Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Bulletin February 15, 2023

 

Written by Patrick Hart

 

President Pinsel presided this week, and we opened our meeting with a pledge and a prayer.

 

We were joined this week for breakfast by Mindy Bradford and by Glenn Garrick, the chairman of our district Polio Plus Campaign.

 

Ron Lapin bragged that after receiving a new hip last month, he is ready to play gold again.

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

At our board meeting on Tuesday evening the club voted to contribute $500.00 to the project of Christian Stevens, the Eagle Scout candidate who spoke at our meeting two weeks ago, and $5,000.00 to Shelter Box to provide aid to victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria.

 

Glenn Garrick recognized five members of our club who had become members of the Polio Plus Society: Tim Dempsey, Patricia Bleck, Jeff Harger, Howard Jaffe, and Bob Zamor.

 

We received a letter from Blue Star informing us that they have made the $15,000, which the event we helped them with was attempting to raise.

 

Eliot Pinsel reminded us that the club still does not have a president elect, whom we need so he or she can move up to president next year.

 

Howard Jaffe spoke about the March 11 fundraiser again.  We are receiving a lot of good publicity from the village, the chamber of commerce, and Mainstreet Libertyville who are all showing the event on their e news sites.   We have sold 294 tickets out of 680, which is great.  We still need silent auction items, and it would be nice to sell more raffle tickets. 

 

Dave Potts conducted a putting contest for fun and frolics this week.

 

This week we inducted Kimberly Smith as the newest member of the Libertyville Sunrise Rotary Club.  Kimberly is the manager of the Center Club, and she is now the designated representative of Advocate Condell, a corporate member of our club.  She lives in Mundelein with her husband, and they have a daughter who is currently studying at the University of Iowa.

 

This week our speaker was Doctor Edwin Moore, the president of BioPhia Consulting, and he provided us with some background information on vaccines.  BioPhia Consulting helps startup companies in medical products.  Ed has a PhD in Biochemistry from Cornell University, and he is also  a professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

 

When Spanish Flu occurred a century ago, there were no vaccines to fight it, and fifty million people died worldwide.  When Covid occurred though we were able to develop vaccines in only eighteen months, which greatly mitigated the effects of the pandemic.  Also the Covid vaccine produced a lot less adverse reactions to its applications than many similar preventions in the past.  One reason for this is that the antibodies for some vaccines, such as the original polio prevention treatment, were grown in chicken eggs, which caused people with egg allergies to suffer uncomfortable side effects. The antibodies for later vaccines though are more likely to be grown in cultured cells, or the producers might use RNA to create a special protein for this purpose.

 

Vaccines work by causing white cells to produce antibodies, which will fight off disease, and to stimulate memory in B cells and T cells, so that the antibodies will be able to respond to future attacks by the  disease as well.  This immunity declines over time though, which is why booster vaccines are necessary. The rate of decline varies between diseases. 

 

People who have had Covid will retain some immunity which will help them avoid a repeat occurrence.  However, Covid Vaccines contain more antibodies than are produced by a prior experience of the virus, and thus the vaccines offer greater protection.

 

No one responded when the first ticket was pulled this morning, and the $29.00 weekly prize remained with the club.  Jim Curtis then became a winner for a third week in a row, as his ticket came up, and he went for the progressive prize, which was a whopping $54.00 with only 53 cards remaining.  Unfortunately, Jim drew the two of diamonds and went home empty handed.

 

“Everything is theoretically impossible until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein