Tippets by Taps - Issue #129
This week we look at the amazing efforts of Bill Gates, understanding grief and finding meaning during COVID-19, how Bookshop is supporting local bookstores, writing to sharpen thinking, and more. Enjoy!
Bill Gates is funding new factories for 7 potential coronavirus vaccines, even though it will waste billions of dollars
5 years ago I posited that Bill Gates will have a greater impact on the world in the work he has done post-Microsoft than he did in building Microsoft. Now, it certainly seems like that will be the case. As described in an interview on the Daily Show, Bill Gates is plugging money into building factories for seven promising coronavirus vaccine candidates, even though it will mean wasting billions of dollars.
“Because our foundation has such deep expertise in infectious diseases, we’ve thought about the epidemic, we did fund some things to be more prepared, like a vaccine effort,” Gates said. “Our early money can accelerate things.”
Gates said he was picking the top seven vaccine candidates and building manufacturing capacity for them. “Even though we’ll end up picking at most two of them, we’re going to fund factories for all seven, just so that we don’t waste time in serially saying, ‘OK, which vaccine works?’ and then building the factory,” he said.
“It will be a few billion dollars we’ll waste on manufacturing for the constructs that don’t get picked because something else is better,” Gates said in the clip. “But a few billion in this, the situation we’re in, where there’s trillions of dollars … being lost economically, it is worth it.”
Incredible to see. I for one, am very much rooting for him.
Bill Gates on Fighting Coronavirus | The Daily Social Distancing Show
When all is said and done @BillGates could have greater world impact with @gatesfoundation than @Microsoft #amazing https://t.co/R6kf7qzoo4
9:44 AM - 28 Nov 2015
That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief
Last week I talked about the rollercoaster of emotions COVID-19 is putting me through. The coronavirus pandemic has led to a collective loss of normalcy. There is a word for this feeling: grief. This interview with David Kessler, who quite literally wrote the book on the subject, offers ideas on understanding and then working through it.
Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it.
When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through.
Searching For Meaning In The Coronavirus Age
A timely post on appropriately directing resources, time, and effort as we search for meaning and ways to help in the Coronavirus Age.
People want to do something about the coronavirus, but that energy is unfocused. Without the right guidelines, that energy might be wasted. After 9/11, blood donations surged to nearly 500,000 units…but only 258 units were actually needed to treat survivors of the attack, and since blood is only good for 42 days, nearly all of it was simply thrown away.
Toward our search for meaning, here are some simple guidelines, based on research, that will help you channel your desire to help, in a way that increases your positive impact and your well-being:
- Find a way to help that taps into your own idiosyncratic resources
- Focus on a concrete action, not just good intentions.
- Involve others in your journey.
Thanks to Bookshop, Indies Stand a Chance Against Amazon
Books books books! Amazon is now not the only game in town. As you all know, small businesses are taking a beating as we all shelter-in-place and attempt to flatten the COVID-19 curve. One such category are local bookstores. Despite all the magic that happens in a local book store and the relatively recent resurgence, bookstores haven’t been able to compete with Amazon when it comes to an online experience. Now, Bookshop is here to help. A new online bookstore, the company’s entire goal is to help independent retailers stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic and fight back against Amazon.
How to Use Writing to Sharpen Your Thinking
My goal two and a half years ago when I first started writing Tippets by Taps was to sharpen my thinking of subjects, synthesize interesting things I found on the web, and share that with readers that might be interested. I found this video by Tim Ferriss on how writing can sharpen and improve your thinking helpful, so thought I would share.
How to Use Writing to Sharpen Your Thinking | Tim Ferriss
Quote I’m thinking about: “…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”
- Bill Watterson, the cartoonist and creator of Calvin and Hobbes