Beyond the Present Podcast

The world is changing rapidly and with it so should we which is why in this episode Daniel discuses the three most important skills that prove essential to prepare us for the world of tomorrow! 

In this episode Daniel will offer a brief breakdown of the book the WIERDest people in the world that stands for Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, and Democratic and uses his international experience to contrast eastern and western cultures. 

One of the best tools in the arsenal of success is your ability to regularly check the progress you are making towards your goals  and in this episode you will learn why what gets measured gets done. 

As we get closer to the end of the pandemic many of us are wondering how will our lives change after the pandemic and whether we will experience some permanent changes once life goes back to normal. In this episode, we will discuss this very issue and offer our prognosis for the situation.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pandemic, life, emission, crisis, problem, people, vaccines, literally, world, technology, months, future, article, ready, managed, major, earthquake, living, fact, hope

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Dan

Pouya LJ  00:09

Hello, and welcome back to yet another episode of The BTP podcast joined with Daniel Mulligan as always, how's it going, buddy?

Dan  00:17

What a man, buddy, glad to be here with you. Life is great. We're hearing a lot of good news from around the world. I mean, England was the first country to reopen up the first western country to open up, basically, and we're hearing some pretty good news. And based on what we've heard so far of global travel, as we restore, and the level of optimism going up all across the building, so the place that you know, that were hit the hardest, including Europe, which now there's a lot of, you know, sign of hope, basically. And the US, obviously, will be out of this mess. And in a couple, perhaps, three, four months. So that'll be a great news generally couldn't be happier and more excited about the future, the summer is coming. Last one, not the best summer of all, but this one probably going to be a lot better. So the hope is rising. And we are extremely hopeful for the future, basically. And I couldn't be any more grateful about how we have managed to, you know, come along so far. And hopefully things are getting much better, haven't you, man, I heard some stuff about Canada, you guys are probably hopefully going forward a little bit slower than many other development development societies. But still, you guys are making progress too, I guess. Right.

Pouya LJ  01:24

Yeah, it's a it's a bit of a problem with having vaccines in hand to be able to vaccinate people. It's not it's not a it's getting better. But it has been slow. So that's the that's the major hurdle, I suppose. Here in Canada. But yeah, it's it's coming along. Slowly. But surely. Now. Yeah. So I was talking about on this subject we were going to talk about for today's topic, we're going to talk about what are the things we should be doing to prepare because it's going to be a different life the same, the same way we have developed ourselves to adapt to the news situation of dealing with the pandemic, we're going towards the world towards a world, which it's not necessarily the same as before, but it's going to have elements as before, and maybe some argument and an upgrade at once. So what are the things that an individual should do, that may not be even thinking about that should prepare themselves help prepare themselves for a future post pandemic? Hopefully, that is prosperous. And

Dan  02:29

exactly, man, that's exactly what we're hoping for. And I guess right now, we have somehow gotten used to form that new norm is not something that can be strong, especially when it comes to social kind. However, the pandemic did have a lot of positive sides too. I mean, like, we've seen some terms of remote work, which has traffic and emission. Ever honest with you, I was recently finishing my vehicle pulled up put a review soon on social media called you know, how to prevent another plane Oh, and other climate crisis. And in reality speaking, I was really surprised, I thought, I feel like you know, this pandemic really helped the environments and reduce the emission, but base the first that I found in the book, at the impact of the pandemic, on the environment, it was minimal, it was less than 3% emission that was reduced overall, which showed that the majority of the emission in the world has not that much to do with moving around and a you know, complete lockdown can't necessarily reduce the emission that much was for me, I feel like you know, what, there was this conspiracy theory, these guys as well stop moving around, so we can reduce the the emission but in reality, the pandemic itself did reduce the entire global emission by less than 3%, which wasn't even you know that much. So this was not one of them. However, the pandemic definitely did teach us a lot of great lessons. Well, mainly, remote work is indeed possible. And many employees could be as efficient working at home, as opposed to just you know, going to the office, and I'm pretty sure that this is gonna be one of those hybrid things where we'll be having a future where companies are going to offer more such hybrid approach to working that is, I don't know, let's say half the week we'll be working at home, the other half of the office and so on, this is definitely going to be a great thing, but I'm pretty sure this pandemic is gonna make some major changes in the near future. And this is going to be the beginning of a new approach towards life. However, we've had all these things for socialists and they'll and wearing masks. This also happened with a flu pandemic. And like this, they tend to live in the present moment most of the time, and kind of like, as we've been somehow struck by some sort of natural disaster being a major hurricane being a storm. After an earthquake, if you've seen these families who have suffered from hurricanes, especially in the coastal areas, or those who have served from earthquake, the first few, let's say days or weeks or months after the event, they're strongly involved with it, then after a while, they forget that there was a patent, basically, a tornado or an earthquake. And the same thing, of course, will happen with a pandemic. Yes, it is true that this has already caused a lot of change the way we live our lives, but then again, human nature and look at their history and knowing that this was not by any means the first plague anybody ever had to deal with looking at things will tell us that this is just one of those major events that happened, and people will just go back living the way they want it to. So I don't think that dependent per se, make a dramatic shift in the way we live our lives. The rest of our you know, life, because this is not the first pandemic. And unfortunately, by that, by the way, it looks probably won't be the last either. And looking at the history tells us that many societies who thought that this was the end of it all, and that this one pandemic, or this one World War, or this one, tsunami is the end of it all, probably, this is not going to be the case, because I've seen this happening over and over again. So people probably about when who declares they spend it because over space, as you probably know, people are in this momentum of oh my gosh, I still got to do this. So it will take approximately three weeks to about a month or two for most people to get used to a new situation, which means I can assure you now, by this time, this is declared over by nearly a show, almost in less than perhaps a month, maybe two, most people are back to living their lives probably very differently. And if you feel like this is going to change, I don't know social context, you are completely mistaken. Because in reality, people are now going to overdo most of those things that used to be forbidden. Obviously, it's human nature, you want to somehow go for it and knock ourselves out basically, right. So for that reason, I see no change the way we you know, do and socialize at all, what I might see is the exact opposite, we'll see a major surge and the increase in terms of these activities that will occur. However, politically, economically and professionally, we're going to be seeing some changes. The first you know is going to be the airlines, I mean, are these guys going to be actually change their entire plan of traveling, we are definitely going to see some increase in many goods and services that are related to tourism, traveling and so on. So all of these things are going to play a role. So even the trend will be more in demand, the price will also be much higher. The same thing applies to hotels, and so many other industries that were hit hard during the pandemic. But more importantly, we have to look at the political changes in this system, we've seen a major political failure. And I really loved the last article by noble Hurry, who actually mentioned this in detail in his latest article that he posted. I wish I could this pandemic was more a political failure than any other type of failure. So we're gonna see some major changes, I hope by governments to learn from this experience and prepare themselves for the next outbreak. But in reality, I don't think that this is going to be like one of those things that will change life forever. Because we have seen plagues and pandemics and outbreaks repeatedly throughout, you know, human history, we've seen that life simply moves on and everything goes back to normal afterwards. And that's what I personally would like to thank. But then again, there's always going to be a factor factor that how we can take advantage of this and how we can actually get ready for the next outbreak. But I'm pretty sure that most of us are now going to be ready for the next pandemic a lot more than we used to. But still, it's not backed up by governmental support, then that simply will be all in vain.

Pouya LJ  08:55

That's absolutely correct. And I have to read I haven't read the latest article by Yuval Noah Harare, I didn't know there is one. So I got you got me interested there.

Dan  09:06

You can check it out. It's pretty good. Actually, it's a free article. And is he published it on a multi multiple journals. And it fully explains because he's a historian. He's seen these things throughout history a lot. So he describes the fact and it's a very wonderful article proventil all of our listeners to actually check this article out.

Pouya LJ  09:25

Fascinating. Yeah, I will certainly do that myself. And we'll link to that in the comment in the comment section at the end of the comment section but the description section of the episode. Okay, so very, so we're moving forward. We're moving past has has Well, besides the obvious, I suppose, has there any been any lessons for you personally, or for other people that you know of, that you would want to take from this pandemic moving forward changing so maybe not completely going back to normal, but adding to what's going on? Because as you know, you, we are meeting you, and a lot of others are very interested if there is hardship, if there's progress past it. It's useful, right? So we want to make use of it that says, What are the things that you think we can take from this pandemic? And that not from the for sure, there is a governmental aspect in preparation for the future pandemics, but on more of a personal level, perhaps, or individual level?

Dan  10:26

Very well. And I agree with you completely. I think this pandemic did teach us a lot of great lessons. I think that the psychological damage of this pandemic was far more than its impact on the lives of people around the world. We've had, of course, unfortunately, a number of deaths that were beyond what most modern societies could actually have. Because we have advanced medicine and having to deal with all these deaths, as we know in the year 2020, and 2021. It just makes no sense. We are at such a level of development in terms of medicine. However, again, in this article, Harare talks about this. And he says that this plague and pandemic, given that we think it was the worst thing that ever happened, because most of us have no experience of a major pandemic in, you know, modern history. So the last one goes back to 1980s, way before any of these, you know, technologies were there. And at that time, nobody even knew what the virus really was. I mean, they are calling a flu, but there have has been no real evidence of exactly what the virus was because the medical technology did not actually do anything about it. But this time around, not only we could exactly identify the virus know exactly what are the problems? What's the antibody like and have it generally show that our advancement technology has definitely helped us a lot in this regard, which is why in terms of what we did with a pandemic wrong, most of it actually goes back to a policy and not technology. For that reason, I don't think that this pandemic necessarily was poorly handled from the medical sector. Because I mean, the idea of just having a vaccine ready for mass distribution less than a year is just, you know, it's the first time It's never happened before, for the first time in history. And a novel unknown virus happens. And a year later, we have the vaccine, multiple manufacturers have worked on it. And boom, it's like literally going to Macy's and Walmart, you get like, you know, you get like all the flavors to get like the different flavors of the vaccines, if you will. So that was like really incredible, personally, to see how much we've made progress that we literally have now options. I mean, in certain countries. I mean, right now you're in Canada, you literally can pick up, it's just like buying your tariffs from God Damn, it's like buying it. I don't know, internet provider. So you can see like, well, you got Johnson and Johnson here. And then we got AstraZeneca here. And then we got, for example of Pfizer here. And then we got Sputnik v here. So literally, that not only we did not fall behind, we actually made so many different vaccines available in less than a year. And that was just incredible. So we have to Hale and admire our medical progress. This is just quite unprecedented. So that's the good side of it. But obviously, in terms of policy, as a whole from store, we've seen as always how politicians disappoint. And we've we saw how this was handled. Probably I as of now, especially from the year 2020. I cannot think of a single nation that handled this pandemic. Well, politically Not a single one. I mean, if you think of any single country, they could have done things much better, but they didn't. Because the world worldwide, none of us were ready. You're now in Canada, we know that the Kenyan government is you know very well, in most cases. But even the Kenyan government failed in this regard. Because Sure, sindhya happened during the Trump administration, the same thing happened to Europe. We thought Germany was way ahead. And now look at Germany. Dude, these guys have been locked down since November. Are you freaking kidding me? So this is what we've realized that technology won't solve most prompts, if politics is in the way and fortunately, this is going to teach all of us in the future to be prepared for an individual level. But from my perspective, I think that every basically difficulty is at the same time an opportunity. And we saw the fact that this pandemic could somehow be productive for some people, yes, many lost their jobs. Unfortunately, you know, the psychological tool was extremely heavy, particularly among the the extroverted population. So it was very difficult it still is because we're not adequate yet. But at the same time, it taught us that technology can help us I mean, the very fact that we use, you know, Internet technology to have our lives, you know, moving forward, that was just incredible, because if you look at the history, this was not the case. I mean, in the past when a flu pandemic occurred, this had to create the need for another world war two compensate for that, you know, economic damage, because at that time, there was no such thing as zoom. So if you shut down the city, you also close and shut down the economy. But we saw that During this time, we actually managed to keep the economy's running Despite all these limitations, so we should look at the positive side as well. And on a personal level, as you pointed out yourself, we also really, yeah, man, I mean, it's possible to go through difficult moments of, you know, human history and still come out stronger and able to, you know, survive and thrive during this pandemic. I mean, the same pandemic made life perhaps easier for certain people as well. I mean, like, they could simply I mean, I just talked to one of my friends who were just today, we had one of our, you know, group sessions, basically. And he's like, dude, I just love this man. And I don't have to, I think from now on, I only work online and I don't, I can just work in my underwear, man is pretty cool. I love to work in my underwear, man is so much more comfy. So for that reason, we are going to see a major shift towards renewable energy, green energy using that technology, instead of just you know, reducing carbon emission, these are all going to be some of the good facts that will be left after the pennant is over. However, from my point of view, the biggest, you know, reminder of this pennant pandemic for us is that our politicians doesn't matter where you are living right now, you could be living in one of the world's most developed society, and who live in one of the world's Least Developed societies. And you'll see that in the end, it doesn't matter how much technology is available to if policies are not in place to help you to protect you, then we'll see the disaster that we saw, especially early part pandemic, most countries, so I hope that we as we leave this pandemic behind, you know, around the world, we develop awareness regarding policy, and we will prepare ourselves for these such events, because they might happen again, I mean, that's just, you know, part of life. So if we get ready to deal with that in the future will will then hopefully, we will somehow not repeat the same mistakes that we made during this pandemic. And on a very personal level. Obviously, if you have gone through the panic so far, you can look back and say, you know, what, I just went through 12 months of almost everything bad that could happen to human human being right. So you got you got loneliness, you got lack of a social life, you got a lack of entertainment, you got lack of human contact. So if you're right now listening to us, you have, you know, and you've done something with your time during this past 12 months, then congratulations, you're really are a superwoman, or a Superman, because it says, You should literally pat yourself on the back, like, dude, I just went through 12 months of the pandemic, and I'm still here. And you should literally pat yourself on the back and know that you have accomplished something wonderful. Maybe some of your friends right now are not with you because they committed suicide, because they lost hope, because they just stopped, you know, following their goals. And they instead started drinking heavily, right? So for those of us who managed to go through this penalty, the least damage possible, I mean, everybody's going to get damaged in this situation. There's no doubt about it, but some of us got damaged less. And I believe that is exactly what matters for us. Because if you are one of those who got damaged less, and he actually managed to accomplish something, perhaps you focus more on doing your term papers before the end of the goddamn semester for the first time in your whole life. Or perhaps you manage to work consistently on your projects. And to delay, maybe maybe be more on time, because now everything is online, so you don't have to be late and you can blame the traffic. So there were a lot of opportunities for us to go through this pandemic, knowing that it is possible for us to simply work hard and to get the results. So you can look back at this and say, You know what, I did something big here, man I, I have, it's like for our generations, you know, the millennials. For us. It's like our grandparents, or grand grandparents who went through the World War experience, we are facing with something that is actually technically and logistically more significant than a World War, because during a World War, there are many nations that are just simply just neutral, and you can live their normal. So what we saw in the pandemic, we, our generation, we should literally be proud of this because most of us youngsters especially, we went through something that most of our grandparents couldn't even dream of going through. But we did it and that requires recognition. And we have to know that if we could do this, if we could go through such a hell called the COVID pandemic, we can do almost anything else. Because if you feel like this was the last crisis of your life, I got a bad, you know, bad news for you. And the fact of the matter is that life is a series of problems, like the ocean waves, and they are but occasionally interrupted, not by a peaceful sea, but by tornadoes. So life basically is problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, crisis, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem crisis. So this is the wave of life like the wave of the ocean, right? And we will go through with this throughout our lives, and most of us we are on the second half of that crisis, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be the last crisis. In our lives, socially, politically, or even personally, and knowing that we could go through this crisis gives us the confidence to know that we can go through any other prices. And the fact that we've managed to, you know, somehow hold on to it and not give up like all those who unfortunately committed suicide or, you know, gave into drug abuse or heavy drinking. Those of us who didn't do that, we know that we are ready for the next wave. And guess what's going to be the next wave once we finish the pandemic? problem, problem, problem, problem prices, problem, problem, problem, problem, crisis. So you just went through one crisis, hopefully, we're gonna finish this one again in next eight months, if you are living in the Western world, or in the next 14 months if you're living in the developing world, but ultimately, we will get out of this. And once we do we have the confident belief in ourselves that yes, we did it. We went through this, we survived and thrived. And we are ready for what? That's right. problem. Problem. problem. Problem. problem. Problem price. Oh, yeah.

Pouya LJ  20:59

All right. Okay, so that sounded optimistic. I want to say, All right, I'm just kidding.

Dan  21:05

This is optimistic, because this is the life and the whole point of life is to go through problems, problems, problems, problems, problems. Yes. And to grow from it. That's the right attitude. The whole point of life is to grow from all these experiences. And once you realize that it is your job to solve problems. I mean, name one person who has no problem or crisis, oh, I can think of one, that person is dead. So when you are dead, you got no problems, you got no crisis, right? So life is dealing with problems. And optimism is knowing that despite all these problems and crises, you can deal with it, that the future is always going to be brighter than the past. And that no matter how tough things gets, whether a pandemic a world war or major, you know, technological disruption that will make you perhaps render you obsolete in the workforce, you know, that you are capable of dealing with whatever life throws at you. That is optimism, optimism is not denying the presence of problems or crises. There's like, no, there's no bendemeer. Once you deny that, you're not an optimist, you're an idiot. But once you are now, to say, yes, there are problems. Yes, there are crises. No, the last places, but I am more than capable of dealing with whatever life throws at me, I'm always greater than all the changes that we know will be in front of me. And I have the greater bad, I just went emic, which means for whatever, crash, I will be damned ready.

Pouya LJ  22:39

So that's, that's really good to hear. Thanks, Dan. It's I think it's a was a very productive episode we have today. But before we close, whether any, anything that we missed out that you want us to talk about or summarize,

Dan  22:55

or Well, first of all, the topic very much great face on your cheeks, but also discussed the life after the pandemic. Fortunately, the news is generally positive world wide. In some nations, things are much better than the others, obviously, because I mean, I mean, that's called modern equality, obviously. But as a whole, the world will eventually get out of this pandemic. And most of the predictions marked q4 of 2021. And we will hopefully see that happening in most countries around the world by then. And we discussed how we'll change for getting out of the pandemic. And I said that this pandemic wasn't the you know, the first, nor probably the last. So it's not going to dramatically change life forever, like nothing really does. And we discuss the fact that those of us went through serious difficult, will be able to handle whatever life throws at us with the right attitude, we also find what it means to be an optimist. an optimist is not somebody who denies problems or crisis, nor someone who thinks that his or her current problems the last life is, as we discussed a series of problems only interrupted occasionally by crisis, which means we need to understand this, prepare ourselves for it, and develop a belief and faith in ourselves and know that the future was going to be brighter, because we have just proven to ourselves that we can go through an entire year of complete restriction where life comes to a halt. But hope still continues. And that's exactly we did. And it's going to hopefully teach us in the future to be able to work on ourselves. And if we could go through the COVID pandemic survive and thrive through it, we can do anything.

Pouya LJ  24:33

Perfect. That's very good to hear. That's very positive, I think. Yeah, despite that, hints that might suggest that there's negativity. It's not ultimately Oh, yeah, it's very optimistic. Yeah. My point of view. Again, thanks. As always, Dan, for joining us. My pleasure. And thank you everyone for listening and tuning in and until a later episode, have a good one.

Financial literacy is the main difference between those who have to constantly worry about money and those who don’t. In this episode you will learn how financially literate people think about money differently than the rest of us.

It is said all things in moderation and moderation in all things and in this episode Daniel discusses why it is important to avoid an extreme path and stick to a moderate one in all personal and professional areas of life. 

Following the 2020 election which marked the dawn of Biden's presidency, the world saw a turning point in history as the nationalist policies of the previous administration were replaced by a globalist one. In this episode of the Beyond the Present podcast Daniel and Pouya discuss what the Biden presidency means not only for the US but also for the rest of the world

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

trump, president biden, biden, world, vaccines, administration, russia, approach, earthquake, president biden's, pandemic, run, nations, policies, ministration, major, talking, vaccinated, obama, highly

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Dan

Pouya LJ  00:10

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BGP podcast. I'm here, as always with Danny Mulligan, how's it going, buddy?

Dan  00:18

What's the man buddy, glad to be here with you pretty happy and excited to be here for you to another let's talk edition of Beyond the present podcast, life is great we are gradually approaching this summer, which as many know is thought to be our first get away from all of this madness called the COVID pandemic. So pretty happy and excited, because as you probably know, I am the kind of person who is pretty much always on the move. And having seen our lifestyles change over the past year or so has obviously made me even more hopeful about what's about to occur in the near future. So life is pretty good. on all fronts, we're happy about the pace at which most of the world is being vaccinated. Although quite frankly, I'm a little bit disappointed by the European Union, things are much better. I mean, the US started off his way back. But after President Biden took, took the office, fortunately, things have gotten a lot better. And now we are hearing that, hopefully, by July, the US will be pretty much fully vaccinated. The stories are also pretty good in many other countries, let's say and, for example, in Russia, I heard they're gonna open up pretty soon, because as you're filming, I was pretty active there. Middle East is doing pretty well so far, apart from a few countries. And the only problem that I have right now is the pace, the slow pace of which Europe is actually moving forward. And it's quite ironic, because I remember Germany was thought to be one of the best countries in the world in terms of the way they handled the pandemic. And that was one of the least efficient, I have no idea why and how it all changed. But generally speaking, you're probably going to be a little bit behind. But for now, the world as a whole is moving forward. I don't know about how things are in Canada, by the way. So you're telling me how things are? And when you guys yeah, that predict things to go back to normal?

Pouya LJ  02:02

Yeah, no, unfortunately, it's not going that well here either. Maybe similar to European Union, I'm not too sure how they are doing but maybe even worse, because the problem is Canada does not have production of vaccines within its country. So it has to get all others. And given what it is it's been proving difficult. And also not not just politically difficult, but also very transportation, apparently, of this vaccine is very, very difficult because of this, especially,

Dan  02:27

you know, the western vaccines. Yes, sir.

Pouya LJ  02:31

Yes. Yeah. Exactly. My maternal Yeah.

Dan  02:33

Now, what is the current statistics in Canada, by the way, in terms of those who've been already vaccinated? The numbers? I mean, is it actually going down? Or is it still going up?

Pouya LJ  02:45

Like numbers,

Dan  02:46

so it's infectious? Yes, of course, yes. Oh, no, infections

Pouya LJ  02:49

are good, it they're not that bad. They're the combination of social distancing, some restrictions, and the vaccines are helping a bit so that the infections, at least within Ontario, are not really that bad. They're like, less than 1000 per day, for your lifestyle, generally, because

Dan  03:06

now gradually, we're seeing, you know, places getting opened, and people are gradually going back to your regular life, are you guys still under a lockdown or life is kind of back to normal.

Pouya LJ  03:17

So it's not a lockdown right now in Toronto, or wrestle Ontario. But there, they have created this tearing system that depending on the statistics, they're gonna put it in different color coded. So, quote, unquote, so what does that mean is that if numbers go higher, they have certain sort of, like 20% capacity 50% capacity indoors outdoors, like these kinds of restrictions vary depending on the numbers I have, across population. So about but generally speaking, for me personally, it didn't create a huge difference. But But I'm thinking for the months to come go into summer, similar to last year, when it was more outdoor activities started, did but because of the nature of this virus itself, probably things going to open up even regardless of the vaccine, and hopefully, the vaccine if then going back to the fall on the other end of the summer, which will also hopefully not be a problem. But we will see. Yeah,

Dan  04:24

I see. Well, personally, I have already planned all my trips, I am not going to spend basically the next summer like the last one, I do want to hit a couple of countries. So definitely, we're going to get started regardless. But let's hope that this thing is going to get better, although we're all hopeful. And we know that this year is going to make it a lot better. Although then again, the pace at which the vaccine is being basically done in most countries, unfortunately, outside of those nations where the manufacturers right now, in terms of the way nations have handled this, so far some of the best nations in terms of payment. wish they were actually vaccinating is indeed, Russia, United States because these two nations have their own vaccines manufacturing in China is also quite close. All of these guys beat the pandemic long ago without even having the vaccines. But generally, when you look at the nations that are manufacturing their own vaccines, the United States, Russia and China, you're sure that they are way ahead of the rest of the world who need to actually import those vaccines.

Pouya LJ  05:24

Yeah, absolutely. That's true. And that that says a lot. I guess there's a there's an inherent value in being able to produce the stuff that you need, especially especially the essential ones, you know, like, the PPS, I don't know, the masks and whatnot, and obviously, vaccines, drugs and stuff. Because Yeah, when the world is good and dandy, everybody's happy to help everybody. But when the cover and push comes to shove, you know, you always go first. Right? So that's that's part of it. Exactly. Anyway,

Dan  05:54

so true.

Pouya LJ  05:55

Right. I actually our topic is not too far from this subject. And it's not the same. So we're we're talking about, we're, how many months like almost three months, two and a half past Biden's inauguration and the new administration in the United States. That's right, as I'm correct to a two and a half,

Dan  06:15

three months, of course, your most jagriti January 23.

Pouya LJ  06:18

So the first so two and a half. That's

Dan  06:20

right. But in terms of the election, yes, actually, more than that, but yeah, right.

Pouya LJ  06:24

Yeah. But since he took office, and well, obviously, with any new administration, comes new, you know, policies within the country and foreign, which is going to affect obviously, the entire world as it did when we move from Obama to Trump. And, and it was a drastic one, and I suppose this one could have, we could have anticipated that it would have drastic, you know, effects on the entire

Dan  06:53

world.

Pouya LJ  06:54

Now, my question is, from what you have observed that this is the topic today, obviously, my question is, from what you have observed from the past couple of months or so, where do you see this administration going? And what the priorities are? And how does that affect the our other countries

Dan  07:12

in the world? Very good question. First of all, we should consider the fact that buyten does not equal Obama, that's a huge misconception that is nowadays quite common. Even from the very beginning people fall Okay, Biden's Obama to point out, no, President Biden does not have the exact same approach towards leadership, as President Obama did, because while they are from the same party, and while they even have worked together in the same administration, President Biden is thought to be a middle left, not a far left. And that, of course, is going to lead to a variety of different approaches, that he will can, you know, control and manage the country is being a left or a democrat does not necessarily mean that you will all follow the same guidelines, or the same approach towards policies in all years of basically governance. Rather, what it really entails is that you have the same background and the same goals. And yet, so for that reason, the first issue that we have to take into consideration is the fact that Mr. Biden is not going to leave the nation exactly the way President Obama because the times basically have changed. And that requires a new approach towards all forms of strategy, the world in which President Obama, let the you know, the United States and the world was somehow very different than what we are seeing today. And especially after what Trump did, a lot of the US alliances have now been severely damaged. So along with us reputation as well, to some degree to some degree, and that, of course, is going to cause further problems and complications. But from my point of view, if you want to look at President Biden's approach, think of someone who is definitely not a Republican, but is also not a far left far Democrat. So for that reason, you can guess someone who is tough, but not crazy, like Republicans, but at the same time, not necessarily all left and all Okay, no problem, we're gonna make deals with everybody, no problem whatsoever. So because of that, we can see the US keeping certain approaches that were initiated by the Trump administration in place while adding new stuff. So these are not going to be basically diametrically opposite, rather, a there's gonna be some major differences in the way the policy is there. Because obviously, you have like republicans versus Democrats. But in terms of the actual direction, it's not going to be like a complete opposite. So many initiatives, like, you know, made in America, for example, are going to continue whether it's buying or Trump because that's part of the you know, the the system. So, since today, we're talking mainly about the international community, and how the Biden presidency affects the international media. Of course, there's going to be a lot of differences. Now. If you probably follow the news. You basically have heard about Trump making an appearance recently and a republican You mentioned saying, did you guys miss it? Oh, I'm sure you did. So for that reason, we can imagine right now what's happening in that people are a little bit concerned whether Trump is going to actually come back and run again, and so on. But right now many of those initiatives are still in place. And I'm not going to be changed that. However, what we can see again, to quote Trump himself, he said, in a simple one month, we went from America first America last. So what what is really actually means is, is that America is back in the global stage. So what the previous administration wanted to have for the world was to make policies solely in a way that benefits especially those who are on the Republican side, so those who are not concerned about the long term us influence. But now the US, of course, would like to take things back in a way that it was during the Obama ministration. So revitalizing the US alliances, the European Union, for example, empowering NATO, returning and rejoining the Paris Agreement, and more importantly, healing a lot of the wounded relationships, and also taking a certain relationships that were favorite for Trump, like those of Saudi Arabia, and you know, a little bit differently to see if things are necessarily reliable in that regard or not. And we're now seeing things like stopping the sales of weapons and sleep aircrafts to Saudi Arabia. So basically, when it comes to foreign policy, we're going to see some dramatic changes by the Biden inspiration. But that does not mean everything's going to change overnight. Because as you probably know, in the world of international politics, there is no such thing as rapid change, that cannot basically lead to some sort of conflict. For that reason, all the changes that will occur in the administration will be slow lunch, we cannot undo the damage of four years of complete, basically, ignorance when it comes to foreign policy, in over I don't know, a couple of months. So what we can predict from the states in the near future is to follow on the same path as that of Obama, but with very different unique strategies. So the Paris Agreement was signed on the first day of basically office. But that doesn't mean that those regulations will necessarily go in place immediately. On day one, they are going to require a lot of time. The other force major approach was about the trade agreements, United States and Canada, and Mexico, NAFTA. And that is, of course, right now revitalize as well. So all of these rejoin these agreements, that doesn't mean that the world has already changed, it simply means we are on the path towards recovery from all the damage done. Now, the other key issues for the Biden ministration, when it comes to foreign policy, is dealing with the threat of Russia, as you probably know, Russia is AB bait for the Democratic basically, side is thought to be the most important and serious threat. So we're gonna have to see how the United States deals with Russia, but mainly through targeted, basically sanctions, not for the economy as a whole, but target individuals to make sure that, you know, the economy does not suffer so much. And that's the major difference between sanctioning strategies of the right administration versus Trump. So when Trump wants to, for example, sanction a country, they will sanction the whole economy, which is going to affect the entire, you know, economy, a great example was Trump's leaving the nuclear deal with Iran. So that itself was a great example of how they actually crushed the old economy. Now, what President Biden right now is doing with Russia, is trying to actually maintain the economy stable, but target these sanctions in a way that sends a message that, you know, the United States is not going to perhaps tolerate certain Russian, you know, aggression, or saying things like, the US will never recognize Crimea as a part of Russia is one of those other examples. So you can even like recently, in one of his first two military, basically campaigns, Biden targeted certain, basically, Iran back basically bases in Syria. Now, they could have actually done some something like that in Iraq directly, but they avoided that. So what this implies is that the Biden ministration does not want serious confrontation the way Trump did. Instead, they are also not going to be like, extreme left and back office. You know what, okay, do whatever you want. I just want to talk. So they are also going to show some strength. That's the thing that got me elected because in the primaries, Biden said, I am not a real radical left, if you will. I am basically a middle left. So a lot of the his initiatives are going to involve certain strength, but not the way Trump did, of course, right. So for that reason, the first and most important impact of Biden ministration on global politics is understanding The fact that the US is willing to strengthen relationship with the allies, at the same time, they are willing to negotiate better, instead of just fighting with the adversaries basically, that the United States currently has. And as of now, when it comes to the, you know, the whole global politics, there are a few nations that are of particular concern for the states, and namely, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and to some extent, what is happening in Yemen, with Saudi Arabia, outside of that, basically, then states is also quite concerned with dealing with the threat, you know, the problems that are currently facing Europe by mainly trying to strengthen NATO, in order to go a face the threat of Russia. But at the same time, the trade agreements, a lot of which Trump imposed on certain nations should be removed the bands of let's say, tariffs, and imports, all of those, but the fact of the matter is, this is all going to take time. So we are going to be seeing a lot of changes. But if you're waiting for those changes to occur overnight, or in the first few months, the chances are, you're a little bit too hopeful about it. Because I think, you know, all these changes to really start kicking in right after the pandemic is basically many months over because by then, hopefully, the bike administration is going to actually change a lot of these policies and make sure they're actually implemented. So that is the major factor that we're currently seeing occurring.

Pouya LJ  16:29

Okay, and that was very elaborate. Now I have a couple of questions that are more, you know, fantasizing, and just daydreaming and talking about these stuff. way out. And that is, why it's not not in that romantic sense. But

Dan  16:44

I mean, we all love daydreaming, man, we all have time.

Pouya LJ  16:48

Right? So in the four years from now, do you see Trump running for presidency?

Dan  16:55

Well, actually, it was officially announced that he is interested. And he actually shows interest, although not officially declared. But the fact of the matter is, as you probably know, the Republican Party currently is putting a lot of value in Donald Trump, because of his popularity, that there simply cannot be any other candidate who can reach the same level of support, especially among the hardcore Republicans. You see, the other states of america is highly divided right now. And it is this major segregation is between the the fluid type, and the more basically, rigid type, if you will. Now, if you want to learn more about this, I remind you a great book called Prius, or pickup, which talks a lot about this major divide in the American Society among the left and the right. But the fact of the matter is that the party that represents Donald Trump has supporters primarily made of what we call their rigid type, oftentimes suburban, not highly educated, usually more concerned, basically, with general basically, and tradition and religion, and at the same time, highly suspicious of basically the outside world. Because most of these communities generally do not have a high level of trust towards the outsiders, whether it's immigrants, whether it's the foreign countries, and this is a specific mindset that is, unfortunately, quite prevalent today in American society, made primarily from a conservative background, highly religious, highly suspicious of anything that is not traditionally thought to be American, and more importantly, generally, less, basically, a suburban and a more rural, if you will, most of whom are all Trump supporters. I mean, how many times have you moved around and saw a truck driver with a Make America Great cap driving his pickup truck, I mean, that's a very, very common thing, especially in rural areas. So Donald Trump is almost like a God. He's even like, almost worshiped by a lot of these people, and thought to be some sort of Messiah who's bringing, you know, peace in order when he says, the line order, we have it all the law and order and all those things. So for that reason, I really believe that this is definitely going to make a huge difference. And for that reason, it is likely for him to run again, although having lost his access to social media could seriously impede his progress. But then again, he could run again. Now, will I say that he will run again, necessarily in near future. I don't think that that could be guaranteed as of now, however, it is very likely that he could run again, although it's not sort of going to mean that he will win again, because as you probably know, there's a great book about this, the key to the White House, basically and in this book is talk about what it really takes to change administration, while the president is an incumbent, so even if Trump runs again, he kept No matter how much his followers love him. And even if he runs again, and he tries to say, yeah, guys, I'm back for making America great again, and all those things In the end, it's almost impossible for an administration to lose its power and make it basically in between two terms. Unless there's what we call a political earthquake. This is what Professor Lichtman talked about in his book, this is a White House. So whether Trump runs people should not be concerned about who is going to run against Trump or not, because that is not a very important factor. Because if Trump runs again, but President Biden's decisions, both at home and basically internationally, will lead to basically a situation where a political earthquake is avoided. So perhaps there isn't a major economic downturn, or there is no major international conflict, let's say with the adversaries. So it all really now the ball is in Biden's courts. And it really doesn't matter who is going to run again on the Republican side. So long as President Biden avoids a political earthquake. Because for Trump, we saw major such earthquakes, I mean, his international deals and then at home that black life matters, racism, he caused a major tsunami on Earth, but a tsunami, political tsunami, right. But for those who are this is want to know more about this, check out the book, the keys to the White House, there are 13 keys, by the way. And for a, you know, a candidate to house basically an incumbent president out of the White House that requires him to win at least six of those keys and causes of earthquake. As of now, it's too early to say whether this is going to happen. But I can tell you this that the odds of President Biden with his moderate approach, neither extreme left because you know, Trump when extreme right? When you move towards any strange, the chance of any earthquake, whether it's in a relationship or in politics goes higher. But since President Biden has already declared himself to be a moderate Democrat, I highly suspect any major political earthquake to happen. And even if President Biden does have certain plans, for you know, taking some extreme left approach, I'm pretty sure just like previous Democrats, is going to be smart enough to keep those things for his second term, not the first. That's what Trump did wrong. He went all extreme. Right away, he went all in from the very beginning and that constantly election, right. So for the next election, I highly doubt that President Biden's gonna cause a political earthquake, if you will. And for that reason, it could be Trump, it could be Trump's Trump Jr. It could be Trump's grandson, it could be anybody. I hope not Ted, Ted Cruz, because I really don't like his facial hair. It's just super weird. But ultimately, it could be anyone. But if President Biden does not basically lose that momentum, there's no chance Trump can win again, even if all of his voters basically in supporters vote again, he could still lose unless Biden, so basically, this election proves that basically, Biden's gonna win again, unless Biden really mess up. So it's, it has nothing to do with Trump. If you already want to be concerned about the future America and the world, be concerned about what Biden is doing, and do not concern yourself so much with what Trump has in store. He says, oh, I'll be back. I'll be back again. That's just a bunch of you know, media because the guy loves the attention. Right. But in reality, it's not about Trump whatsoever. It's about what President Biden does, if he avoids any major political earthquake, if you will. He's got his next four years right after that.

Pouya LJ  23:40

There's a natural question, given his age, whether he would want to continue that.

Dan  23:45

Well, that's another story. People are talking a lot about that as well. Whether we the illustrations, regular habits, first female president, I personally think that us currently is not at this very stage is not ready. But hopefully in the coming years, hopefully, the US will be ready to also to have basically its first female president, because as you probably know, the US is highly divided right now. And among the traditional, basic conservative communities in the US, which are, by the way, everywhere, they do not have that approach. They are very patriarchal in nature, they don't believe that a woman could be on top of everything. It's like, very traditional old fashioned, if you will. So for that we need a little bit more time, but then again, probably there's no better time to get started, then, basically 2024 We'll see about that. But until then, we have to keep our eyes fixated on President Biden, and just watch Trump for you know, its own sense of fun. I mean, the guys are, you know, showman. He's funny. I mean, like, I can't imagine a single time I watched a speech and didn't laugh at some point because oh, yeah, entertaining man. It definitely is. I mean, the guy was a reality TV star, right. I mean, he knows how to entertain his audience, but the problem is global Politics and International. Politics is not a goddamn reality TV. We need a real president. Like President Biden, not a reality TV president like Donald Trump.

Pouya LJ  25:08

Yeah. Amen. Amen to that. All right, that was that was a great, great talk. And I think we covered a lot, because we covered more than I thought we would. So thank you for that. My pleasure. I don't know if you we left anything you want to wrap up, or we can? Well,

Dan  25:23

first of all, great topic, and I wouldn't like to wish and hope all our listeners, because we're going for a very tough time, I'd like to wish them you know, peace of mind. But please do know that a lot of the policies that Trump ministration basically had earlier was what led to the current situation. But fortunately, hope is really inside. And we can actually see some light at the end of the tunnel. But more importantly, today, we're talking about President Biden's influence globally. And we mentioned that, based on what Trump said, we've gone from America first America last. But the fact of the matter is, what has really happened is that America is now open again to the world. So this is going to make some major difference, because the states has a very special role in controlling basically, this situation all over the world because of the influence that the country has, right. And that will make us very hopeful. However, people should not think of Biden administration, as you know, miracle workers, because the world of politics is very complicated. And changes rarely occur. I mean, you can damage things very quickly as Trump did. It's kind of like in like a building, you can demolish an entire building, it took you years to make it you know, with one that nation, but you cannot build it also with one that nation right. So for that reason, while the damage that Trump administration caused on the global community was huge, and the rapid, basically, healing of the alliances, and bringing back ordered to the world is going to take a lot longer and saying we have to spend a lot more time to build and construct than it does to destroying. So for that reason, we should be hopeful and know that this change is going to take a while but in the end, hope is hopefully inside, and there is light into the tunnel.

Pouya LJ  27:08

That's great to know. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dan, for joining us as always.

Dan  27:12

My pleasure, man. Love it.

Pouya LJ  27:13

All right. Thank you all for tuning in listening in. And if you have any comments or questions, please ask us leave comments, and if not until later episode. Have a good one.

Today Pouya is speaking with Tyler Martin, Physical and Mathematical Specialist with extensive research into Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 data and String Theory.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

herd immunity, people, models, vaccination, assumptions, lockdowns, mathematical modeling, vaccinate, talking, deterministic, masks, number, means, mathematical models, strategies, politicians, frontline workers, account, restrictions, predict

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Tyler Martin

Tyler Martin  00:16

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of The BGP podcast. I'm here joined today by my good friend and colleague, Tyler Martin. He is okay. Why don't I hand him I'll hand it over to him to tell. Tell him tell you guys about himself. Hey, Tyler, how are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you?

Pouya LJ  00:36

Very good.

00:36

Thank you for having me on podcast. I've always heard your podcast. So.

Tyler Martin  00:43

Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure. to to to be talking to you. Now. Okay, so why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? What do you do? What are you? What are your likes and dislikes in this? crazy world? Okay, um, a little bit about me. I'm doing physical mathematical specialist utsc with, with you, we're in a lot of the same classes. And so my dislikes COVID right now is a big dislike. Yeah, yeah. But I love physics and math. That's my go to. Yeah. No, it's great stuff. I do agree with you in that. In that sense, we share

Pouya LJ  01:26

the love of physics and math. I so I don't know if you remember, Mr. He was on the podcast A while back. Now, now we got you. And hopefully bunch of other people join in the cohort. But yeah, today, actually, we're going to talk about something very relatively timely to all the COVID stuff. And so you have done some research and studies on, you know, mathematical modeling, modeling, which I think it's I guess people are getting tired of hearing it. That is surprising, because now politicians are talking about it, right? Like, oh, yeah, these are the numbers and mathematical models based on these, we're making these decisions. Never, you could you could never get politicians to pay so much attention to science, I suppose. As we do now. So now, all of that is about the spread, mostly, that's what they were talking about. But all of that also applies to vaccination strategies, which is probably the most timely because those are the decisions that politicians and then the world leaders around the world are making decisions on, right, all of these numbers that are jumped out. So now, for the audience, we are trying today, with the help of Tyler to make sense of all of this. What are these? You know, modeling that they talk about? What What is it behind the scenes, and to simplify it to a degree basically. So why don't you Why don't you go ahead and like started us start us off with? What was the what was the starting point of your research early on? And what were your, you know, thoughts going into it? And immediately after you started reading some papers and articles.

Tyler Martin  03:10

Yeah, definitely. So first, like, you watch the news. And you see all these politicians, like you said, talking about mathematical modeling, and then you go, what is even mathematical modeling in the first place. So then you have to do a little bit of research if when it first started. First off, we haven't even done a ton of research and mathematical modeling. It only started around, like going up around 40 years ago. And recently, there's two big definitions of mathematical modeling we can use today. One is the deterministic, and the stochastic, those are big fancy words. But they pretty much mean stochastic as in random randomness. So we can capture the randomness of humans, because no one can actually predict human behavior or human psychology. deterministic is a little less complex. It just kind of puts humans as a person with no emotion, no thoughts of what they're gonna do. They're just there. And then we can judge how a disease reacts from these two different types of models.

Pouya LJ  04:22

Right. Right. And do you know, so I mean, that's a natural, we're gonna delve into what they are in a second, maybe in further depth. But do you know, what are the when people talk about these models? Is it is it mainly stochastic or deterministic? Or sometimes just sometimes that are a combination of both? What are they usually talking about? Or what are the most effective

Tyler Martin  04:46

perhaps I don't know, the most effective from my point of view from what I found is stochastic modeling is most effective, although it's more complex, meaning we have to have big Fancy computers to run all our simulations, it's more effective in actually grasping our results and accurate results. What to when you compare it to deterministic modeling? I would say, for deterministic modeling is more better for handing paper. So if you're wanting to do a model by hand and paper, like we all do in class, then that's a good way. But stochastic modeling is definitely the way to go. When you have the time. Yeah.

Pouya LJ  05:30

Right. So so the deterministic model doesn't take into account just to clarify, right, it doesn't take into account human behavior. So for example, if you're supposed to be social distancing, your social this, that's absolute state, like, it doesn't consider that, you know, if you're on a lockdown, you're going into grocery, and you might happen to you remove your mask to unlock your phone. So none of these is accounted for. I mean, I guess it's not specifically accounted for in this

Tyler Martin  05:58

model, either.

Pouya LJ  06:00

But it basically treated as absolute steady state, meaning that it's everything being perfect. Is it? Well, I guess it depends on the assumptions you make to right you can also be assumption that, right? So so but whatever assumption you make is a fixed one in this in the, in the, what do you call it? The deterministic modeling? Right? Yeah, everything is fixed. For the stochastic model, we actually have a probability, right? So like, if you're more probable to go outside, or if you're more probable to stay inside, so it's not like you're fixed to do one certain thing. We have a probability density. Right? So instead of means 01, it's somewhere between zero and one. Exactly. Potentially. And our deals models like this stochastic ones. Are these probabilities dynamic, maybe changing in time? time?

Tyler Martin  06:51

Yeah, for sure. They change in time because people's reactions to a pandemic changes with time as well. So like, like we saw when the pandemic first started, a lot of people were outside and about not really caring. But as soon as the stay at home orders and stuff came along in the lockdowns, then we had to stay inside. So then our model has to account for that as well. Yeah.

Pouya LJ  07:17

Yeah, that's, that's fair. Is there anything specific you want to talk about in either of the two? In the technicality? So what are the factors that we're looking at? When we're saying probability of, for example, you mentioned human behavior, but what other factors are relevant here,

Tyler Martin  07:35

because actually, it depends on how complex you want to make your model. So if you want to make a super complex model, then you could take in a ton of factors like not only just human behavior, but like traveling around the world, and which planes travel to which countries and which are bringing back stuff. Or another common thing is for Western societies, we like to shake hands. And so for other societies, we don't have that type of contact. Like in Asian societies, it's normal to bow. So just like even the smallest things, just like that you can take into account into our model. And but as the more you take into account, the more complex it gets, so it's kind of like a trade off. Right, right.

Pouya LJ  08:23

Yeah. And then you did mention the, we get to be practicing soon enough, I suppose. But you didn't mention like, it is really deep. It's all these these models all started with some sort of assumption, right? And that assumption, determines what the what so let me take actually a couple of steps back for people who are not maybe thinking about so the idea is that you want to see, you want to model meaning try to predict what will happen given a certain guesses like so you you, you say okay, if there's no lockdowns, right, I'm correct me if I'm wrong here or if I'm slightly off, or you can add a caveat to it. But the idea is that if we make certain assumptions, meaning for example, there's no lockdowns, everybody's behaving like they would there's no pandemic at all right? What is the number what are the numbers are going to look like? What are the number, the number of people who are getting sick or who are dying, what demographics what you know, geographical neighborhoods, perhaps are the country, the city etc. And based on that, and then you combine and then you create different models with different sets of set of assumptions and find out what you want to do depending on what you want to achieve. So for example, you want so what is that absolutely no restrictions What? at all, one with minimal restrictions, maybe just socially distancing, and mask but then do whatever you want. Or maybe to 20% capacity, restaurants, whatever or absolutely locked out. So you create certain, you take certain assumptions, and you model these and you see, try to see into the future, essentially, and then try and then politicians come up and based on those predictions, if you will make certain decisions about what to do, what restrictions they were they want to impose on the population and whatnot. Is that Is that a fair summary of what what is the point of these models? in the first place?

Tyler Martin  10:25

Yeah, yeah, that was a great summary. And the big point is, is the relationship between the politicians and the scientific researchers, so if they don't have a good relationship, and they're not constantly communicating over what they're finding from these models, then the politicians will have a harder time making decisions on health policy issues, right. So that you have to have that constant communication going back and forth. So you can make those good decisions. Exactly. Now, that's

Pouya LJ  10:57

a very fair, fair point, actually. And so, now, I said all of this, to clarify all of this, but the beef I have with these models at some point, not not all the time. But first of all, they're not the so this is the this is the idea that some people talk about, actually, my dad always talks about this, he's like, the carpenter only cares about the wood, or the shoemaker cares about his shoes, and the electrician cares about his wires. At the end of the day, when you're talking to somebody whose job is to save lives, the only thing they're going to care about is to save lives. And yeah, the save lives doesn't comprehensively and take into account everything. It just takes into account saving lives who are being lost due to COVID. Period. Yeah, you know, like, if it if it. I mean, I'm not saying those people actually thinking like this, but that's their priority, because that's their job. The same way My job is, I don't know what it is. But right now to talk. So all I'm gonna focus on this fucking right.

Tyler Martin  12:00

So

Pouya LJ  12:03

my point is that, okay, all these things are getting done, I guess, supposedly, the politicians job is to take into account all of these models from the, you know, the, the scientific community from the, from the health community first in the first place. And then similar models are going to be done slightly different, obviously. But similar mathematical models are going to be done in on the economical side by the economist, or what is what are the impacts are going to be based on different assumptions, again, to the economy, and then eventually politician is going to be a general person, taking all of these into account, that's at least the idea, and then make some some decisions. Anyways, let's back up. So the beef that I have is that there, there, the there is no caveats, by when when you're talking about me, and you know it, the scientists know it, but when you're communicating this to the public, there's no caveat that all these modern things, though, they predict into the future, they have, they highly depend on your assumptions. And as you mentioned, ultimately, they're completely probabilistic. Like I, some of these models I have seen specifically restricted to Ontario is where we are in Canada. So and, and some of these don't take in taking don't take into account at all that they're, in fact, travelers coming from different countries. And I'm not saying they shouldn't, right. And, and they're, they're their only variable is human behavior due to lockdowns or restrictions or whatnot. And sure, that changes the numbers. But But let's let's let's toy around with no travels whatsoever, or where are these? You know, where are these outbreaks actually coming from? Is it is it because of travelers? Or is it not? Or is it because people are going to restaurant or is not? So I think this is very last Sunday? Again, and it portrays outside to the public so much that, you know, these are God given things, which I think and Would you agree with that they're they're very, very varying, depending on your assumptions.

Tyler Martin  14:12

Definitely assumptions is like, probably one of the biggest things like you can have a model that is almost exactly the same. But if you vary one thing, they can go completely different directions, like you can be off by if you're calculating the number of deaths, you can be off by quite a lot. So our underlying assumptions of our model are particularly important that we make accurate assumptions from what we actually perceive in the world.

Pouya LJ  14:45

Perfect. Now, I just wanted to make sure that I'm on track. They're not just spewing nonsense out there. Now, obviously now, the more interesting subject today has become the vaccination and vaccination. strategies, how are you vaccinated when vaccinate, who which population to vaccinate, which geographical location to vaccinate, etc. And so all of these are very good questions. And again, similar models are being done. And I know you were talking about before we started this conversation live recorded. You were talking about this new york times article, which was looking at different vaccination strategies. And essentially, they were trying so this is the title of the article, if I let me read it out, when when could the United States reach herd immunity? Well, question question mark. And the answer is, it's complicated. And hey, answer this. So first of all, let's define herd immunity. What is hurting herd immunity for those who don't know it?

Tyler Martin  15:43

Okay, I have to define one more thing before I define herd immunity. Okay, fair enough. Oh, first, there's a reproduction number. So a reproduction number basically just says, If I had the virus, how many people on average, would I pass the virus on to? So say, I have a reproduction number of two, that means me having the virus on average, I pass it on to two more people. So a herd immunity says that our reproduction number is less than less than one. So when we have less than one, then there's no chance of an outbreak or epidemic happening. And this means that there's less risk of the situation getting more serious. So herd immunity, basically just says, um, let me get a good definition that the state of the population where the fraction protected is sufficient to prevent outbreaks. And so herd immunity kind of just is basically what we want to reach from vaccination efforts. Yeah.

Pouya LJ  16:53

vaccination and the fact that people already some people already got and and recovered, right. And supposedly they can't get reinfected.

Tyler Martin  17:00

Exactly. So they're like, we have to take into account or remove population when we're doing these, the removed population is basically people who've gotten it and can't get it again, or people who have tragically passed away from it, or people who have immunity to it COVID. We don't know if it's any immunity to it yet. Like underlying immunity, but there are other diseases with immunity.

Pouya LJ  17:25

Right? Exactly. So so then that, and that, because there's a certain portion of the population whatever that number may be, that is removed, then they are not, which is the reproductive number drops below one which ends up and over time this virus decays, because it cannot. So if I get it, if my r naught is one mean, means that if the average is means that if I get it, I can only give it to one more person, so I'm only replacing myself, I'm not growing. And if it's less than one, on average, it means that I'm not even replacing myself. So over time, this is gonna vanish, because that's exactly okay. So yeah, right. So So in that sense, it's a combination of these, whether you're vaccinated and your immune or your so if I got it, and I come to contact with you, I'm assuming you're vaccinated, then you can't possibly get it. Whereas if you were not vaccinated, I would give it to you. And my Arnott would be at least plus one, because you're not you. You are not vaccinated. You're not Yeah. Yeah, that immune not being immune, or whatever. So either that person has passed. So it doesn't even exist to, you know, contract it, or they already got it. So there they have immunity because they cannot be reinfected. At least for a period of time. We don't know what the period of time is exactly. But let's just say for now, for the purpose of this argument, let's just say it's indefinite, and or persons vaccinated. Again, same idea. Now, now, let's go back to the article, I suppose and you can take the range from there, but I'm going to reiterate the question. So they were trying to researchers were trying to see when, you know, says reaches this herd immunity, meaning that the reproductive number will be less than one. So eventually the virus will die out over a period of time, and it definitely cannot grow. And their conclusion in one sentence was this complicated. So why did they say that on what, what what were they looking at? What they find what happened? Go ahead.

Tyler Martin  19:31

Yeah, it is actually very complicated. I think as a Canadian to looking at what the states is doing is definitely beneficial for us. Because we don't vary a ton from them. Some of the states have a lot more relaxed. laws as in like, they can walk around without masks and stuff, but we're actually fairly the same. So just looking at this is very interesting. One thing they want to look at was They sped up the rate of vaccination. So on average, the US is administering about 1.7 vaccination shots a day. So if they continue to do this, their reach herd immunity by July, and around 100,000 people pass. However, if they sped it up, it would increase to around 13 million shots per day, then they reach herd herd immunity By May, and 90,000 people with pass. And if they increased it even more, which is very improbable to 5 million day, that's kind of insane. They reach herd immunity by enpro. And 80,000, people would pass. I think the more interesting part of this article is looking up is looking how herd immunity and vaccination along with with relaxing social distancing measures comes into effect. So, if you actually keep 1.7 million shots per day, and then look at relaxing your social distancing measures, they return her to me by July, like I said before, 100,000 people would pass. But if you lift restrictions, when 15% of the population is vaccinated, then you reach herd immunity by June, so a little earlier than July and 17. Or say 170,000 people have passed. So that's a big jump from 100,000. And then even more interesting, if they end all restrictions right now. Then they reach herd immunity by May. But in that case, 3200 or 320,000 people who pass so these jumps to me are just like, insane. When you look at how many people would pass if you just relax the restrictions on social distancing?

Pouya LJ  22:15

Mm hmm. Right. And, yeah, that isn't saying the same thing we were talking about. The initial assumptions can change a lot. And the same thing happens in the vaccination strategies and social distance. So I think so. Now, I don't know if I got it. So with currently with the with, what do you call it, their current rates of vaccination? And the if we don't, if we keep the measures in place, like the social distancing, or at least the basic measures, such as the social distancing and the masks, yeah, now, that number of deaths in the United States until the herd immunity is achieved is 100,000. People. Yeah. Right. So if so let's let's pick this again. So if the same rate of giving vaccine to the US population is continued, not increased, not decreased, which is 1.7 million per day, which is impressive, by the way, is a lot. Yeah. Do they have a lot of big population too? Yeah. Bigger than Canada. I mean, so anyways, so 1.7 million per day until the next foreseeable future, like unless next few months, and then you still do social distancing, you still do wear masks? Maybe not no major parties or anything. And then the estimated number of deaths from COVID until July which is the time that they reach herd immunity is 100,000. But if they don't take the if they ease up the measures, meaning don't wear masks, maybe don't social distance, maybe throw away some parties but not a lot then then that then that number jumps by almost twice and 171 point seven 170 1000 also, which is and and and and now let's say we keep this social distancing measures and hold on a second. Let me see if I get this article. Right. Excuse me. Now if you do increase the supply to 3 million a day, yeah, but that but then they didn't do any investigation as to what happens if you do measures or don't do measures today? No. If you increase the supply, but also keep the measures

Tyler Martin  24:39

Oh, no, they didn't. They didn't do that. Okay,

Pouya LJ  24:41

yeah, okay, okay. Okay. They didn't do that. Okay, but it is very interesting and okay, but if they do increase the however if they do almost double the shots, although they reach herd immunity much sooner, still number of deaths is like 10,000 people. That's 490 Yeah. That doesn't make a lot of sense. How's that? You know,

Tyler Martin  25:03

I'm not too sure. That would also depend on what we're talking about before their underlying assumptions. Right. Right. So

Pouya LJ  25:08

they didn't talk about those assumptions, I suppose.

Tyler Martin  25:12

Right? And yeah, they Yes, they do. Put it in the beginning a little bit, but not too

Pouya LJ  25:19

long. Because,

Tyler Martin  25:20

yeah, they also do cover the different types of variants. Oh, interesting. So with the current variant, like I said before, 100,000 by July. So 100,000, people would pass, and they'd return immediately by July. But for the more contagion, like, very more contagious variants with precautions, and they in the states gets all of those variants, they would have around 200,000 people pass, and they reach herd immunity by July. But if they have the most contagious variants with no precautions at all, they reached an insane number of 530,000 people. And the herd immunity by April.

Pouya LJ  26:16

So more number of people in short amount of time, basically. Mm hmm.

Tyler Martin  26:20

Exactly. Yeah, it's it's quite a number to look at. The death toll at that point would be just insane.

Pouya LJ  26:29

So in a way, the the the immunity due to getting the virus and recovering from it as actually acting much faster than the vaccination process, basically. So that's why they're getting to the herd immunity earlier, because the virus is infecting everybody and whoever survives just as immune. So the immunity increases fast moving, but, but obviously, a lot of people are

Tyler Martin  26:53

doing cost. Yeah,

Pouya LJ  26:54

yeah. Well, that's, that isn't, like these numbers that that is looking at these numbers is actually quite, we will, by the way, I should say this, we will put the link a link to this article in the show notes. So if anybody wants to go and look at these numbers, themselves, feel free to do so. Okay, let's, let's now move move forward. Unless you want to talk about this article more. I don't know if there's anything left? No, no. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So let's move forward a little bit and talk about what are the discussed around the table, if you will, the different strategies of vaccinations? And what is the argument for each of them in terms of who to vaccinate, which areas to vaccinate, why and why not? Etc.

Tyler Martin  27:40

Yeah, there's a couple different methods of vaccination. One very promising one is called a focus method of vaccination. That's where you focus in on a certain group of people. Give them all the vaccination that we have. And then once there are not basically as getting better, then you move out to a little more like diverse, further out rural areas and start vaccinating back. Oh, so

Pouya LJ  28:09

it's mostly thinking geographically, right? Yeah. If you're, if you're in our big, if you're in a big, congested populated city, for example, let's say Toronto, New York, whatever, then you focus on that and leave the rest of the state under province a lot, right? That's the idea. Okay. Okay. Go ahead.

Tyler Martin  28:26

And so like that strategy is actually one of the more promising strategies. So we actually, as Canadians, we see this happening now. Nova Scotia is giving up some of their vaccination to other places in Canada, so that we can actually get to a herd immunity for Canadians as a whole faster. Yeah. Interesting.

Pouya LJ  28:51

And do you know it is now across Canada? One story, but within Ontario, do you know if they're using this strategy or not? Like the focus wrench?

Tyler Martin  29:00

I'm not too sure. From what I know, it's more of just everyone gets to or the most people. important people get a first as in the people who are doctors who are Yeah, doctors, frontline workers, or people who need it, like the elderly need it. So people like that would get it first. So it's more than not focusing on a particular area. They're just trying to get the people who are who

Pouya LJ  29:34

can't think of the word more vulnerable, maybe Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I get I get the I think the doctors and nurses is a bit clear to me because we want them to be healthy to take care of all of us, not just for COVID for everything really. So that's even from a very selfish point of view, not acknowledging their sacrifices, complete selfish point of view. You still want them to get it first. I think the frontline worker Especially doctors and nurses, and the rest of the frontline workers, perhaps to paramedics, police officers, etc. So those are because there's a very important, like they have to be able to function. And at the same time, like very urgently be able to function at the same time, they're much higher at much higher risk. So that I think it makes complete sense. But after that, although there are there really are most vulnerable, but they're not mixing as much. I'm not so convinced that the focus after that prioritizing those people, the focus approach will not be more successful. But they still also, by the way, so they still do these similar modeling, get taking different assumptions, right, for example, assuming that you give it to elderly and assuming that you give it to like a focus strategy to give it to parts of the population that are mixing and mingling more. Maybe there are denser neighborhoods, for example, the basically the places that have the highest numbers, geographical places, right? Yeah. So get them. You know, as soon as they get contained, they can't really move it on either. Right? as much. What do you think on that? That would be your thoughts? personally.

Tyler Martin  31:16

I think mathematical modeling wise, it's a, it's a better way to get down to death toll to vaccinate the elderly first, like if you think about it, our death toll will go down. If we vaccinate the elderly first compared to everyone else, because the elderly are dying the most Sure. So if you're just looking at it, from a mathematical modeling point of view, it's like if we want to get down the death toll, vaccinate the elderly. In general, though, I'm not too sure. I would say the focus strategies, probably the better strategy to go to, but, um, after the frontline workers get their vaccination, I don't know. I'm not too sure. Who should get it after that. Right. Really not. It's a very complicated story, obviously. Yeah. And you don't get on people's feet by saying that you shouldn't get vaccinated. Yeah, so yeah, no, I

Pouya LJ  32:17

mean, I'm definitely not saying that I think focus is the right way to go. I'm just saying it's not really clear which one is? And maybe there is no one right answer or one wrong, and maybe both answers are wrong, or both of them? Yeah. So it's just a slightly better, I think they're actually at the end of the day in the long margins of things, depending on what you're looking at. Yeah, sure. Maybe if you're here, purely looking at death tolls due to COVID specific because on the other hand, look, there have been reports and studies done on the the side effects of this whole COVID thing like not, you know, not just the deaths and despair from the COVID, but also that loss of job economic distress, you know, suicide rates, people who couldn't get their scans and for cancer, etc, their operations. And that all of that is obviously costly as well, we cannot just ignore that, although the forefront is to COVID disaster, but it has, you know, side effect that is rippling through our societies and communities as well. Right. So we definitely would like to, if we do like to look at it comprehensively, I think, at the end of the day that the approaches are not really clear cut. And that is what you were mentioning, like in terms of, if you want to introduce more variables, it just keeps getting more complicated. Exactly, yeah. And perhaps even impossible to to predict anything with any good amount of good measure of accuracy. So yeah, I guess I bought my way complicated. It's not as easy as this is the right way to go. So maybe we can relinquish that arrogance, I suppose to a degree, because it is a complicated problem. So yeah. Is there anything we left on the vaccination fund that you wanted to talk about that we

Tyler Martin  34:14

didn't? I think we pretty much covered it all. By no means am I also a vaccination expert. No, we're just

Pouya LJ  34:22

discussing our own, you know, experience with these articles.

Tyler Martin  34:27

Yeah,

Pouya LJ  34:28

yeah. That's good. Because I think, two to a high degree because you actually did study these matters to a degree. I mean, again, I'm not quite we're not claiming to be experts, neither of us but because you have done specifically the math, math, mathematical modeling. I'm sure you have more understanding than many including myself. So it's good to. We don't need to listen to the greatest experts to increase our knowledge. I think it doesn't. That's as long as you know more than me. I can learn from you. That's it. Yeah.

Tyler Martin  35:00

Yeah, exactly.

Pouya LJ  35:02

Right. Okay, yeah. So I think it's a good place to stop, like, end that conversation. I'm gonna give you a few moments after this to, you know, gather your thoughts. final words, if you want to save, but before that, I think it's a good point. I think this was a good. Good understand, I think you had this epiphany, I suppose. And I definitely did that it is, in fact, a complicated matter. It's not as easy as 123 go. It's a bit requires in depth contemplation. And at the end of the day, there are going to be mistakes, there are going to be errors, there are going to be things that are not going to get to the right answer. Or what is even the right answer. Right. So all of these are subject to a lot of assumptions. And I think that was that was the some of the most important epiphany of all in this in this journey today. Exactly. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to add to it?

Tyler Martin  36:07

Maybe one last thought, and that is that no mathematical model can accurately predict the future. Like no matter what if we take in the as many complex variables as we can, we can predict the exact amount of people who will die. So take every everything these politicians say about mathematical modeling with a grain of salt when they're saying it, but some of them are actually fairly accurate at the same time.

Pouya LJ  36:34

Yeah. They're the best worst thing we have. Exactly.

Tyler Martin  36:39

Exactly. Okay.

Pouya LJ  36:40

Fair enough. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Tyler. It was a pleasure talking to you today.

Tyler Martin  36:46

It was pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on.

Pouya LJ  36:48

No problem. I'm thank you all for tuning in and listening to yet another episode and I hope you enjoyed it. Leave your comments, suggestions, questions below there are there's going to be shownotes as I mentioned, which we're going to include the New York Times article in it and until later episode, have a good one. Take care

The story of the human race is the story of masses selling themselves short. Do you know why you assume many of the goals you would like to achieve to be impossible? The answer lies in the emotional state you habitually find yourself in. In this brief program you will learn how to set yourself up to do what you thought was impossible and end up making it possible! 

One of the biggest drawbacks of the coronavirus pandemic has been the psychological toll of dealing with the uncertainties of this health hazard along with all the social and financial limitations that it could bring about. As a results we are seeing an increase in the number of depressions and suicides during this tough period. On this program Daniel and Pouya discuss the issue of depression and suicide during the pandemic and offer solutions on how to effectively prevent or manage both. The advices given here are not meant to replace the those of mental health professionals and if you are suffering from symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts make sure to seek professional help as soon as possible.

Photo by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

pandemic, people, depression, extroverted, nations, introverted, extroverts, seminar, pressure, harder, problems, psychological toll, active, suicide, airbnb, world, challenge, life, literally, social

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Dan

Pouya LJ  00:09

Hello, and welcome back ladies and gentlemen to yet another episode of the b2b podcast joined as always with Daniel Mulligan, how's it going, buddy?

Dan  00:16

What's up, buddy? How's it going good to be here with you for yet another awesome podcast. Let's talk addition beyond the present here with you man life is great. Fortunately, we're hitting a lot of great news worldwide regarding the progress towards the basically the coronavirus pandemic right now worldwide, particularly with respect to the you know, vaccination because the fact that Pfizer and basically vaccine and a few others were somehow kind of slow to move into to transfer to different countries because of you know, the all the temperature requirements. Now, just today, it was announced that the Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine actually is more than 91% effective. And as you probably know, that was basically made with the older technologies, which means it doesn't require any specific equipment to be transferred, it can just be moved around by a simple refrigerator anywhere around the world. And that is going to make it much faster and supply vaccine to more developing nations or poor nations around the world to accelerate the process of getting out of this goddamn pandemic. So that was a very good news overall, of course, in the same country, we're getting some other bad news about the politics, but then again, politics is rarely a happy place for most people, right. So generally, life is great in terms of business, gradually, the world is somehow coming to terms with the pandemic, we're gradually seeing improvements in terms of employment numbers all around the world, or at least in those nations that I'm currently active in. So overall, it's been great. And the hope that this pandemic is soon going to at least be alleviated and eventually conquered hopefully, by the end of the year, is just probably the best news we've gotten so far and couldn't be any happier.

Pouya LJ  01:51

No, absolutely. That's true. It's it's been it's been devastating here. And it's continues to be and that's great news to hear that there there are being things are being facilitated towards vaccination in a variety of countries, not just to developing the developed countries, but also the developing countries. However, in the meantime, we are still in the midst of the pandemic and to talk which brings us to today's topic, which has people dealing with depression and suicide during this pandemic, because a variety of Yeah, from variety of reasons, from the lack of activity, perhaps to not being able to contact with others, loss of jobs and economic hardships, caused people to retreat mentally, perhaps, to a degree, depressed, and the worst case is, unfortunately, commit suicide. Now, what are your thoughts very broadly on this topic, during this pandemic?

Dan  02:50

First of all, what a great topic you pick Pooja x for this show, I agree with you completely. And the reasons are multitude when it comes to the reasons why we are seeing higher numbers of depression and extremely higher numbers of suicide, which is just unprecedented, basically. But then again, as you put it out yourself, it definitely does make sense. I mean, you would definitely expect such things to happen in this current situation, given the fact that the pandemic has pretty much made it impossible to be human. I mean, what makes us human, I was watching a speech by Chancellor Merkel. And despite the fact that she has been quite harsh, basically, with the restrictions, which I think she made the right decision, because Germany was getting out of control. And she made a lot of basically new sweeping rules to make sure that people are staying at home. And she was in one of her speeches actually was saying that, oh, all the things that we have done, is actually making us less human. So she admitted it openly. And I really admire her courage for that, too, as a global leader to come and say that, she said that all the things we say we should not be doing are the things that we should technically be doing to be healthy and happy. I mean, physical contact with those around us getting close, being social, communicating frequently, leaving the house being physically active, moving around, eating well, and above all, not always panicking and being anxious. Oh my gosh, I'm going to talk I'm going to tell you this right now, how to get the virus. Literally, I was in a seminar yesterday. Of course, we conduct this seminar, under the strict rules of the basically health guidelines to make sure that first of all, the number of attendants were kept limited. And secondly, maintenance major, everybody wears masks and have the distance. And in that seminar, we actually talked about a similar topic. And ultimately, a lot of our attendance set like I am just my biggest problem isn't the goddamn virus. It's the psychological toll that it has had on my life. Now, in the same seminar we took, we took a survey and we realized, generally this pandemic has hurt the extroverted population far more severely than the introverted ones. I mean, like, we were just we ask people, so which ones in this class for example, or this environment are more likely to be introverted? We collect You know the results, who is going to be like extroverted, we've got the results. And realize the ones who reported to be more extroverted are the ones ironically, who find it almost impossible to deal with one of our tenants, they're like, you know what I've been doing this for like, I'm when I wouldn't when it first happened, I told my husband, this is going to be like, oh, a couple of months, maximum, maybe two, three months. And I just can't go any further. I'm just literally done with this. And obviously, that pressure and that psychological toll isn't just on that lady within our center. But it's basically describes perfectly what is happening to billions of people around the world right now. It's the same level of pressure and anxiety. So I guess the biggest tool that it had on us, other than the fact that we can't really do a lot of things we normally have always taken for granted. But it's more about that sense of, you know, presence, always worrying if I'm going to get infected or not always having to watch any one of our attendance. Like, look at my hands. I've been watching this every friggin 1015 minutes, and I'm done. So all of these things are going to create problems. And this is definitely going to affect us negatively in terms of our mental health and psychological well being. So obviously, as you pointed out, basically, this issue is tremendous. It has affected all of us, some of us more than the others. I mean, those of our listeners right now who tend to self report themselves as extroverts probably have been hurt, hit hit the hardest. And ironically, we've had a couple of introverts in our audience who said, Hey, I love the pandemic, it's the best time ever, I don't have to leave the house, I can work in my pajamas. And I can simply read books all the time, I don't see anyone's faces Oh, normal. So it really depends, I guess, on the person you're talking to. Right. So definitely, this pandemic has not been as harsh on certain people, especially, I guess, on those who come from wealthier backgrounds. I mean, those who are are basically wealthy in general, who have had assets before the pandemic. Now, most of them are richer in most nations that I'm currently active. And actually, whether it's those who work in real estate, those who have, you know, a couple of stocks. Now, you remember that games, basically stopped stocks, guys, I mean, that was incredible, basically. But what I'm saying is, those who have been wealthier headed much better off. Unfortunately, those who were middle class or lower middle class, they are the ones who are hit the hardest, because not only they have to face with all of the natural psychological impacts of the pandemic, they have even lost their jobs, many of them and they don't have even money. So on top of all of that, now, they have financial problems, too. And as you probably know, in the field management, we say, no crisis ever occurs alone, and always is followed by other crises, because one thing leads to another and this continues, right. So because of all of this, now, we are seeing a tremendous impact on the psychological well being of people around the world. And of course, it is a mental health crisis. And we need to help people to find their way around and to hopefully make it to the end of the pandemic, basically intact.

Pouya LJ  08:09

I couldn't agree more. Yeah. So that there's There are multitudes of why somebody would face challenges mentally, perhaps, you mentioned a lot of them, of course, economics. pressures could be another, you know, potential problems that people are facing. And sometimes that takes a toll. Now, to a degree, especially, so it's really, I guess, it really depends on the causes of the mental pressure and depression, perhaps, but to a degree, it might really not be avoidable for for some people under some circumstances, or it might be for others, perhaps to a degree. But either way, I think there should be then there are ways to, you know, minimize this pressure, just mental pressure. And I want to put a disclaimer here, neither myself or Daniel are not, you know, experts in this subjects. We're not licensed

Dan  09:04

or not certified healthcare professionals. These are meant purely to inform you, and it's not going to replace the advice of a professional psychiatrists.

Pouya LJ  09:13

Perfect. Yeah, that's what I was going with this. So just if you do have problems, please seek professional help. But we're merely here to give our own proper advice based on our expertise. But no licenses here. So I just had to put that disclaimer out there. But from your perspective, what are the things people especially extroverted people, you like yourself, because you're one of them? who's dealing fairly with this challenge? Oh, and people who have, you know, financial difficulties, what would you How would you, you know, advise the people of these two categories mainly, for sure,

Dan  09:49

but I'm actually I'm gonna give you both answers in a moment because I know my answer, but you on the other hand, I'm sure also all of our listeners know about this that you are at slightly more on the introverted sign and I'm more on the shorter side. So I'm actually curious first about you. Did you really feel that toll and pressure on you there in this basically, period? I mean, how do you feel as somebody who's more introverted than extroverted?

Pouya LJ  10:13

Right? So, this is actually a funny question you ask because especially being around somebody like yourself, yes, I'm definitely much more introverted than your. So I always consider myself more like, Yeah, probably in the middle, but edging towards the introverted side. But actually, this when they make happen, and I did, then I realize how much I in fact, am extroverted. Because I started missing people. I

Dan  10:37

was like, No, I just want to see people.

Pouya LJ  10:40

And phone calls. Don't just introverts

Dan  10:42

feel a pain, man, can you believe that even those, of course you are not a hardcore introvert, obviously, because you're more on the ambivert side. So you have both sides to your character and personality. But of course, I talked to a few really hardcore introverts who didn't have much problem, but I'm pretty sure even like a very standard introvert would still feel a lot of things is missing in his or her life.

Pouya LJ  11:04

Absolutely, because as humans, this is just those human interactions. And you know, personal touches are essential to our existence. I mean, again, yes, there are always exceptions to these, quote unquote, rules. But typically, we as humans do crave that, you know, interaction. So it was it was, I just realized how extroverted I actually am. And, yeah, so I mean, of course, you can do phone calls, you can do video calls, group, video calls, etc, all of that good stuff. But at the end of the day, there's something that is about, you know, physically being in the same place at the same time, that has a, a, you know, a comforting feeling that is always missing in these interactions. Yeah, but I still don't definitely have the hardest of times, I'm sure. Probably compared to people like yourself, but it did hit me a little bit, especially deep into after months have passed the pandemic, it definitely did hit me.

Dan  12:06

Especially you living in Canada, and and you guys are all, you know, law abiding citizens and nice guys, like you never, never, like violate anything. So I'm guessing it was much harder for you guys as well, are those nations who really followed all the health protocols? Because in some nations that I've worked in, pretty much nothing I mean, right now, for example, if you go to countries like Russia, dude, these guys have opened their strip clubs as well. So I mean, that's it's very hard to wear a mask when you're getting strict, basically dancing right there. But overall, it's, what I'm saying is it hasn't affected people equally in different nations, for sure. And since this issue really is an international issue, you see major and measurable differences between nations among their citizens, based on the rules, conventions, and how well the people follow those rules. They seem, I think that's incredibly important, basically. So as expected, of course, for us extroverts, the pressure has been much harder. Although I personally have done my very best to make sure that my social life is not going to be affected so much. Now, in addition to having basically meetings, online, from morning to night, pretty much I felt my entire schedule, make sure I'm always working. And I'm always in touch, especially communicating. And for me, that's very important. I also managed to whenever we could to actually create, you know, events and seminars as much as possible to fill up that gap if you will, even though because nowadays, it's much harder to attend, for example, like a full on party, because obviously limitations and there's no possibility of dancing. But seminars, it's a lot more feasible given that you can actually create social distancing on the audience, and so on and so forth. So I tried my very best to remain as social as possible. And be really that when it comes to extroverts, they reading to do their best to get out of the house, whatever way they can. Now, for me personally, I also have always taken my basically, sports seriously taking my fitness seriously and my workout very seriously. So during the pandemic, my actually my record has actually increased in almost all the things I do. And nowadays I exercise three times per day, so morning before going to work and basically in the afternoon when I hit the gym and at nights just for you know, relaxing walks. So I actually ended up exercising more during the pandemic, you know, than before. Ironically, it was pretty interesting. And now, fortunately, in my case, I did not have to deal with the financial aspect of the pandemic because all of our businesses, except for the ones regarding real estate, with respect to Airbnb business model, were not affected that much. So pretty much all of our businesses remains active because we managed to link them all online, except for the ones regarding the tourism because we have basically the as it proposed, Previously, on one of our posts about this Airbnb model, we actually had an episode about this completely discuss the details. So that sector because it's linked to tourism I was heavily influenced until a while back when the borders gradually got open in certain countries like Dubai, for example. But still outside of tourism, and Airbnb, Reynolds, pretty much all of our other businesses were active during the summon, in some cases actually became more profitable than before. However, and I know that in this case, I am not representing the majority of people around the world. What is instead, the case is that most people around the world unfortunately suffered financially, they lost their jobs, they tap into all of their savings. And they started, you know, accumulating credit debts for consumer basically products. And this is a very, very bad and very grainy view of the future for most of these people, because now they have to work for years just to get out of the debts they accumulate during the pandemic. So for that reason, I believe that we need to create a plan a game plan to approach both our social lives and our financial lives. Many of those so called depressions that you mentioned, or even suicides have to do with their finances. I mean, let's be honest, if you really lose your job, and then you have no income, and you have no job and no work for two years, you're, something's gonna, you know, click in your head, like, Man, I'm done with this, I'm, where's my shotgun? And you're going to have some problems, obviously, right? So for that reason, I believe we need to have a game plan to address both issues. Because our depression, in most cases has to do either with our basically emotional problems or our financial problems, because both are equally challenging to our basically psyche. And we have to find a way to address both. And obviously, I think the key here is how we can address both separately, depending on the nation culture and their lifestyles.

Pouya LJ  16:45

That's very comprehensive, I think you hit it right on, it's, it's definitely a challenge. So what I can say to those people is that you're not alone, you know, Bear Bear that in mind, and notice that this is a challenge for a lot of people. Some are luckier, of course, than others, perhaps, or more prepared, perhaps. But at the end of the day, this is this is a, this is a collective challenge. That should be a hopeful view, meaning that you're not alone. Because a lot of times these mental pressures, or more pressured by the fact that you feel like you're left out, you're alone, nobody's there with you. But at least even if it's challenge, it's a collective challenge. And I'm sure we'll get past in one way or another. Okay, so we're coming to the end portion of the show, and I want to give you the time to, you know, give it like a bring everything together if we didn't say something, do so. But before that I just have a news, which is just

17:51

what is it?

Pouya LJ  17:52

Now, the BTB podcast is also available on iHeartRadio. And iOS for the website.

Dan  18:00

I Heart Radio. That's right. We're now on radio, baby. Come on.

Pouya LJ  18:06

Yeah, so so this is this is another good news. I just received the confirmation. So congratulations to us. And

Dan  18:12

first of all, I want to congratulate you, you are the world's literally the best producer, at least for me, you're the world's best Podcast Producer, good job for you know, making the progress really, you put a lot of effort into this arranging, everything's using AI to generate, you know, the transcript of our conversations, creating new ways to publish it. And really amazing man, I congratulate you for the hard work. And yet I Heart Radio, beyond the present podcast. Oh, yeah.

Pouya LJ  18:40

It was much appreciated. And anybody who already is on the platform, I'm sure you're gonna get a kick out of it. If not deco, take a look at the platform. It's actually quite quite nice for, you know, podcasting. And they also have live live radio. So they should do that. Anyways. So getting back to our subject. Now, the time is yours, the platform is yours. if we missed anything that you wanted to add, or you want to bring everything together, please do. So

Dan  19:07

let's write very well. So we discussed in detail today about the issue of depression and suicide. We brought about the causes, but we haven't fully offered solutions of like in the last part, give a few solutions for those of us who are suffering from depression right now as we speak, or are perhaps, goodness forbid, are contemplating perhaps suicide. When it comes to depression. Of course, that's a far more prevalent issue than suicide right now. And if you all listen to us right now, and you feel depressed, you feel like your life makes no sense and that you're losing that sense of pleasure. First of all, know whether or not you have those symptoms. Pretty much depression is defined as you losing motivation and pleasures of the daily life that you used to have and no longer can feel. At the same time you also feel less motivated. So you feel like life is not as pleasant as it used to be or you don't have as much motivation. These are all right signs of early signs of depression. And you need to take action immediately. Now, what does that mean? remove the mask and start kissing people on the streets. No, don't do that, like, well, I got vaccinated, I want to kiss everybody don't do that as dangerous don't do that. So instead, what you got to do is to try to make your life social, even if you are a hardcore introvert, find ways to get social online, perhaps, or events where it's not online, but you can actually maintain your focus and also social distancing. At the same time, try your very best to remain focused on achieving certain goals, you've lost your job, you're running out of your, you know, savings, it's all okay, you could temporarily use credit, just to you know, make ends meet. But please do know that right now, most governments around the world are offering some sort of financial support to their citizens. Now, if you're living in those nations where that's not possible, still, you could be able to create some form of income. So if you're unemployed, you have no job and just said, like, man, I got no money only wires and no money, get out of the house, or at least search online for ways to generate income or find a new job, trust me in the same economy that we are dealing right now. Now, there's a lot of demand for different types of basically jobs. So it could be a courier, it could be a delivery guy. And so well, I work as an accountant, I don't want to be a delivery guy now friends on, I know, but it's a crisis. And it's much better to be active and doing something than not doing so sitting in your home and think that all the good old days and your work in your office is not going to change it. Yeah, it's not as fun to be a delivery guy or find other means of employment that are now more in demand, perhaps, if you're having it experience to work online with some other companies, but the key is keep yourself active and engaged. Success equals goals. The pandemic, unfortunately, has forced a lot of us to forget about our goals or have simply none. set new goals. Ask yourself, what are the kind of goals I can achieve during the pandemic? You want to go even further? Tell yourself, what are some opportunities that the pandemic will present me that I could never ever, ever have? For me right now, literally, the pandemic is an opportunity. And for me, the end of the pandemic is both very happy and very sad. It's going to be very sad, because I am literally going to run out of time for a very special period of opportunism. On the other hand, for a lot of people just imagine, just imagine, like you feel like Dude, pennies on the end, in seven months, I got only seven months to do all these things. Once you change your perspective, not only you will not suffer through the pandemic, as I haven't, but you will actually benefit from it right? So ask yourself, what unique opportunities does pandemic presented me, perhaps deep thoughts, meditation, self analysis, setting new goals, having deep conversations with your partner you haven't had for a long time, or finding new ways to perhaps, you know, get yourself active to open new hobbies. The pandemic is not all that bad guys, trust me. There's a lot of opportunities. They say, within every obstacle or setback, there is a hidden gift. What is that gift for you? What gift has this pandemic brought for you? Yes, the pandemic can bring you some gifts, guys, trust me. Now that's for your emotional aspect of it. Financially, if you're struggling, the story applies. Do not sit on your sofa, watch the news and say, Oh, my government is not releasing the goddamn you know, relief effort button do something I need the paycheck now. Don't sit on your ass and just wait for the government, you know, handle it, you know, a check. Instead, ask yourself how can I generate money right now. But I'm an accountant, I'm not going to work as a delivery guy. Well, you want to be unemployed, it's much better to do something that not to do something right, and get yourself out of the house or engaged to start generating income. Because the fact of the matter is, if you make very bad or poor financial decisions are in this pandemic, it might take you literally five to 10 years to get out of it. This whole pandemic could last for only two years, and then you can have to pay for it financially in terms of, you know, credit payments and credit card payments for the next seven 810 years. So why do that? Why not, instead, find a way to live below your means and maintain and control your finances. Because by doing both of these things, you first of all, get yourself busy, active and moving, which is the key and antidote to all forms of depression. And secondly, you will make sure that your finances will not basically be left without any care or any attention by doing both. Hopefully you will increase your odds of beating depression leading the pandemic And ideally, hopefully benefiting from the pandemic.

Pouya LJ  24:40

Well said, Well, I couldn't so this this whole change of perspective is really really gold out there. I don't it's a gym. I don't think a lot of people really realize and it's obviously easier said than done. When it's done. It's done, you know? Alright, well okay with our company. To the end of the show, as always, thank you then for joining us. My

Dan  25:03

pleasure, buddy. Glad to be here with you.

Pouya LJ  25:05

Thank you and thank you everybody for tuning in. As always now, you can tune in and iHeartRadio as well as you heard in a few minutes ago, until a later episode. Have a good one.