Our program Thursday morning, May 28, 2020, was presented by Susan Champlain, Director of Government Operations, Boeing Company.

“Strange times.”  Susan Champlain began her presentation to the Club with great understatement, particularly for the Boeing Company.  The company, still our state’s largest employer, has faced enormous challenges in the last year and continues to work through them.

Today, Boeing employs 71,000 people in Washington.  The Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Capital Corporation divisions of the company are headquartered here.  The 777, 767 Dreamliner, 787, 777XS, 737 Max, and 747-8 are all built here.  Approximately half Boeing’s employees are located in Washington and the average salary is $124,500.

Susan addressed the two “horrible” 737 MAX accidents that were “devastating” to the employees of the company. The plane has been grounded now for over a year.  The company is hopeful that the certification process will be completed in the third quarter of this year.  Production of the aircraft halted in January of 2020; but new production will begin again shortly.  But there are 400 737 MAX aircraft currently parked awaiting delivery to customers.

There were “serious mistakes” that lead to this situation, she said.  The company erred in understanding how pilots would react in a very stressful situation.  She believes that, once certified, the revised 737 MAX will be one of the safest planes in the air.

Equally concerning to the company is the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.  US airline traffic is down more than 90 percent from last year and “airlines are suffering mightily.”  While Chinese air travel has begun to recover, it is not expected that recovery will become complete for three years.  There are currently 16,000 jets parked and out of service.

Boeing has reacted to these challenges through two large layoffs.  Four thousand employees left the company voluntarily, but the company recently announced an additional 6,000 involuntary layoffs.  There may additional layoffs.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that aviation, historically, has been incredibly resilient:  It always come back. 

To aid in the comeback, a consortium of manufacturers, airlines, regulators, and academics have begun working on significantly enhancing the safety of flying.  People need to feel safe when they are flying and the consortium is working on innovations like UV lighting and antimicrobial surfaces on planes.

Susan took questions from the membership, but did not comment on Hal Beal’s announcement that he had recently purchased Boeing stock.  Several members were quite knowledgeable about the great variation in the stock price, which, some said, might be a buying opportunity.

Susan expressed optimism about the future of the company, but, clearly, there will be a long road to recovery.

Presentation by Jonathan Mayer, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, to the University Sunrise Rotary Club. May 14, 2020

COVID-19 continues to be a dire public health risk.  It might never go away.

Globally, there are 4.4 million confirmed cases and nearly 300,000 deaths in 188 nations.  In the US, there are nearly 1.4 million cases and over 80,000 deaths.

The US will reach 100,000 deaths in a few weeks.

These numbers are most certainly low as some regions have limited data.  These regions include developing parts of the world and regions where testing has not been robust such as the United States.

An elevated cause for concern in the US, is increasing numbers of cases per capital in rural areas.  Yakima County is a “real concentration” in Washington State.  The Navaho Reservation and Four Corners area of the US Southwest, as well as Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and North Dakota have become areas of increasing concern.  As of this date, COVID-19 remains “way under-reported.”

Urban areas remain hot spots.  This includes Detroit and Chicago, as well as the entire corridor from Washington, DC to Boston.

The good news is that curve is flattening and the rate of increase in reporting of disease is diminishing.

But Dr. Mayer expects the pandemic to continue to plague humans until there is population “herd”) immunity (estimates for this virus are when about 60% of the population becomes immune from exposure) or an effective vaccine is being used.

We do not know if there is a seasonality aspect to COVID-19 yet.

No one in the medical community thinks that this will burn out.  It is likely, at some level, to be with us forever.

Dr. Mayer discussed several of the ongoing research efforts to find effective therapies and vaccines.

Hydroxychloroquine: While there has been anecdotal evidence that this might be effective, the clinical studies thus far are “really disappointing.”  Published research in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association do not demonstrate effect on reducing mortality or need for ventilators.  There is still no definitive word on the therapy, he says, but concerns about side effects and the lack of positive research recently have made it very difficult to recruit patients into the clinical trials that could demonstrate effectiveness conclusively.  This was the medication that was optimistically discussed by the President.

Remdesivir:   While Dr. Anthony Faucci has called remdesivir a “game changer,” the published data so far does not yet support that conclusion.  This could be an important new therapy.  New data is expected to become known over the next several weeks which will help make that determination.

Convalescent Plasma: This therapy has shown mixed results with nothing definitively yet proved.

Vitamin D:  There are no definitive studies with regard to its impact on COVID-19.  Vitamin D does impact the immune system, but it is dubious if mega-doses will work on COVID-19.  Still, Vitamin D supplements are “probably prudent” for most people at latitudes such as Seattle.

Vaccines:  there are over one hundred vaccines in development.  There are no vaccines that are imminent.  In fact, Dr. Mayer lamented, we do not understand the immunology of this virus yet.  It is certainly not known yet at the level where a vaccine, when approved, will be effective:  50% of the population?  98% of the population?

There is no credible scientific evidence that the coronavirus was engineered in a Chinese laboratory.  It is most likely that it originated from a bat virus that spread into humans.  But, he said, the epidemiology of the disease and the habitats of the likely source suggest that disease was much more widespread within China than has been reported.

“I think we can move forward,” said Dr. Mayer, “toward a more normal life.”  But he suggested important safeguards. First, changes in restrictions should be based on the science. Second, far more testing is needed and fast. third, contact tracing could be a very important tool in limiting the spread of the disease, if combined with isolation of the infected.  This will require, nationally, one hundred thousand trained workers.

Maybe it is time, he said, to let low risk individuals—people in the twenties and thirties, for example, go back to work—with assurance that they will not be in contact with high risk individuals.

Conclusion:  Dr. Mayer was fantastic.  He is incredibly knowledgeable about this topic and has the rare ability to communicate a complex topic to an audience.  His talk was sobering, particularly with regard to the belief that the virus was not going to disappear—and that a vaccine might not be the panacea for which we hope. It might be a long road ahead of us.

At our online meeting on April 6, 2020, longtime member Tom Ranken reviewed the book “Bowling Alone” by Robert D Putnam, Professor of Public Policy of Harvard. Written 20 years ago, the book deals with the decline of social organizations in US society. A compelling and challenging book, the author argues that the infrastructure for social interaction has been devastated in the last fifty years (including Rotary Clubs). He discusses the reasons why, then makes a very persuasive case that this has done enormous harm. An update of the book is due this year. The themes discussed were stimulating and challenging. Here’s a link the PowerPoint presentation : Bowling Alone.