Meeting Notes

February 16, 2021

 

President Paul welcomed everyone to today’s Mountain View Rotary Meeting.  The Rotary International theme for this year is “Rotary Opens Opportunities.”  Our Club theme is “We Open Opportunities For Everyone in the Community.” 

 

We welcomed Tom Moran as our Rotary Guest today.

 

Mandy is our Rotary Foundation Chair and the goal for the Club is to have 100% participation in this year’s contributions to the Foundation.  You can send your donation for The Rotary Foundation to Mandy Andrei at 2934 Vivian Lane, San Jose, CA 95124.  If you prefer, you can also make your donation to The Rotary Foundation on line at https://my.rotary.org/en/donate.   If you make an on line donation, please send a message to Mandy to let her know.  Feel free to give Mandy a call if you have any questions at 650-281-4356 or email her at mandyandrai@gmail.com.

 

For anyone who would like to join the President’s Club, please make your checks out for $150 to the Mountain View Rotary Club and send them to Mountain View Rotary President’s Club, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041.

 

From Heather:  We are still in need of speakers for our meetings in April and May.  If you have speaker ideas, please sign up for a week(s) or month via this spreadsheet or contact me by email (hsten@me.com) or phone:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yWN7DTtzVo5i8Zk8lAeZFM8f6fZ0D5-b/view?usp=sharing.

 

President Paul has asked that all members consider donating whatever they would have spent on tickets to the Crab Feed.  The funds will be used for the Club’s charitable grants for the year.  So far, we have received about $6,500 from Members of the Club.  Members may make their checks out to “Mountain View Rotary Endowment” and send them to Mountain View Rotary Endowment, PO Box 390280, Mountain View, California 94041.  All donations to the Mountain View Rotary Endowment are fully tax deductible.  And thanks to Tori’s incredible kindness, for every $60 donated, you will get a chance to win a weekend stay (three days and two nights) at Tori’s property in Half Moon Bay with the drawing to be held in March.

 

Anita announced that the Club will begin accepting Community Grant requests.  This year’s theme is Education and Literacy.  The link for the grant application form is: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SULhpIHO_nylhiIuv8qjcz6Pux84fPoPAg0zsaDEvBc/prefill

 

President Elect Heather is in the process of forming her Board for the next Rotary year.  If anyone is interested in a most exciting position on the Board, please contact either Heather or Past President Tom.  If we are short of volunteers, Tom has indicated that he will shift into draft mode.

 

If anyone knows of any of our members in distress or that need anything, please let President Paul or one of the Board Members know.  We want to make sure everyone knows that we are here to take care of each other.

 

 

Heather introduced our own Dr. Steve Nichols.  Steve has specialized in Internal and Geriatric Medicine for thirty-five years and he has been a member of our Club for thirty years.

 

Steve began by providing information about the pandemic.  The last pandemic in our country was in 1918 which resulted in many deaths.  COVID 19 is believed to have originated in Wuhan, China, possibly from bats and then making the transition from animals to humans.  The incubation period for COVID is between two and fourteen days with the peak at five days.  Anyone exposed to COVID must isolate for fourteen days.  Anyone infected with COVID must isolate for ten days after the positive test.  Anywhere between a third and half the people who contract COVID have no symptoms, but they can transmit the disease to others.  81% of the people with COVID have mild to moderate symptoms.  14% have severe symptoms which may require hospitalization.  5% have critical symptoms which may result in death.  COVID may lead to chronic symptoms and organ failure including blood clots, heart attacks, cognitive issues, and kidney and liver failure

 

Steve then told us about the available vaccines.  There are currently two options available for the vaccine, Pfizer and Moderna.  They are using a new Messenger RNA technology for these vaccines.  With the first dose, you have approximately 50 to 80% protection from COVID.  And the second dose increases the protection up to as high as 95%.  The time between doses is three weeks for Pfizer and four weeks for Moderna.  A side effect after the first dose is a sore arm and after the second dose, possibly a day or two of body ache, fatigue, chills and fever.  At this time, it is unknown how long the vaccines will last and we may need to get them annually.

 

Two additional vaccines are likely to become available soon, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson which are both vector vaccines.  For AstraZeneca, it is 75% effective after the first dose and 86% effective after the second dose.  Johnson and Johnson only requires one dose and it is 66% effective.  Both AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson may be stored at room temperature where Pfizer and Moderna must be stored at an extremely low temperature.

 

All four of the vaccines are very good at preventing severe cases of COVID as well as cutting down on the rates of transmissions to others.  There is no cost for the vaccines as they are provided by the government.

 

 

Tuesday, March 2, 2021, via Zoom.  Social time will start at 12:00 pm with the meeting beginning at 12:15 pm. Our speaker will be Lisa Schader talking about “The Business of Blogging and How a Blog Can Help Any Business.”