Program Summary: Sam Kaplan, “Challenging China: Smart Strategies to Encourage its Liberalization,” February 11, 2021

By Merrill Mayer

Sam’s new book, Challenging China: Smart Strategies for Dealing with China in the Xi Jinping Era will be released in spring 2021. At Sam Kaplan (samkaplanauthor.com), there are links to a variety of places to buy the book. The Amazon link is here.

What to do about expansionistic China? This is one of 4 most important issues dealing with China

Sam Kaplan
Sam Kaplan

Escalator Incident: In President Xi’s visit to Seattle in 2015, Chinese security unilaterally turned off escalator in Westin Hotel. This was against US law–and one example of a very different demeanor from past cooperative visits.

Power Consolidation:

  1. More power in inner circle. More closed and more oppressive
  2. Xi gave speech to make sure China doesn’t go the way of USSR
  3. Human rights deteriorated. Uighurs in internment camps Forceable sterilization of Uighur women. Lots of crack downs. People arrested. Internet censorship

Threats:

  1. Xi wants to replace liberal world order with authoritarianism. .
  2. China more expansionist. China claims territorial waters more more than 1000 miles from its borders.
  3. China wants to make it easier to spy on citizens via telecommunication. They export this technology. More vocal about Taiwan and possibly invading.
  4. Hong Kong crack down. New Security law prevents free speech
  5. China has companies with world wide impact like TikTok. TikTok even collects key strokes from phones when using the app

Economy:

  1. China very successful economically which gives it great leverage in the world. However, GDP per capita is lower than other Asian countries like South Korea
  2. Very sophisticated mobile payments big stride in biotechnology.
  3. Brought many out of poverty. Increasingly large middle class
  4. Many business people in Africa. Factories in Africa. Benefits these countries economically
  5. China has demographic issues with aging population. China’s population will be older than US’s population in 20 years. This results in end of high GDP growth rate.

Policies to deal with China -Improve our country:

  1. Improve infrastructure
  2. Put human rights at forefront of our policy. Carter and Reagan did this
  3. Multilateralism – build alliances. However multilateralism could be difficult as US stepped back from world stage. Plus economic ties other counties have with China deter this. Countries see America in decline for example the DC riots, poor response to COVID-19.
  4. If we are able to liberalize China, we could see more improvements in the world such as medical and economic.

Program Summary: Jonathan Mayer, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, “An Update on the Pandemic,” February 4, 2021

Jonathan Mayer, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
Jonathan Mayer, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington

On February 4, 2021, Jonathan Mayer spoke to our club.  Again.  It is hard to imagine anyone more qualified to speak about the pandemic.  He is a Professor of Epidemiology and Geography at the University of Washington.  He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine, (Division of Infectious Diseases), Department of Family Medicine, and in Health Services, Global Health. He is Program Director, joint degree: MPH in Epidemiology/PhD Biocultural Anthropology.

Dr. Mayer talked to our club almost a year ago; here is a summary of the talk at that time. He was great and very well received by the Club.

Some of the items of interest that he noted included:

  • There are around thirty vaccines in advanced clinical trials around the world.  Their mechanisms are similar.
  • There are three ways to mitigate the pandemic.
    • Prevention through masking.
    • Treatment of the disease.
    • Vaccinate.
  • Herd immunity is the goal—which may require 80 percent of the population to have been vaccinated or attained immunity because of having had Covid-19.
  • The vaccines probably both protect the individual from getting the disease—and limit transmission.
  • Lung cells are particularly susceptible to the virus.  The spike protein attaches to lung cell receptors.
  • The vaccines ‘trick’ the virus.  They emulate the spike protein and prevent the virus from attaching to human cells.  The vaccines use different mechanisms to induce the same result.
  • The first Chinese report on the virus was published on December 31, 2019.  Within a couple of weeks, the entire genome of the virus had been published.
  • Most vaccine candidates fail.  There are lots of disincentives to develop vaccines:  The science and the risks are hard.  The federal government mitigated those risks for the Covid-19 vaccine with spectacular success:  That was the essence of Operation Warp Speed.
  • Distribution of the vaccine, thus far, has not been as successful.
  • Vaccines and drugs require three stages of clinical trials for approval.  Most fail during trials.
    • Phase 1 involves a small number of volunteers (30-100) and looks for notable side effects.
    • Phase 2 involves more than a thousand volunteers and looks for safety and efficacy.  Volunteers are randomly put into drug and placebo arms of the trial to determine efficacy.
    • Phase 3 involves thousands of volunteers.  Moderna had 30,000 volunteers.  The volunteers are randomized into placebo and drug arms and the results are compared to determine efficacy.
  • For Covid-19, regulators were seeking a minimum effective rate of fifty percent.
  • The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines had 94-95 percent efficacy, but these were under ideal conditions—not real the world.  The effectiveness in the real world is almost always less—85 percent may be more likely.
  • If herd immunity requires 80 percent efficacy, almost everyone will need to be vaccinated to achieve that goal.
  • Dr. Mayer indicated the risk in open spaces and with short duration contact was very low.
  • He also warned that it may be two years before we see a return to crowded sporting events.

February 14 Addendum: My slides from my presentation are already out of date since there is good news about the J and J, AstraZeneca, and Novavax products—I expect that the Johnson and Johnson will be approved by the scientific board of the FDA at the end of the week of the 22nd—and will probably be approved shortly thereafter. That is the single injection product. And while it is not as effective in totally preventing COVID than the others, it is nearly 100% effective in preventing severe disease and hospitalization. So I expect that that will make a big difference within a couple of months. I’d be glad to do an update for the group in the coming months,

Rotary Peace Fellow Applications

Rotary Peace Centers

The 2022 Rotary Peace Fellowship application is now available, and we need your help finding the next cohort of global peace and development leaders.

Club members are encouraged to use their professional and social contacts to find potential candidates. They can also support the program by coaching candidates through the application process and connecting them to districts that can endorse their applications, a required step in the application process.

These resources can help you recruit candidates for 2022 Rotary Peace Fellowships:

Candidates have until 15 May to submit applications to their districts. Districts have until 1 July to submit endorsed applications to The Rotary Foundation.

Send any questions about the fellowship program to rotarypeacecenters@rotary.org. Thank you for your dedication to the Rotary Peace Centers and your help educating Rotary members and your community about the fellowships.

Sincerely, 
Rotary Peace Centers

Rotary Peace Centers are made possible by the generosity of donors.

Program Summary: Bill McSherry and Ryan Tomasich, Boeing, January 28, 2021

Bill McSherry

Our program for January 28, 2021, featured Bill McSherry and Ryan Tomasich of Boeing. Bill and Ryan updated us on what has been happening at Boeing, during some truly turbulent times.

William McSherry is Vice President, State & Local and Global Corporate Citizenship, Boeing Commercial. He has worked at the regional, state and federal levels of government on economic and aerospace issues. He has a BA in political science and an MBA, both from the University of Washington.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Tomasich-Ryan.png
Ryan Tomasich

Ryan Tomasich is a Government Operations manager for The Boeing Company. In this position, he is responsible for representing the company before elected and appointed public officials and their staffs, industry and business association executives and political community-based organizations in the Puget Sound region. He acts as a company focal for negotiating and influencing government relations’ policy on external issues and he provides political strategy and advice to company management. Tomasich graduated from Loyola Marymount University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

The hardships that the company has faced in the past eighteen months were striking. This includes both the 737-MAX difficulties and COVID-19. In one of the more striking slides, Bill and Ryan talked about the decline in air travel in the past year. In April, passengers were down over ninety percent–four to five times less than the periods following 9/11 and the Great Recession.

Some more of their presentation is incorporated in the following:

Subject: Rotary Scholarship

Many residents in our state do not have access to quality medical care from licensed physicians. Your help is needed to improve the availability of primary medical care in underserved communities.

The vision of Washington’s community-based medical school is to prepare students to become healthcare leaders that are ready to serve Washington communities where they are needed most.

The Rotary Scholarship supports students preparing to be the healthcare leaders for an underserved community. The first recipient will be selected in Fall 2021 with support through their four-year study. Three more scholarships are needed for successive years.

Donations of at least $20 per District 5030 Rotarian will fund one scholarship for the first year and an endowment for it’s successive years. To learn more or make a donation visit bellevuesunriserotary.org/rotary-scholarship.  

Rotary Volunteers Needed for Blood Drive

Seattle 4 is helping Bloodworks NW at Bloodwork’s two-day Pop-Up Site Blood Drive at the Seattle Aquarium on Tuesday February 16 and Wednesday February 17 and they could use our assistance.  

The Pop-Up site is in the Aquarium’s Mezzanine Cafe and could be hard for some people to find.  A way around this predicament is to recruit greeters and guides to provide needed direction.  It seems like it’s a perfect opportunity for Rotary!

I have this picture in my mind of folks, in their best Rotary garb, complete with a Rotary Facemask, giving this needed guidance.  I see Rotary brochures displayed on the table out front enticing donors to join a local Club.  My vision also includes many Rotarians lending their arms at the Aquarium doing their part to to save up to three tives.

Our idea is to split the days up into at least one-hour segments (perhaps two to three people in each segment).  This requires a lot of Rotary People Power as Tuesday’s drive is from 9 am to 4 pm and Wednesday’s is from 9 am to 5 pm. 

Blood donors are required to register before their donation.  Use of this link, https://dslnk.co/Rotary5030, helps Bloodworks track that the donor is a District 5030 Rotarian. I’m scheduled to donate at Noon on that Tuesday.

Please send Jaime Mendez (Seattle 4 Volunteer Coordinator) and me the names of the individuals who would like to be part of the greeter/guide team.  It would be nice to include the name of their club, as well as the times and date they’d like to help out.  We will put together a final volunteer schedule as soon as we know how many people we have to work with.

Thank you for your cooperation and for being a leader in Rotary District 5030!

Alan Merry

Past District Governor

Rotary District 5030

University Sunrise Rotary Collects Food for the University District Food Bank

The University Sunrise Rotary Club collected 910 pounds of food plus cash for the University Food Bank in a food drive last weekend. It was great to see (at least a portion of faces) many our members out doing service for the community (January 23, 2021).

Thanks to our members that participated included Dave Arndt, Steve Barton, Hal Beals, Ed Bronsdon, Lincoln Ferris, Scott Jamieson, Dave Mushen, Pam Mushen, Teri St. Onge, Ben Porter, Tom Ranken, Felicity Wang, Paul Weibel. Special thanks to Isaac McNally for leading, organizing, and participating!

Teri St. Onge, Paul Weibel, and Isaac McNally
Paul Weibel and Teri St. Onge
Steve Barton and Scott Jamieson

Program Summary: Denny Wilford, “The Fight Against Polio,” Jan. 21, 2021

By Steve Barton

On January 21, 2021, we were honored to host Denny Willford, a Polio survivor who has given much of his life in the eradication of polio and improving the lives of survivors.  Two drops is all it takes to never have Polio and Denny has given hundreds two drop doses to children in multiple trips to Ethiopia and Uganda. 

Unfortunately, it has not always been enough.  Those who do come down with polio often become what is known as crawlers, unable to walk.  This condition can partially be resolved through surgery, which requires extensive rehabilitation.  On of the best restoration methods is hydrotherapy. Denny and his foundation built a hydrotherapy pool to assist in just that with great results.  Once rehabilitated, these former unemployable crawlers can now support themselves and their families.

Denny hasn’t stopped there.  He has formed the Willford Foundation which is supplying school desks for schools in Ethiopia.  To quote him:  $5,000 builds a lot of desks. 

Through the efforts of many Denny’s volunteering their time to provide 2 drops, worldwide polio cases were down to a handful with the goal of a polio-free world well in sight.  However, due to Covid and political discord, polio immunizations have stopped for the duration of the pandemic.  This has set the goal of eradication of polio back many years.

Words to Live By: George Carlin

“The paradox of our time in history is that we’ve learned how to make a better living, but not a better life. We have more conveniences but less time, wider freeways but narrower viewpoints, more medicine but less wellness. We’ve been to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor or to help a stranger in need. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice.

So put down the phone and the remote, and look at the world around you. Spend time with your loved ones, because they won’t be around forever. Take the time to make a new friend, to say a kind word, to do something selfless. And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.”

           – George Carlin