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The quick answer: Yes! Absolutely get vaccinated. The quicker we can stop this virus in it’s tracks, the less chances we have that it mutates. Right now it’s a relatively mild virus, but it has has the potential to mutate. If we have the ability as a society to stop it before it can mutate, then we should. Not only that, but why get sick if you can prevent it, especially if you happen to be one of the unlucky few who gets hit really hard by it!
Because of all the media attention this vaccine is getting, and because it feels a bit rushed, a lot of people are somewhat skeptical of getting vaccinated. Today I’m going to try and answer as many questions as I possibly can about the vaccine. And although I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching this information, I’m still not a medical expert. Therefore if for any reason any information in this post is incorrect, please let me know right away.
How does the flu vaccine actually work?
Both the seasonal and the H1N1 flu vaccine work the same way. They basically help us create antibodies to fight the “real live” virus. How this is achieved is by injecting us with a tiny part of the DEAD virus. Again, it’s NOT live. And because the virus is dead, it cannot grow in us. But what it does do is allow our bodies to combat it, and hence build an immunity to it.
This is also generally why we don’t get sick from a vaccine. The virus is not live, and hence is not infecting us. It’s possible that we feel some minor flu like symptoms, and this is a good thing. It means our body is reacting to the dead virus and fighting it off, building antibodies.
Can flu shots cause the flu?
No. The vaccine ONLY contains DEAD virus. If you do get the flu after a virus it’s because you came into contact with it from another source, such as a door handle, a handshake, an infected air particle from someone coughing in the same room, and so on.
As well, do remember that the vaccine’s effect is not immediate. If you get the vaccine in the morning, you’re not immune that afternoon. The vaccine works by letting your body react to the dead virus, giving it the ability to pre-build antibodies before it’s exposed to the real live virus. Therefore you have to give your body the time to create these antibodies. For H1N1 it can be anywhere from 10-21 days for your body to build up it’s immunity.
Am I completely immune to the virus after I get vaccinated?
No. No vaccine is perfect! Most flu vaccines are 70-90% effective. It really depends on how closely matched the real virus is to the virus you were vaccinated for. So for example, if the H1N1 virus mutates significantly, then it’s possible that the vaccine’s effectiveness drops. Even more reason to get it now, so that we can stop it before it gets a chance to mutate. Studies have shown that if at least 70% of a population get vaccinated, it’s enough to extinguish most viruses.
In any case, right now it’s appears that the H1N1 vaccine is about 85% effective. That means that 15 people out of 100 people that got vaccinated will still get affected by the H1N1 virus.
The good news is that if you do get affected, it’s very likely to be much milder than if you didn’t get vaccinated. And if it does mutate, you may still have some partial immunity. Some immunity is better than no immunity.
Studies have also shown that people who get vaccinated do get sick less and miss fewer days of work.
Do healthy people need to get vaccinated?
Yes. Healthy people do get sick. Although in most cases their symptoms are much milder than the young and elderly. However when newer (for lack of better word) strains come out, such as the H1N1 flu virus, they are just at risk if not more so because of the Cytokine Storm produced by their body’s immune system. In the 1918 pandemic, it was the healthy young people that seemed to get hit the hardest.
If nothing else, although the symptoms may be milder to healthy people, they can potentially expose a lot of other people, such as their kids, their grand-parents, their parents, their grand-kids, their nieces, nephews, etc. Basically they can expose people who’s immune systems aren’t as robust as theirs.
What about the Guillain-Barre syndrome?
In 1976, a very small but unfortunate number of people developed GBS (Guillain-Barre Syndrome) after getting vaccinated (300 people out of 48 million). The vaccine that was given then didn’t go through the usual process like the H1N1 vaccine did. As well, even though it was never officially proven that the vaccine caused GBS, that vaccine is no longer used.
Studies have since then found that there is no difference between people who get flu vaccines and those who don’t in terms of getting GBS. But your chance of getting GBS after being sick from the flu is much greater than your risk of getting GBS after a flu shot.
In other words, getting the flu vaccine overall drops your rates of getting GBS. Do remember that the flu itself can cause swelling of the brain, it can cause comas, seizures, etc. The odds of getting GBS from the flu itself are higher than from the vaccine.
Is there mercury in the flu vaccine?
In some vaccines there are tiny amounts of thimerosal in the flu vaccine. Thimerosal prevents bacteria from growing in the bottle of vaccine. Thimerosal breaks down into a kind of mercury, but not the kind that causes mercury poisoning.
What are adjuvants?
Adjuvants are additives to vaccines to make them more effective. They basically cause your body to make more antibodies and to make them faster. It’s almost like pressing a turbo button on your immune system.
Adjuvants also help people with weaker immune systems since they aren’t as strong. Again, remember that the whole idea behind a vaccine is to expose your body to the virus and give it a chance to build an immunity to it. If your immune system is already weak, it may not be able to fully build up an immunity to it without a boost.
The other benefit of adjuvants is that it gives vaccine manufactures the ability to produce more vaccines in less time, which is great for rampping up vaccine supplies in times of pandemics. It does this because each flu vaccine needs smaller amounts of the dead virus to have effect. Less virus means less time reproducing large quantities of the virus. If H1N1 had turned out to be more virulent, or if it does ever mutate to a more virulent form, adjuvants will give us the ability to manufacture more vaccine quicker.
Are adjuvants safe?
Adjuvants are correctly considered to be safe. Most people don’t realize that many other vaccines do include adjuvants, some given to babies. They’ve been around for a long time. So far the results have been positive.
The only reason non-adjuvant vaccines are recommended to some groups such as pregnant woman is just because they’ve never been tested. It’s not because negative results have been found, it’s simply because there is no data. It’s actually been recommended that if push comes to shove for a virulent strain, and the choice is between an adjuvant vaccine and no vaccine at all, that the adjuvant vaccine be taken. It does appear to be safe, but it’s also hard to ethically test some specific groups of people (such as pregnant women).
How do you get the vaccine if you have egg allergies?
Unfortunately most flu vaccines are grown in eggs. If you have serious allergies to eggs, you may not be able to get the H1N1 vaccine.
That being said, I haven’t really done the full research into what options are avaialble for those with egg allergies, so if you do have these allergies, please feel free to comment below and let us all know.
Can kids become Autistic because of the flu vaccine?
There are two arguments people generally refer to when asking this question. Firstly, they point to the small amounts of mercury (the thimerosal mentioned early) as the cause. Studies have shown that this isn’t the case. In Denmark for example, thimerosal was taken out of the vaccines and it didn’t reduce the autism rate in that country. The WHO (World Health Organization) have also come to the same conclusion after several studies.
The second argument is that the rate of autism has gone up in correlation to the increase rate of vaccines. But if you remember your science 101, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Just because something is related it doesn’t mean it’s the cause.
For example, as the number of pirates have decreased, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore the lack of pirates is the cause of global warming. Since the 1950s, both the atmospheric CO2 level and crime levels have increased sharply therefore CO2 causes crimes. In both of these cases it’s obivous that the correlation doesn’t imply the cause but sometimes the lines are fuzzier.
For example, as cell phones are being used more, autism rates have increase, therefore cell phones cause autism. I highly doubt this is true, but it’s a less obvious example. If you go one step further, as vaccinations have gone up, so have the rates of autism, therefore vaccines cause autism. Again, just because something is correlated it doesn’t mean it’s the cause. It’s back to the same type of argument: As ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply, therefore ice cream is causing people to drown. Absurd, but it is actually correlated.
Conclusion
Should you or shouldn’t you get vaccinated? Yes, you should absolutely get vaccinated if you can. To be honest, there’s no reason not to.
Although I try not to post too many customer testimonials here about LandlordMax, I just couldn’t resist the following one from Dallas Powell. Especially since we just released the Mac version of LandlordMax.
I’m just writing you to say thanks for developing this awesome software and keeping on top of it with frequent updates and fantastic new features. You guys are a top notch company. I was really happy when you offered it for Mac’s. I liked it enough that I bought it and boot camp with Windows for my Mac to be able to use it and the only downfall was having to get on the Windows partition which I don’t like. I can now use this awesome software right on my Mac!
To those who are considering a purchase, I can assure you that you will be happy with it. I needed something easy to operate without having to spend a lot of time figuring it out. Within a couple of hours I had the software completely figured out with out having to read the literature that comes with it. Just start inputting information (a property, a tenant, etc) and it will all become clear.
– Dallas Powell
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
– George Santayana
Why is there such a big push for the H1N1 vaccine right now? Why did the United-States declare a state of Emergency for the H1N1 virus? Why has the WHO (World Health Organization) been so public about escalating the H1N1 virus to a “pandemic”?
It’s because we’re learning from our past. Well hopefully we’re learning. Back in 1918 people were too slow to react to the biggest Pandemic in recorded history. And when they did react, it was either too late or too slow. The time to react is not once we’re in the midst of a full virulent pandemic storm. Rather the time to react is before it becomes virulent. Even with today’s modern medicine we still can’t cure the Influenza (Tamiflu isn’t really a cure). All we can do is prevent it and treat the symptoms.
Back in 1918, before it really struck at full force, people just kept saying it was “only just the flu”. Nothing to worry about. It’s just another cold. Yes, initially it was, but that quickly changed. And even then, many people still kept saying it was only just a flu. It wasn’t until people started dying, and even then it wasn’t for some time, that the population really started to react.
If you don’t know the history of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, I strongly recommend the book The Great Influenza – The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. It’s an amazing read! The information and knowledge in the book is priceless! Not only does he follow you through the history of the pandemic, Barry also explains how influenza works and why we still need to be just as vigilant today.
The 1918 pandemic is chillingly similar to today’s pandemic. Firstly, the 1918 Influenza was an H1N1 Influenza virus, unlike the Avian Flu’s H5N1 makeup. If you’re not familiar, Influenza can come in a number of forms, H1N1 being one, H5N1 being another, and so on. Each form is different enough that if you have immunity to one it doesn’t give you immunity to another (so for example being immune to H1N1 doesn’t give you immunity to H5N1). This is why there are seasonal vaccines, there are just too many possible forms. As well, to make things more complicated, the Influenza virus can be different enough within one form to only offer partial immunity to that form (and in some cases none at all). It’s almost like variations within forms!
But getting back to the 1918 pandemic, it too started with an initial mild first wave. It’s the second wave that brought death and carnage to the world. The second wave was of the same form but much more virulent. So virulent in fact that in the most severe cases it killed within hours of when people showed the first signs of symptoms much like the death this week of the 13 year boy in Toronto who died of H1N1 with 48 hours of showing symptoms. Statistically, the 1918 flu killed anywhere from 2-20% of those infected as opposed to the normal rate of 0.1%! The good news is that in most cases it just made you really sick, but please don’t confuse that with how many people it killed. It killed complete families. It devastated whole communities. Governments in the US collapsed. Cities collapsed (Philadelphia, etc.). Booming cities became ghost towns. In terms of scale, it’s estimated to have killed over 100 million people. In today’s numbers that would be over half a billion people!
This is also incidentally why the WHO, and governments around the world, are pushing so hard for everyone to get vaccinated as soon as possible. We want to stop it dead it in it’s tracks, to prevent it from mutating into a much more virulent form. We don’t want to give it that chance. Not only that, we know that the H1N1 has the potential for being a real killer!
The similarities don’t just stop there, the H1N1 from 1918 was much more virulent to the healthy young people than to the young and elderly. Sadly, hundreds of thousands of children were left without parents after the virus had finished it’s run. Not something you normally see from the seasonal flu.
The reason it can be so deadly in young healthy people is because they are so healthy. It’s not actually the virus that kills them in many cases, it’s their own body. Rather than just sending in special soldiers and snipers from your immune system to attack the virus, it has to send in it’s full arsenal. Now in many cases, it’s not a big issue, but if the virus fights is strong, your body reacts accordingly (not exactly but close enough). So what happens is that you get your own personal World War 3 waged in your body. In most cases your body will win, but have you ever seen a battlefield after a big war? There’s not much of it left. In this case, the battlefield IS your body, specifically your lungs, so there’s not much left. This is called a Cytokine Storm.
This is often what causes you to die. And you’re lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the battle, your lungs are so beat up that they get secondary infections such as pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. In 1918 they didn’t know what to call this. Today we call it ARDS (Acute Respitory Distress Syndrome). If you get ARDS, your chances of survival are low. In 1918 you had a 10% chance of surviving. Today I believe it’s now up to a 50% chance of surviving. Better but not great. Incidentally, this is why SARS was so scary.
Just how fast can it happen? Here’s a story from the book The Great Influenza: “In Cape Town, South Africa, Charles Lewis boarded a streetcar for a three-mile trip home when the conductor collapsed, dead. In the next three miles six people aboard the streetcar died including the driver. Lewis stepped off the streetcar and walked home”.
Yes today we have better treatment for secondary infections such as antibiotics, but we definitely don’t have enough supply for a major pandemic. It’s believed that the world supply of antibiotics would be depleted early on in a significant pandemic, and manufacturers wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand. That’s part of the cost/benefit of our society’s “Just in Time” inventory. It helps reduce costs and wastage, but we don’t have much backlog. Again, we still have no cure for Influenza itself, all we have is medicine (antibiotics) to treat secondary infections.
Which is why we need to get the people who will be most sick (or most likely to pass it to others) vaccinated first. Not just because they’re more likely to suffer and die, but also because we want to be careful not to overwhelm our already over stretched medical system. In most places in North America, the medical system is already running at more than 100% capacity. That’s right, more than 100% capacity!
If you compare the medical system today to the 1918 medical system, they may have been better prepared. The hospitals back then were running well below 100%. In 1918 the bed per capita (ie number of beds for a given number of people) was much much better than it today. Even with this extra supply of bed and staff, you hear many stories from survivors who while in the hospital never saw a doctor. In some places people couldn’t get beds, even with bribes. People would lie on the floors waiting for others to die so that they could take their beds. It wasn’t pretty. And that’s with a bigger padding than today. It’s not about the quality of care, or what treatments are available, but just about being able to see a doctor!
It’s believed that our current medical system can’t even handle the extra surge from a mild pandemic! Never mind a virulent one. We just don’t have the resources for the surge in capacity. It looks like our hypothesis is about to be tested, and it’s already proving to be accurate. We are ONLY in a MILD Pandemic right now. Hopefully that’s all it will be.
The good news is that we have much better communications today. The fact that Barack Obama has already declared a state of emergency for the United States is phenomenal!! In 1918 it was hushed for as long as possible. Declaring a state of emergency early means we’re already starting to allocate resources before it’s a massive problem. It means we’re trying to prevent it rather than react. Not only that, but making people aware is a good thing. There may be some fear and panic right now, but compared to what happened in 1918, it’s way better.
In 1918 because they tried to hide the spread of the virus (it was during World War 1 and they were trying hard to boost morale – an Influenza pandemic killing millions doesn’t exactly boost morale), they created even more fear and panic. People had no idea what was going on. People didn’t trust anyone. Would you? It was a mess. Actually the cities that fared best, such as San Francisco, did so because they publicly shared truthful information. People were informed. Information was the key. And because they knew what was happening, what to expect, they dealt with it much better. The unknown is scarier than anything else. When you watch a scary movie, the anticipation up to the moment is the scariest. Once you see the bad guy, you’re no longer scared. The unknown is what’s scarier. So I only have praise for Barack Obama because he’s already started to allocate resources ahead of time. Great job!!
In terms of prevention, learning from 1918 (and other pandemics), it’s almost impossible to stop Influenza. This is why in the spring the WHO basically suggested there’s no point in stopping air travel. It was too late. With the Avian flu they still had a chance, but with H1N1 it was too late. It had already spread.
To give you an idea how far and wide it can spread, almost no one was safe in the world in 1918, before they had commercial travel like we have today. Even remote locations up in the North Pole got hit. Researchers were recently able to resurrect live samples of the 1918 Influenza from Alaska. The only communities that were able to save themselves from the 1918 Pandemic enforced very strict quarantines, almost to the point of being extreme. No ONE, and I mean NO ONE was allowed in once the quarantines were setup. Even something as innocent as a delivery of mail could devastate a community. Most communities failed, even with strict quarantines.
Yet still some were able to enforce quarantines where no one died. Communities such the town of Gunnison, Colorado. In October of 1918, in advance of the pandemic, they shut down the town for about 2 months. No public gatherings. Lawmen blocked all the roads. Train passengers weren’t allowed to get off the train to stretch their legs, not even outside. There’s even a record of a couple trying to drive through the town who got thrown in prison and quarantined. Basically they took very drastic measures but it worked. The neighboring town, Sargeant, esperienced 6 deaths of out 130 in one day. The quarantine worked. If you’re interested, you can find a list of newspaper clippings from 1918 with dates as the events unfolded here – it’s very informative.
Of course in our global world, it’s already too late. There’s no way to quarantine yourself. What you can do however is stay away if you’re sick. Please, STAY HOME IF YOU’RE SICK! This is how the virus passes. In our modern society, we’ve grown up to tough it out, throw some dirt on our wounds, and go to work. That’s the exact behaviors that cause the virus to spread. We need to change our way of thinking. If you’re sick, don’t go to work. Stay home. Don’t go out to public places. If you don’t need to go to the doctors then don’t. And especially, if you don’t need to go to the hospital then please don’t.
Even if you’ve been vaccinated, remember it’s not 100% effective. It’s 85% effective. You still have a chance of getting H1N1. However if you do get it, odds are that it will be much milder. As well, be aware that the vaccine is NOT immediate. It takes time for the vaccine to take effect. Your body has to build an immunity to it. It takes days, even weeks (I’ve read as much as 3 weeks with H1N1). In that interim, you CAN STILL CATCH the H1N1 flu. Each day you’re less likely, but you still can.
And please, please, please, if you already have the flu, don’t go get vaccinated while you have it. Firstly, it’s too late. Secondly, it won’t help, you’ve already gotten it. It’s not a cure but a prevention method! And this is why a lot of people think the vaccine is sometimes ineffective. If you were already infected but hadn’t yet shown signs (even more so if you show symptoms), it won’t do anything for you. It’s totally useless in that case. Again, it takes some time for vaccine to take effect, so you should get it sooner than later. The longer into the pandemic you wait, the less effect it will have.
For example, today in the news I read “Desrochers said she is anxious to be vaccinated because her grandson is sick with flu symptoms.” Are you serious? If you already have the flu, the vaccine is not going to help. It’s not going to make your grandson better. If anything, all you’re going to end up doing is infecting other people. It means you’re going to nullify the vaccine for everyone you come into contact with. It’s just wrong. But people are misinformed, and unfortunately the message being communicated is completely inconsistent.
I’ll give you another example. I was talking to someone locally who had just seen her doctor, and they informed her not to get the vaccine. The reason given was that it was a live virus and could be potentially dangerous because you needed a strong immune system to fight it. She is one of those high at risk. Her doctor couldn’t be more wrong. The vaccine available to her includes the dead virus, not the live virus. Secondly, she is exactly the high risk person that needs to get the vaccine. Why did it happen? Because the information traveling around is inconsistent. In marketing terms, there is no consistent message. That is to say, unless you educate yourself and your smart about what sources you refer to, etc., there’s all kinds of conflicting information. No one is stepping up and what’s happening is it’s creating misinformation, and hence fear and paranoia. We’re, sadly, repeating history in this case.
While I’m ranting, the other thing I don’t understand is why we aren’t delivering the vaccine faster. As far as I can tell here locally, it’s not the lack of vaccines that’s stopping us. What’s happening is that the vaccination clinics are only open for a few hours at a time before they decide to close down for the day so that they can close at their expected times. Don’t they understand, this is a race. It’s a race between getting the majority of the population immunized before the virus has the time to take hold, and in the worse case mutate to a virulent form. We’re not running out of vaccines right now. My local station giving the vaccine is only open between 2:30pm and 8pm. Within an hour the lineups are so bad that they have to close to let all the personnel go home by 8pm. At this rate, they’re vaccinating 4200 people in my city per day. Within a month, that’s approximately 100,000 people. In a city of about a million, that’s 10% of the population in a month, way less than majority needed. At that rate it would take until midway through next year just to hit 50%. Now I do understand that they are scaling up each day, but with doses available now, there’s no reason to close the vaccination clinics so early. If it’s a staffing issue, I’m sure there’s a solution to be found.
Since I’m on the topic of vaccinations, right now we spend more researching the West Nile virus than we do on Influenza, yet Influenza kills more people per year than the West Nile virus has killed since it was discovered. Why is that? With one pandemic, Influenza can kill more people than AIDS in several decades (the 1918 pandemic killed more people from Influenza in 6 months than AIDS has in 25 years). And not to downplay AIDS, but Influenza is much more transmittable than AIDS.
Not only that, but if you look at the economic costs of Influenza each year, just in terms of sick days, it’s very significant. It’s not a cheap virus. Why aren’t we developing a vaccine against all type A Influenzas, which would encompass all the different forms including H1N1. Because there’s not enough political interest, and hence not enough funding. If we could just invest 1%, or even 0.1% of what’s spent in Iraq (an accounting rounding error), I’m sure we’d make amazing strides forward. And the ROI (Return on Investment) would be significant. Imagine if we could wipe it out!
Alright, one last comment on vaccinations for now, if the vaccination effort is a success and the virus doesn’t have a chance to mutate to a virulent form, that is very few people die or get sick, what do you think will happen? People will start to complain that it was for nothing. That it was over-hyped. That it was a waste of time and money. That we scared ourselves for nothing. But did we? That’s success!!! Success IS that nothing happened.
If you think back to Y2K, did anything happen? No, because we invested millions, if not billions to prevent it. Unfortunately if nothing happens, people assume it was for nothing. Nothing happened on Jan 1, 2000. But you know what, a LOT of systems would have failed had we not put in such a big effort beforehand! Thankfully because of that big effort nothing happened. It was a success! Yet today people think it was over-hyped and not a big deal.
What about the Avian flu? Was that over-hyped? What happened? Nothing! Again, millions and millions of birds were slaughtered to prevent it from spreading. Every outbreak was quickly addressed. Thankfully the virus wasn’t too contagious and they were able to prevent a pandemic. A lot happened to prevent a pandemic. There’s a reason nothing happened. It was a success!
The same is true with 9/11. Before and after 9/11 many terrorists attempts were prevented. Of course we never think of that. All we think of is the one failure. Until something breaks down, it really wasn’t needed. It’s over-hyped. It didn’t do anything. That’s prevention. We need to be aware of why prevention is so important. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
What are you waiting for, go get yourself vaccinated as soon as possible. Be a part of the solution, not the problem. Now’s the time to do something!
In the next little bit I plan to write about the vaccine, such as is it safe, what about this or that. If you want to make sure you won’t miss, you may want to subscribe here to get it by email as soon as it’s available.
I’m proud to announce today that the latest version of LandlordMax (version 6.05b) is fully Mac compatible, for ALL Mac OS’s (including the latest Snow Leopard)!
For those of you who have been following the developing story here, it’s been quite a journey that started a long time ago with more than one false start. The last big push, starting in the Spring of this year (2009) resulted in this release of LandlordMax.
One of the best benefits of the Mac version of LandlordMax is that you can transfer your database back and forth between the Mac and Windows versions. So should you decide to change computers, it’s not an issue. Your database can move with you, regardless of if you get a Mac or a Windows computer.
The Mac version of LandlordMax does include all the features and functionality already available on the Windows version. That is, you get over 100 different reports, you can quickly find out which of your tenants are late paying their rents, you get full accounting, invoicing, workorders, etc. You can also send any report you generated directly from within LandlordMax as an email attachment. If you want to an idea of just the features we released for this latest version (6.05) you can see the complete list here.
Again, I’m very proud to announce that LandlordMax version 6.05b is fully Mac compatible with all Mac OS X versions, including the latest Snow Leopard. Welcome new Mac users!!
Before I begin, I’m going to disclaim that I’ve used Randy Ray’s PR services for my company LandlordMax in the past (he’s one of the authors of the book The Big Book of Canadian Trivia).
That being said, if you’re into trivia, especially Canadian trivia, you’ll want to check out Randy Ray and Mark Kearney’s latest book The Big Book of Canadian Trivia. I have to admit when I first received it, I wasn’t prepared for the sheer size of it. I definitely didn’t expect it to be telephone book sized. Yes, you read that right, telephone book sized! Although it doesn’t have as many pages, and the font size is much more readable than a phone book, it’s just as thick. Hopefully that gives you an idea of just how much trivia this book contains.
Because this book is a trivia book, what’s interesting is that you don’t have to read the one page after another. You can jump in anywhere and start learning right away. And because you can just jump in anywhere, you can focus on the topics that are more interesting to you (and there are a lot of topics).
The only problem I have with this book is I find it harder to write a review for it because it is a trivia book. Most books are focused on a specific topic or ideas whereas a trivia book is about much more random and short topics. Compared to most trivia books I’ve seen though, The Big Book for Canadian Trivia offers a lot of value for your dollar. I can’t imagine the amount of research and information gathering that went into this book. Even just perusing through this book you’ll learn something.
Sure there’s the obvious issues like the fact that they have to spend more per car made. Sure there’s the issues with the unions and high salaries. Sure there’s the issues with the lower quality of their cars. Sure there’s the mismanagement issues. Sure there’s the issue that they’re focusing on government bailouts rather than solving their business issues. There’s a lot wrong, no doubt about it. But I believe it’s even more fundamental than that.
Let me ask you a few questions:
- What’s the family sedan from Honda?
- What’s the family sedan for Toyota?
- What’s the family sedan for Ford?
- What’s the family sedan for GM?
I bet you were immediately able to answer the first two questions (Honda Accord and Toyota Camry). I’ll also wager that you weren’t really able to answer the last two. What is the family sedan for Ford and GM? Why is that such a hard question to answer when that’s the most common car people buy?
It’s because they have no focus. They’re all over the place. To succeed you need to be about something, something that people can care about and follow your lead. It doesn’t matter how good your idea is or how good your execution is, without a goal and focus it’s all for nothing. So let’s hope they can figure it out before it’s too late.
I wish I was able to say that the Mac Version of LandlordMax was ready to launch this weekend, but unfortunately I can’t. I’m still amazed how difficult it’s been to release a Mac version of LandlordMax. Much more than I anticipated!
Since I last wrote about it, we resolved our biggest issue. That is the software now has the ability to backup and transfer databases between both the Mac and Windows versions. What we’re struggling with right now is the obfuscated version of the deployed application. For those of you who don’t understand that last sentence, what it means is that as part of publicly releasing LandlordMax we take the generated program and scramble it to make it hard to reverse engineer. We don’t actually do it ourselves, we use another piece software who’s sole purpose is to obfuscate programs.
However when we do this it breaks something in the program. We’re still working through the details to figure it out. The worse part is that it only breaks the program for the Mac version, not the Windows version. So it’s something specific to the Mac. Once that’s resolved, we’ll of course need a bit of time to re-test and re-verify that everything works on the full-fledged and obfuscated version.
Something else, we’ve just confirmed that LandlordMax will not run on the latest Mac OS called Snow Leapord. As far as I can tell, supporting Snow Leapord is going to cost us a significant effort (anywhere from weeks to months). I won’t go into the details now, but it has to do with how Java is setup on the Mac OS. Needless to say, I’ve had to make some hard decisions over the last few days. The biggest one is that we’re going to go ahead and release the Mac version of LandlordMax without support for Snow Leapord. If you try to run LandlordMax on Snow Leapord you’ll get an error message saying that Snow Leapord isn’t yet supported. I just don’t feel it’s right to make everyone wait when most people haven’t yet upgraded to Snow Leapord.
Hopefully it won’t be long before I can post “LandlordMax Mac Version is NOW Available!”. I know I’m really looking forward to it!
Several months ago I had the bad luck of catch Strep Throat. Since I’ve had it several times in my life, I pretty much knew I had without having to see a doctor. But if you want antibiotics to treat it, you need to go see a doctor.
Before I continue, let me just say that the main reasons you want to treat Strep Throat with antibiotics is two-fold. Firstly in rare cases it can easily prevent some pretty severe complications. And secondly, you’re much less contagious.
In any case, I initially tried to see my family doctor but unfortunately he was unavailable for whatever reason, maybe he was on vacation or something, I just can’t remember. (by the way my current family doctor is the best doctor I’ve ever had – not only is he good, but he also cares!). Because I couldn’t see him, I went to a local walk-in medical clinic.
The doctor saw me, did a quick swab test, and of course the results came back positive for Strep Throat. However, for whatever reason, the walk-in doctor didn’t want to prescribe me any antibiotics. She was very adamant, saying that my body could, and should, fight it off naturally.
Now I understand there is a lot of abuse going on with antibiotics, but Strep Throat is an infection that can potentially lead to serious complications in some cases if not treated, and it was 100% certain I had it. Sure it might go away naturally, but let me tell you, once you meet someone who’s experienced the serious complications from this infection, you understand why they recommend treating it. So why not take the antibiotics, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Plus, I’d be a lot less contagious.
But she refused. She said to go home, relax, and come back in a few days if got worse. So I left. But after a few hours, I had second thoughts and called the clinic. I explained that I had been diagnosed with Strep Throat, that the tests were 100% positive, and that it was highly recommended by the medical establishment to treat it with antibiotics. Not just to help fight the infection, but to help prevent any potential complications from the infection. Talking to doctor via the receptionist, she basically informed me the doctor really didn’t want to treat me with antibiotics and to come back in a few days if it got worse. I pushed some more and since it was near closing time, the receptionist said they would have to call me tomorrow.
The next day I decided to get a second opinion since I hadn’t heard anything by lunch time. I went to another walk-in clinic and saw another doctor. He quickly did another swab test and it was also positive for Strep Throat. He immediately gave me a prescription for antibiotics. I mentioned about the other doctor who refused to give me antibiotics, and asked why she wouldn’t just to get a better understanding. He said he had no idea, that with Strep Throat you should always give antibiotics. Again, this isn’t a sore throat, it’s a confirmed (now twice confirmed) case of Strep Throat.
Two or three days later, I forget now, I got a call from the initial medical clinic. This time the receptionist said that the original doctor that saw me wasn’t in today, but another doctor from the clinic would like to talk to me on the phone. She said, and I’m trying to remember the exact words as best as I can here: “You have Strep Throat and we HAVE to treat it with antibiotics. You can come in within the next hour to pick up a prescription, I’ll leave it at the front.”
Now you may ask, what was the point of this whole story? And how is it related to feedback? Well, if you look at the first doctor, she basically refused to treat Strep Throat with antibiotics. Since she’s not my family doctor, once I leave the clinic, she has no way of knowing whether her treatment was effective. Or worse yet, whether her treatment (or lack of treatment) helped or made things worse. She can only assume that things got better.
Let’s take this one step further. Let’s say her lack of treating me with antibiotics caused a rare kidney complication from the Strep Throat. How would she ever know unless I returned to tell her about it? She can’t know, and therefore she can’t learn from her mistakes. As far as she can tell her treatment was very effective since I didn’t come back.
How rare are the complications? I don’t know. But did you know it’s speculated that Mozart, the famous composer, may have died due to a kidney failure complication because of Strep Throat. Although rare, it does happens. But what’s worse is it’s so easy to prevent.
Getting back to our story, let’s say there are complications in 10% of the cases. How can any doctor from a walk-in medical clinic know (and learn) on the effectiveness of their treatments? As far as the first doctor who treated me can tell, there were no complications. No one came back. Although they might have ended up in a hospital, she wouldn’t know. She might not even be aware that another doctor from her very own clinic treated me with antibiotics. She could theoretically believe her treatment was right and continue treating her other patients the same way, re-enforcing her belief that her treatment (or lack of) works. A vicious cycle. And it’s really not her fault, there’s no way for her to know if it isn’t working.
Which is why it’s so important to have a family doctor. Unlike a walk-in clinic doctor who you’ll only see once, or maybe a few times over the years, your family doctor is going to be following-up with you on an on-going basis. Your family doctor is going to be getting feedback on their treatments. They’re going to see the results of their treatments firsthand and learn from them. They’ll know what works and what doesn’t. It’s not necessarily that one is better than the other (although it may be case), it’s that one has the chance to see the results of their actions, and learn from them, while the other doesn’t.
Feedback is the key! Without feedback how can you learn anything? How can you know if something really works if you never get to see the results of your actions? Feedback is the key ingredient in learning!
As I’ve already mentioned before, we’re working on a Mac version of LandlordMax. The good news is that it’s almost ready. It’s also why I haven’t been posting much lately, I’ve just been way too consumed trying to complete and release the Mac version. It’s amazing how many little details there are when supporting another operating system. I plan on eventually posting about some of the issues we encountered between Mac and Windows.
To give you a quick update, the Mac version is looking really good. The only issue we’re aware of that’s left has to do with backing up and restoring database file between the Mac and Windows versions. This is an example of some of the weird operating system differences that we’ve had to resolve.
In any case, we’re extremely close to releasing it. I know I told some people I expected it to be available by now, but the LandlordMax Mac version will be released any day now.
It’s very exciting!
As part of opening up the technical support phone lines for LandlordMax a couple of months ago, we’ve chosen to let customers leave us a voicemail rather than waiting on hold on the phone until someone becomes available. I believe this is the best solution for us, and we call back pretty quickly.
That being said, we get all kinds of voicemail messages. Some are great and some are not so great. Unfortunately sometimes the messages are just too hard to decipher and we can’t call back. So today I’m going to share with you the keys to leaving a great voicemail. And this applies to both personal and business voicemails. In no particular order they are (other than the first three):
Introduce Yourself Clearly
First and foremost start your voicemail by stating your name and phone number before you start leaving your message. This really helps give context to the message. Although you may know who you are, don’t assume the other person knows who you are right away. Not only that, but if you start talking about a prior history and the person taking the message doesn’t know who you are or what history you’re talking about, then they’ll have to re-listen to the voicemail at least twice (maybe more) before fully understanding it.
Imagine that you’re the receptionist at a doctor’s office and you get a voicemail such as: “Hi. After all I won’t be able to make the appointment for tomorrow at 3pm that you scheduled earlier for me”. If you heard just that odds are pretty high you might not be able to put two and two together and figure out who the caller was. Not only that, but if there’s more than one person handling the voicemails, then the person listening to the message might be the other receptionist who has no idea of the history. Adding “Oh and my name is ….” is very helpful, but it would be even better if you could put it first. Without looking back, can you remember what time the appointment was at? Probably not, you’re too busy just trying to process the message that you have to go back and re-listen to it.
Another good reason to state your name and phone number first is that generally when you transcribe voicemails to paper you write the contact information first. It’s easier to sort and take notes if you have several voicemails to call back. This is true for both personal and business voicemails.
Speak Slowly And Repeat Your Name and Phone Number
When you leave a voicemail, say your name and phone number slowly!! Remember that although you know your name and phone number by heart, the other person doesn’t. If you rip it out at mach 10, it’s very hard for the person taking the message to decipher it, never mind write it down. We’ve all heard voicemails where the person says the number so fast we have to hear over and over and over and over again just to get it down on paper. Avoid this at all costs!
If you have an odder name like mine (Stephane Grenier), take your time to articulate yourself and say it clearly. If you quickly muffle through your name, especially in a low voice, the other person has very little chance of getting it right. This is especially true if you’re offended when people incorrectly say your name. The good news is that you don’t have to spell it out, you just need to pronounce it clearly.
Raise the Volume of Your Voice
Speak louder than usual. Some connections are terrible. Maybe your phone has a lower quality microphone. Maybe the other persons phone is of lower quality. Maybe the person taking the message is in a louder environment. Speak up. Don’t be shy. It really helps. On several occasions we haven’t been able to return calls because we just can’t hear the person. They speak so low or softly that we can barely make out anything. Combine that with someone who says their phone number really fast, and there’s no way you can decipher the voicemail.
Don’t Assume Caller ID
Just because caller ID is everywhere, don’t assume you don’t need to leave your phone number. The number you call from can be blocked. The person transcribing the voicemail might not have access to the caller ID information. And in many cases the phone number displayed through the caller ID is just wrong or inaccurate. This is especially true if you call from a business and all calls just display the main phone number for the business.
Don’t Assume Previous Knowledge
Having already mentioned this, don’t assume the person taking the message has any history of your previous conversation. Especially in a business environment. Even if it’s a direct line to the same person, they’re probably dealing with multiple people on a daily basis. It’s not personal, it’s just the way it is. We humans have limited memory capabilities, so let’s help each other out. By giving a context, you’re also helping yourself.
Don’t Assume I Know You Just By the Sound of Your Voice
Generally you can get away with this for personal voicemails, especially with close relatives and friends. but definitely don’t assume this in a business environment. And even with friends and family, don’t assume it. Maybe when you left the voicemail there was a lot of background, you had a cold, my phone isn’t very good, etc. Remember, assuming makes an a– out of u and me.
Leave a Phone Number That Can Be Called Back
If you want someone to call you back, make sure you leave them a number they can call you back at. Just today I got a voicemail from someone asking me to call them back. When I tried, it said: “This person is no longer accepting any calls”. I can’t call them back. Similarly if you call a business, leave a number where you can be reached during the business day. And vice versa for a personal voicemail to a friend to call you back at night.
Avoid Background Noise
As mentioned before, if at all possible, when you leave a voicemail try to keep the background noise to a minimum. You never know the sound quality that will come out the other end, so why make it harder for the person taking the voicemail.
Always Leave Your Phone Number
This one is much more true for business than personal voicemails. Just because we’ve talked on the phone several times before, it doesn’t mean that I have your phone number readily available. Just imagine you’re a banker and someone left you a voicemail to call back about the interest on their mortgage but didn’t leave their phone number because you’ve had several back and forth calls. Now for some weird reason you can’t find their phone number in your notebook (it’s there but you can’t find it), what do you do? You can then look it up on their mortgage application form, which hopefully it’s there. If not you can always look them up in the phone book. You have so much to do, maybe you’ll just call them back later this afternoon since you have to digg for it. As you can see, as the effort to find your phone number climbs the odds of getting a quick call back drop. And who knows, if you’re very unlucky, they may never be able to call you back! By leaving your phone number you can make returning your call that much easier. And we all know the easier it is to do something, the more likely it’s to happen.
Conclusion
Obviously there are other things you can do to improve your voicemails, but just these will make an incredible difference. If I had to keep it down to a sentence, I would say: “Always say your name and phone number clearly, slowly, and loudly”. At the very least, you’ll get a call back!
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