm just gonna think I have no idea But but what I saw that they weren't calling the grants anymore. I was concerned too. It's like, oh great now You know, they're gonna want me to pay that back too Of course, you know, I'm saying that like that money's already in the bank I know that's what I was just thinking Tom. Did you already get your 10 grand? No, the government owed you that you shouldn't have to pay back. I check um We wrote a call yesterday and I you know Had somebody on the call that said that they actually had the patients to stay on the phone long enough To speak with somebody at the sb and they told they were told that it might be three weeks um That's anecdotal. I mean I haven't seen anything official on that but You know We I look I looked a little bit more time and what I saw Was that it was three weeks. I mean three days After approval So that made sense to me. I was like, okay So three days after approval not three days after applying so and Have you seen anything that that speaks to when we would expect approval? I have not but I can imagine it might take a little bit of time with all of these people All at the same time I did see that you Can expect one to two more weeks Let me see. I have this one up actually um one or two more weeks for your $1,200 um Whatever that $1,200 Check Yeah, the stimulus check A minimum of a week Is that assuming direct deposit only? That yeah one to two weeks for direct deposit and up to five weeks for paper check Well, that's good because We saw stuff yesterday. It said that the paper check could be anywhere from eight to 13 Eight 13 Yeah, so let me see where I'm getting this information where it's coming from This is being reported on In our local newspaper Where they're getting the information It's just talking about state officials in here It's just coming Contact your local congressional office Yeah, so not much it says like the Treasury secretary said that the cash payments would begin within two weeks according to uh The washington post Yeah problem is With all good intent, you know, they're Let me let me let me preface this by saying What it is that they're trying to do here Is really ambitious. This is Once again, we'll use the term unprecedented We've never been in the situation where the federal government has Been in the position where they've tried to push out this much aid this much money this quickly give you give you perspective the Uh 349 billion dollar ppp portion of this which is You know handled through the sba and the local banks are are processing that If you go back over the last six years combined and add up every loan that the sba Is made under every program that it's had It's less than 800 billion. It's like 793 billion to be exact so this is Almost half of what they've done over the last six years. They're trying to do Immediately here within a matter of days Yeah, so they're trying to do Put it, you know, they're trying to do three years worth of work in a matter of of of of days so Yeah, I guess we should give them a little bit of a little bit of a break if they're they're not Your targets but Washington is also saying that you can expect your $600 Fed check for unemployment to begin dispersing by the 18th. That's the expected date right now So this actually was a decent article had a lot of dates in it For for planning purposes. I think we're learning that whenever we get these dates. We should assume that is best case Yeah, then it might happen. Who knows but don't don't bet the ranch on it. Don't be Financial decisions saying I can go ahead and I can spend the money I have now because by the 18th I'll have that extra six hundred dollars Oh, let's see. What is Linda saying? This is what my accountant Tax spend sent if you take the ten thousand dollar immediate cash advance the amount of the ppp loan That could be forgiven. Will be reduced by the ten thousand dollar advance I think I had heard that they would roll together Also, and so that makes sense to me It sounds like the same information. I've been hearing just stated a little bit differently. Maybe Ohio unemployment struggling with the volume. Yeah I Who texas no new york somebody was saying today that uh new york's Unemployment fund is almost bankrupt already, so I got no money. I mean make make sense to me Uh, if you remember yesterday, we were talking about the number of unemployment claims Shout out to like 6.6 million the week, you know last week Which is twice as well as the week before and the week before was almost Five times of highs that ever has been in the history since another been tracking such stuff I saw some numbers that were breaking those unemployment claims down by state and by far Then I don't remember the exact numbers, but uh, california was Several times higher than the next highest state If the york was I don't know they were in the top 10 probably the top five But was a lot lower than what you would expect it to be with the Relation that it had and part of the Part of the explanation for that is they just don't have the resources to even count and process so um I make sense you layer that and over the fact that you know, they're they're out of money but It's gonna be a lot of A lot of tough uh tough problems that are going to need to be solved here over the days and weeks ahead and we talked much about the uh tax credit program as opposed to ppp and if one is Worked more or better than the other Nope, we said we're going to try and talk about it in the next couple of days. So We're uh Playing around with a spreadsheet We want to build a calculator that kind of help us plug in numbers to see if if one is is better than the other and i'm gonna Try to see if we can can get that done over the weekend. If so, we'll uh, we'll share it monday um but Now those are two separate programs. You can't do both if you do ppp. You can't do the tax credits if you do the tax credit You can't do ppp ppp basically once you get the phone we've got Eight weeks after that that you can write off 100 of your payroll up to the two and a half times the payroll amount that Was there assuming that you meet the whole criteria that you've got your Workforce back up to full strength by the end of june and if not then it's per rated down by some amount So in order to make that work rationally or you know economically logically You want to make sure that you're cleaning stuff And are getting paid for it Before you get that loan because the minute you close on that loan You're on the plot for those next eight weeks So like if you're shut down because we'll stay at home orders and stuff like that You get that one You're really going to be limited is what you can do with it because You're not really having any material payroll and the idea of bringing everybody back and just paying them for Not generating revenue It's kind of a risky deal because If for whatever reason you don't get your payroll back up to the number that it needs to be by by the end of june You're going to have to pay that's going to be a loan. You're going to have to pay back In two years Two years the interest rates relatively low yesterday. We thought it was a half a percent the Up to 1% the regional bank said they would lose money on a half a percent So they bumped it up to one but still really you know, that's immaterial but Paying it back in two years is kind of kind of hefty um The the tax credit program is kind of interesting It's basically designed to offset your payroll taxes the social security and and and those type things And you apply for it into the quarter and the way it appears to be written is if You have more credits than what you had a liability for your your your payroll um with holdings The the difference would be considered an overpayment and you would be reimbursed for it like getting cash back So The way that we're reading it the way our cpa is reading it is it's as good as cash and you get it back in the very quarter And that program starts back somewhere in the middle of march So you can even go back and get some tax credits for for first quarter All the way through the the end of december of this year Now it's for 50 percent of The qualifying payroll at the qualifying payroll is capped at ten thousand dollars per person So it would be five thousand dollars per person maximum credit that that you'd be able to get This is where it gets a little bit confusing. So you have to do some math and say well How much at the date that I think that I might get my ppp loan What would my payroll look like for for that eight week eight week period and how much of that Would I be able to write off assuming I could meet the requirement versus How much of that 50 of up to ten thousand dollars of already payroll that I could accrue over the course of the year with that ad up to bay and There's a little bit of a tax thing you have to give back on the tax credits and doesn't get a little spreadsheet That we can look at all look at all that next week, but Not not if you think that you're going to be starting off slow Or if you're going to be shut down for a while, you're not going to be busy till second half of the year You might be better off at the the tax credits and then ppp And that's the spreadsheet that you're going to work on over this weekend comp. Is that right? Yep. Yep People figure out. Yeah, that sounds great You want to see what christianne has? Is posting here it's it's basically the the Dilemma that everybody's dealing with right and so she's basically just put it down and in words here Still getting calls from clients, but our employees don't want to go out They're scared of getting the virus some are getting paid sick leave Some are getting paid a sick leave due to child care, but others aren't we allowed them to use their pto without notice But some have already used it all up They've heard that they can get 600 a week through the irs and would like us to lay them off I realize the ppp will help us retain them, but not sure how to handle between then and now Not even sure we'll end up getting the funds Oh, that's uh, oh, that's rational What we're trying to do And everybody has like different twists and versions based on how scared your people are how many clients need to be cleaned or want to be cleaned and Whether or not you have a lot of A large chunk of your workforce has children that are no longer in school is going to be a Deciding factor there whether or not your state is considering you an essential service Changes that whole that whole scenario too Sarah says I thought the ppp was to keep you going But the tax credit was to help cover fmla It doesn't seem like the ppp would cover if lots of employees take advantage of the 12 weeks off The 12 weeks off. Are you talking about the six? Are you talking about the 16 weeks of Unemployment or oh the 12 the 12 weeks of child care gotcha the Paid fmla, which has this new act for an FSC r.a. All right. Yeah families first I mean theoretically We're going to get that money back and but that's that's separate then the I forget what that with the tax credit program is is called the top may have but it has something to do with like creating jobs create You know, if you're working people Between beginning or middle of march so to the end of the year and not doing ppp You can get tax credits for for for for you know, those people working as well for half of their salary And you know, there's caps and some other stuff But for most of us, you know, we don't have any any technicians that are making over a hundred thousand a year So that's not a concern And you get them up to you know up to like $10,000 or the payroll you get half of that five grand um Which is different than the paid fmla or the paid sick time if we wound up paying any of that and I guess there's more and more rules coming out of that and I don't have any of that top of hand But in some cases you can get exempt from from some of that. Do do you know any of those particulars Liz? um The last thing I read is the same thing that we the last thing I received is the same information that we've gotten before Is that you still using the word may be exempt if you're less than 50 You have less than 50 employees And then like what were the criteria? Sorry I I have um I absolutely have information fatigue going on so much information I can look that up though. I do have Sorry, sir. I'm with you. Oh man so much to learn Sarah it is. I mean I've been lamenting that I just Feel like my head's been put in a blender. It's just so much Hey, it's so much to keep up with and then you like Spend time reading like all of the the rules of the documentation and what you know The sba is telling us and what the treasury is telling us And then you wake up the next morning and it's completely different website It's the one I even bother so somebody was saying that uh Um pqp has changed already, but I guess that wouldn't matter because it's not going out actually to a monday anyway Yeah, what it's it's it's funny. Oh it wouldn't I fully expect that whatever assumptions we're working with now for ppp Some of them will be different by monday morning Okay, sarah. She was good to go on keeping up until the tax credit part kicked in. She's like, okay I got it and then the tax credit is like a whole new layer to lay on top of everything else Uh, I do think that tom spreadsheets can help us a lot on monday sarah for that I'm gonna I gotta cheat I'm gonna go to cleaning business today because I think we already have a link there talking about the tax credits Maybe it'll help if I share my screen. Yeah, I'm not thinking that's cheating. I'm thinking that's good business move right there so Go to where the stuff is And the tax credit is the irs part of it employer retention credit under the cares act so go to that link and read this and this is uh This basically gives you the skinny as to what you you need to to to know about the tax credit And the important thing to realize is If you go this route and take advantage of these tax credits, which In essence is is is money that you get at the end of every quarter Um, you cannot do the ppe But You definitely want to continue you doing the ppe The triple p Look into my cpa and he was referring to it as the triple p. Okay the ppp anyway, um I'm not a I'm not even a hundred percent sure on this. I do believe that you can apply for the ppp and Once, you know, they process it you can you can decide not to take it Don't Take I mean, I can't even guarantee that at the moment, but that's that's an assumption. I'm working under So if you're not sure which way you want to go I don't think that you have anything to lose by applying Then but then you just need to make the decision, you know, once it's approved you need to decide Which one of these ways you want to go if you accept that long You won't be able to do do the tax credits And another consideration there is I know a lot of people are applying for the ppp because they're worried that the Money's are going to run out. What is it three hundred and fifty eight billion. Is that right, tom? 349 billion. Thank you. 49 58 are those the same number? 49 billion so they're worried that that is going to run out But on the flip side A lot of people are also thinking that they're going to throw more money at that if they if they run out More money will be thrown at it But if more money doesn't get thrown at it, there's another option Yeah, you you then will Definitely want to take take this option um rosemary was saying Potentially our stay at home order could go into june that would push us against the june 30th eight week criteria It's it's it's already though that Period that you're able to use That can go past that june 30th Because you don't have to have it eight weeks old again then before june 30th, but you do have to do Your private numbers need to be you know first of full employment. You can get by june 30th in order to be able to write it all off It's going to be tough though if the Stay at home order is running till june 15th. You know getting fully staffed by june 30th And who knows even it's going to be by june 15th so and all of that kind of leans towards making the The the tax credit program for some of us may be making more sense Now there's criteria For the tax credit program that I should probably show you Because we're not even 100 sure how all of this is going to be um You know tom i'm thinking that if you could just make a list of the things that you are 100 Sure, that's going to be a very short list Yeah, i'm gonna show you that this is that list you see there's something on it Blank page blank page Uh But there's two things here the one on the bottom says a significant decline in gross receipts during the calendar quarter Basically, that's 50 that below they they described that's a 50 drop in in an income from Either the prior year quarter or the prior quarter. I think they let you do both of those But that's a pretty hefty number. You might not be at that point. I hope you aren't but the other one which I think more of us might be able to uh To to to use as the criteria is fully or partially suspended operations Due to uh some order from an appropriate governmental authority limiting commerce travel blah blah blah blah that You know if you could say that well the government entered a you know It should stay at home program and since we do house cleaning You know most of our you know clients, uh, you know declined to use this you could even say that you know You took the position if you if you closed completely that or even partially closed that Somehow you should be able to use that to rationalize I talked to my cpa about that today and Yeah, there's no guarantees any of this year But he felt that that that we would have a really strong argument in any any community that Stay at home order that that that would You know at least be a partial suspension of our operation Yeah, make sense and I mean one thing that we can be pretty sure of is That the government is trying to help us the government does want us to succeed. It's not trying That the government is trying to protect small businesses, so I think I think so Yeah, I think so too. And so if that's true then Sometimes, you know, you just got to go on faith so Okay, you don't know exactly how it's going to work out but going to have some confidence and some faith that it is going to work out and Move forward in that mindset with some confidence around that idea that Okay, the world is not conspiring against me the world is conspiring for me. And so I'm going to go with but with some hope there That's not always a great move. But I think that in this case it is also we we do have the What's the saying that you always use tom that we have the protection of the masses I think You were protected. We're protected by the masters, you know, if we're The majority, you know, if If you're an outlier if you got a problem it's that nobody else has then you're kind of on your own But if everybody has the same problem, it's kind of hard for The government or anybody else to kind of throw everybody under the bus because then there's nobody left, right? Usually they wind up, you know, writing a law to protect the masses and this is Usually when you're in a small business is a small business owner You don't that's not where you are. But this is one of those rare occasions where it's actually working to our advantage How's your camera tom? I have no idea. Oh, there you go. You're back Uh rosemary is saying that seems contradictory with the $600 unemployment and the fmla changes Oh Payroll tax credit for fmla. Is that what she's talking about? What she's talking about that doesn't seem like it at least I think I think where she's coming from is that doesn't seem like it They were really looking out after us at small businesses. Oh those changes Uh, I give you that rosemary. Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily written the rule that way but You know, there are a lot of political interests that all needed to be satisfied I mean, you know that the senate passed this bill unanimously and I think maybe the house did too if I'm not mistaken Or you know, it was almost if it's not complete so You know both sides of the the aisle needed to get you know, there's stuff there and um, you know they want to make sure that that Everybody feels like they're getting a fair shake this time because back in 08 with the Tarp program and all the bailouts that looked like it that was for the big banks and for for wall street and everybody else was was basically left nothing and What they're doing this time certainly looks like that. Um, you know, they're trying to take care of everybody Um Well I I just like that they actually wrote it in that not he and none of his Holdings are eligible I thought that was interesting Okay, so let's see christianne says sounds like the pgp was to offset that but the only thing that is sure at the moment is the unemployment of six hundred dollars per week Insure is basically how We read it as it's you know being written and applied today which um Things can change by monday So just look at how many times the interest rate has changed for the ppp in one week Right, it started out at four percent went down to a half a percent back up to one percent so I mean everything is shifting and changing Yeah, I think the only right now the only thing that you really want to bank on Is that there will be some changes You know, I mean Again talking to to my my banking contacts Earlier today, they think they've got most of the regs kind of figured out one of the big sticking points with the ppp was that there's a stipulation that if a bank loaned to A company that was committing fraud or was laundering money Then the fba wouldn't bank it It wouldn't back at the bank would basically be left holding the bag on it and Since they're being asked to process these loans with relatively no due diligence because they want to get the money out there fast They really don't even know who they're loaning the money to so If they were going to be responsible for that was going to slow the whole process down yeah So supposedly the the you know fba is telling i'm just going to loan the money We're good for it. Even if you screw up and loan it to the wrong person But you know, this is all happening so fast that I am sure that You know six months a year two years down the road. There's going to be a lot of fuzzy memories and You know, I don't know. I don't know who's going to win and who's going to lose on this But it's going to be interesting Well anything else going on Us looks like everybody's kind of getting a handle on things and maybe making some decisions about direction and Where they're going next week everybody feel good about where you're going to be next week what you're doing You know When when we started doing these programs What's that? I've been doing this for a couple weeks few weeks now Um Doesn't matter the thinking the thinking was that Right now this is a financial exercise. We need to get our you know debt You know squared away and get as much of that deferred as we can and get as much bank financing and you know Sba and federal help and You know, I'm kind of surprised that we're still here having that discussion I would have thought you know several weeks ago that we would have kind of figured all of this out and we've moved on to something else, but You know the rules keep changing so oh that smells that looks like a smells Oh my gosh. I can't even stand it. I keep forgetting that i'm like on camera and i'm like It's my favorite smelly flower. It's free chef. Is that for your birthday? Yeah Yeah, yeah, I love them I got a cookie Yeah, you got more than a cookie You just remember the cookie the most because you liked it the best Actually, good for you. Bridget, you're feeling comfy. What tom actually what? You don't like your cookie. It wasn't good. No, my cookie was good. It still looks good. It's there Is it one of those big huge cookies? we took a I took a just a cooking sheet kind of rolled out a bunch of dough and kind of made a yeah made made a One big cookie Hi cookie I got a picture somewhere. They actually do a corona virus on it Nice it's the corona birthday Yeah Hey, Bridget. I'm with you next week might change, right? Oh, tom. I do have another question remember. I said I had a couple of questions from people um the other question was uh around Oh, that's actually nice. That's a sheet cake cookie. That's really nice. That may be a good job. That looks good It was it still is actually wait for us left of it I'm actually really well done I'm sorry. I digress What we have a question. Oh, yeah, my question was um Do you have any thoughts and I know that you are not an attorney and So you don't know the legality here, but do you have any thoughts on? responsibility for companies that are open and if their employees were to contract The corona virus like who should they tell what should they know? Who are they legally responsible to? Oh, same thing. You know in my company. I just told you we had A client who tested positive for for the virus And on the call that I was on when we were talking about these things earlier the consensus was hey get your people tested and Get either a positive or a negative test and then move forward from there But I was wonder we were talking about I wonder if there's any type of legality there. Do you have any idea? Suspicion is that there could be as time goes on there there there there may be This is all in part of waters yeah, traditionally you know If I were to work and this person sitting next to me has the flu and if I catch the flu That's just kind of the way it works and there's no liability But corona virus is such a big thing that we really don't know how that's going to work so you know If you go to mrs. Jones's house and mrs. Jones has a cold and you wind up with a cold two days later Is it some issue between you and mrs. Jones? No, you just caught a cold. That's what happens So we don't know how that's going to go down with the corona virus. Um One more thing. Yeah Throw it throw it on the list. Um, you know the golden rule though Sometimes, you know, I find useful when it comes to stuff like this, you know, what would what would I want to happen if if if I was the cleaning technician and went into mrs. Jones's house and mrs.  I would hope that that somebody would would tell Before me So, you know that would that when it comes to those questions. I'm not sure what the legality is traditionally There has never been any liability there How that might change, you know I suspect it's going to start with People suing the cruise lungs the cruise ships with all the people that got, you know, sick on those We're going to set some precedent You know, some attorney's going to pick that and try to use that case law to apply to And you know Well, it goes to sort of a little bit of what linda was talking about I'm wondering if these types of things are going to change, you know after after the coronavirus All this it sort of blows away a little bit Are we going to have to be wearing Ppe on a regular basis so that our people don't get sick so that we're not liable or so that we're not passing anything on How could that play out? No, I don't know and linda wants to know What is a good place for a training course for my staff to address the new normal after we go back to work? That's a good question And in what is that training going to look like and I mean one of one of my favorite programs is You know the one that that, you know, we developed with, you know, hct and Hct is a very broad broad program house cleaning technician certification program Um, but there's certain parts of that that that's certainly uh specifically address You know the the chain of infection and how cleaning breaks that, you know breaks that chain and You know what the different types of uh pathogens are and and and and how we re-neutralize them I don't know if there's really a great course out there right now specifically for house cleaning companies who deal with all of the Science we're going to have to train more to science than what we traditionally have in the past in order to really Deal responsibly with the corona virus and in cleaning in a world where you know, we've got These types of of of pandemic type diseases and more and more the belief is that You know, we're going to be seeing more of this if time goes on because we're just pat more densely and we travel around more and We better we better get ready for this in the long haul we've got we've got to understand the science behind the cleaning and So we're not just doing it, but we understand why we're doing it and why what we're doing has efficacy and white white the way it works um What do you think Liz? I mean do we need a program that we don't have? Uh, uh, I I think so. I think that there needs to be some type of a training course I was going to ask you about also The issa training course that they're launching on monday The one what is it the gbac for 49 dollars? Do you know anything about that? I haven't seen the syllabus shot So I guess it depends upon Yeah, they have good work and they're they they the stuff they do is founded in science So whatever it is. I'm sure it's a quality program um I've seen some of their stuff and it's focused on like forensic cleaning the biohazard deep cleaning and I know they have programs that will teach you You know how to put on a tyvek suit and how to make sure your You know powered respirator is working properly You know dawn and doff all your you know Equipment properly and make sure that you've got negative air flow. So the germs aren't leaving your workspace and it's all really You know great if you're going into some infected place and trying to wipe out ebola or coronavirus, but um I'm not sure how practical that is for your typical house cleaning company Yeah, I suspect there's useful information there, but You know, we're going to be cleaning homes for a long time after this initial shutdown is over of of our economy And we're not going to be wearing tyvek suits and respirators when we go in and do our you know biweekly cleaning at mrs. Jones's house However, we are going to be cleaning it with with with with hygienic cleaning and making sure that we're doing a good job of Sanitizing all the high-tech surfaces and we're going to be cleaning it with a higher purpose and a different mindset than what we have been doing it traditionally Cherry says she wants training also Um, I I think that that really speaks to what's going on though tom people want training Like cherry says I want training And I think they're just kind of feeling like I just need more knowledge. I need more information I need I need whatever's out there So a lot of people I know are taking whatever they can find I'll take anything if it is you know, how to How to be fully suited up and full PPE gear so that I can do full decontamination Okay, then that's what I'll take if that's what's out there What what are options? You'll learn stuff from that that you can apply to your Bi-weekly maintenance cleaning of mrs. Jones's house. You're not going to wear a tight suit to do it But you'll understand more about, you know, what pathogens are and the different types and how to neutralize them and what a high-touch, you know surfaces and You'll learn stuff. So Learning stuff is always good But I haven't seen it. Is that is that fast to be available next week on monday? Yeah, um, this is if you go to facebook tom. It's on the arcsi residential cleaning discussion group And apparently debbie is putting on a course. I'm not sure if there are two. It sounds like there are two different courses Um, and then there's a webinar a telemedicine Webinar have you heard about that? um Essentially virtual medicine And this is a benefit that your employees would truly value Don't know about that. That's a different type of training um But kelly jones is the one asking about hi can someone confirm if there's a corona virus certification course being offered by issa on ipel 9 Hope it's just a webinar and then she says debbie Sardone is also offering a similar course. I need to decide the best route to take at this time And erin's the one that responds with issa is launching their certification course on monday um from gbac Members will be able to get this certification course for 49 dollars Um, and she says I believe the course debbie is offering is the one the issa is producing with gbac so I don't know that sounds Repetitive there, so i'm not sure exactly what's being said I apparently there's another one maybe debbie's course Is 200 dollars more with it with debbie? I don't know It's confusing still might be a good Conversation tom for a call for one of the facebook lives What are some of the resources and what are the different trainings that are out there? What's going to be valuable for us? in our In our roles as host cleaning business owners I'm glad this came out I was going here and somehow I You know, it's easy for me to get sidetracked. Um We started doing there because it was all about finances and getting our financial house in order The thinking was by the time we got to this point that we would already have that in the rearview mirror And now's the time to really talking about how we're going to be doing business moving forward A big part of that is we all need to become more informed on you know What are pathogens and what is our responsibility as professional cleaning company to to you know Mitigate them in a responsible way and how do we do hygienic cleaning and sanitizing disinfecting the proper tools and equipment and Smiling flowers and all that really They smell so strong I'm so sorry Tom. They're so strong. I'm putting them out of my My hands reach But yeah, we need we training we need to And you know, we're looking at that in castle keepers and we're making plans We're you know, we're we're we're primarily shut down, but we've got some people on our staff And we're going to be doing some serious training over the next A couple of weeks here Um If we had some type of program during the day, where were we doing stuff like that would that be You know, I guess I guess we could do it for whoever wanted to sit in on it, you know What kind of charge are you thinking of Tom? For a program like that. I don't think I don't think we would I don't know. I you know, I'll see if I'm not free training I know I'm gonna help develop it, but I'll also sit in on it. No I don't know. It's just it's a kind of There's a lot of schools of thought on this and we're we got you got the rest of our lives to make some money But at the moment, I think that we just need to help each other you know Get to a better place and and and and do everything we can to help and You know, well, we'll make money another day. I mean don't get me wrong, you know, we don't We all need food and shelter. So let's let's start with that But once we get to that point, let's let's just try to take care of each other And if we can all get to some place better together, then we can can start making money again, right? Things are so different right now. I really I'm really grateful that you know, our industry is so good At pulling together and helping each other and sharing resources. I I feel really blessed to be part of Of this industry. There's I think we do this better than most for sure a time reminder three o'clock time to put up your your your your machine animation and then if anybody has Uh a piece of gossip or information that they've heard and they're not really sure Let's get time to tell it like it is on Monday About something anybody have anything if not, I always have something I listened to too many people talking about too many Yeah, Liz. I mean you're the person who teaches the program on how to stop gossip. How come you only have all the good gossip This is how I stop it. I go I go somewhere and I get find a credible source And this is it believe this stop talking about all that cleaningbusinesstoday.com Um over here, this is where you subscribe if you haven't I encourage you to do so.  You'll get our newsletters with all our updates Um, if you go to forward slash coronaviruses dash downloads, that's where you'll get all of our good download stuff and and other resources, uh specifically for um You know what we're doing here for COVID-19 I'll um Take that link and hide that and I'll put that there bang Wow Are we done for the week? I hope so tom. I'm beat I'm ready for weekend to begin and Start this whole craziness next week again. Who knows what they'll come out with over the weekend, right? Yeah, but you know, I think I think that we all feel like we've got a lot of work we need to do this weekend and you know It'll be it'll feel it's saturday. So at least we'll feel different even though I haven't been going It does feel different. I don't mind. Um, I feel like working on saturday and sunday is easier It's less pressure And plus I can touch my workout for 12 hours Yeah It's it's it's it's bonus it's bonus time Yeah, thank you, sir. You have a good weekend too Thank you guys Take care of yourself again. Relax a little bit. Get some rest. We'll uh, we'll be back here monday at uh, at five Okay, what's the name of the show we're supposed to be watching tom tiger Oh Watch the last episode last night. It's uh, you know, it's a dumpster fire, but you You You watch those when you want to cross them, right? So that's right You want to feel better? Yeah, thanks rose mary. We appreciate you guys too. Talk to y'all later Bye. Bye. Bye


Hey everyone welcome back to JSA TV and JSA podcast We are here at day two of the ESG summit here in Oslo, Norway Very excited to be back for day two. It was a really intense long But really a really awesome day one and really it's day three, you know, you know how it works at these conferences Monday, you know, there were some some early pre-conference Scheduling and events. So our third day here but officially day two and Yeah, we went to the networking reception yesterday evening for the tamp net one at the rooftop here Which was really beautiful as the Sun was setting perfect timing. We had dinner on the water I mean much fun. Yeah, lots to do here I'm glad we've gotten to go out in the evenings do a little bit of networking It's been the perfect mix of kind of the daytime activities and then the networking as well Yeah, absolutely. And of course, hopefully you all were with us yesterday when we we went through So many JSA TV interviews heard from so many thought leaders in the industry about what they're doing with sustainability And they're a little corner of, you know, digital infrastructure There were also some amazing panel sessions We that was one of the most common pieces of feedback that I kept hearing from people And that we experienced as well was that the content at this conference is really really incredible So and and really well attended like I feel like there's always a lot of people anytime There's a panel going on in the in the room across the across the hall from us here And you were over there yesterday We have to say Candice was moderating a panel yesterday about data centers in North America. So that was great Yeah, it was quite lively and a lot of people, you know showed up and you know, we've got some good questions So good audience engagement. So I think that just goes to show exactly what I was saying really good content At the ESG summit. So yeah, so and then as far as content goes I think that's a good segue into the content that we'll be providing you today with all of these additional JSA TVs this was going to be our later day I have to say and so we keep getting more and more interest. So I feel like we've at we've added twice as many interviews To you.  So we're gonna be bringing you so much good content today I think we've got even a little list here of what we've been talking about what we're gonna be talking about So we've got power dynamics and availability Greenwashing was a huge topic yesterday. We were talking a lot about that. There was a panel going on Investment in sustainable projects global regulatory frameworks scope three emissions something we kept hearing yesterday and our interviews as well Heat reuse and data centers data center cooling and so much more that was covered in panels and here on JSA TV Yeah, so and I'll just read a list of my own because I also want to have a list So we've got a few companies coming at you today So clean energy capital edge connects Dan Foss the verdict of WSP Hora Lee DC by Tamp net QIO Technologies, which is also data center Alliance same representative and Yeah, I think I think that's everyone But I don't know we've had several come up and asked to do interviews So if we can sneak folks in in between slots then we will do that as well So we're we're excited to get started. So I think we should just go ahead and do that We've got our first interview here in the room and I think we'll get him settled and and kickstart the day Absolutely. Yeah, and come see us if you're here. We are in the main hall. They're about to serve breakfast So you can't miss us. We will see you soon