• AS POST-PANDEMIC STRATEGIC PLANNING BECOMES A CRITICAL FACTOR IN OPTIMAL BUSINESS RESURGENCE, a reminder that, in conjunction with our affiliates Executive Performance Group and ExecNetwork, DCG expertise serves most specific industries and activities – including manufacturing, distribution, marketing, real estate development & property management, technology, entertainment, creative arts/entertainment/music, legal & most professional services. Call us for courtesy consultation.
  • TEENS & YOUNG ADULTS WHO VAPE SHOULD BE AWARE THEIR RISK FOR CORONAVIRUS IS SIGNIFICANTLY GREATER. Vaping can “damage lungs, hamper the immune system and make virus exposure more susceptible to infection, besides increasing transmission risk from sharing e-cigs and/or hand-to-mouth contact.” A nationwide Stanford University research survey of some 4,300 kids aged 13 – 24 who’d vaped within the preceding month were five times greater – and, if also smoking regular cigarettes, up to seven times – more likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19. [THE WEEK – 8/28/20]
  • THE PANDEMIC HAS GIVEN FLEXIBILITY to some 40% of the workforce now able to balance non-work activities, and for employers to hire people otherwise unable to take full or part-time jobs (roughly a 3:1 women ratio). For another 30% who still do their jobs in-person, many are thankful to not be stuck at home, but are impacted by generally being lower paid and at greater risk of contracting the virus, on the job or commuting. The remaining 30% of pre-pandemic workers who have lost their jobs or left the workforce “risk loss of skills, atrophying work connections, potentially lower pay in the future, access to health care & housing…exacerbating already deep inequalities in the U.S. economy which are likely to increase as remote work continues even after the health threat from Covid-19 is abated.” [REUTERS – 8/20/20]
  • SCIENCE IS IMPERFECT. THE LATEST CONTRARY PERSPECTIVE ON COVID-19 AVOIDANCE: A comprehensive study just published in Annals of Internal Medicine –one of the most widely cited and influential specialty medical journals in the world, published by the American College of Physicians – contends that social isolation, masks & school closings are totally unwarranted. The list of practices “no longer having conceivable rationale” includes closing down businesses, limiting assembly size, class testing, quarantine or social distancing, and suggests that current theory of “virus isn’t going away until herd immunity is reached threshold” appears wrong. Rationale includes: (1) Based on research of over 3,400 Covid-19 infected people in Hubei China (a third living in the same household), traced to every person with whom they subsequently had ‘close contact,’ found that those with mild-to-severe symptoms infected fewer than  6%, those showing critical symptoms infected only 10.5%, and those showing zero symptoms subsequently infected only ONE person.  (2) It turns out that CDC tracked the first official U.S. cases (a lady who tested positive a week after returning from China and her husband, who hadn’t accompanied her, a week later). “Nothing was reported in the press, but of 372 people they contacted during those 15 days, not a single one contracted the virus – it went solely from her to him and no one else at all.”  (3) Various studies suggest that “up to half of us already have pre-existing and very long-lasting ‘crossover immunity’ from having been infected with older strains of coronavirus – many of which cause nothing worse than a common cold… so we’re likely a lot closer to herd immunity” anyway. Still nothing is certain, but wow…   [RED STATE – 8/19/20]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

 “Only intuition can protect you from the most dangerous individual of all – the articulate incompetent.”

“The purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.  –Theodore Dalrymple