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B117 is coming. We are not ready
73 Plays3 years ago
The B117 variant of COVID-19 is hyper infectious, currently rampaging through the U.K. and Ireland and is already here in Canada. It's only a matter of time before it gets to Alberta. We talk to Dr. Gosia Gasperowicz about the super strain and what Alberta needs to do to stop it.
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Transcript
Comparing Strategies for B117 Variant
00:00:00
Speaker
So if we would have the time it would take to quench B117 starting from five daily cases, it would take us six and a half weeks to stop the community transmission of five daily cases of B117, which is exactly the same time we would need for quenching 1,000 daily cases of the old variant.
00:00:27
Speaker
with strong restrictions. If we have 10 daily cases of B117 in community, it would take us with New Zealand style lockdown, nine weeks to quench it. From 20 cases, it will be 12 weeks.
00:00:43
Speaker
And under current restrictions, the B117 would double every six days. So from five cases, in six days, we will have 10 cases. From 10 cases, in six days, we will have 20 daily cases. So basically, each six days of waiting are adding a couple of weeks of strict lockdown to quench down.
00:01:08
Speaker
And where are we at on surveillance? I know there was a question at the Hinshaw press or the other day that they're testing around 150 of the positive cases a day for the B117 variant. I can't remember that exact number. And then they say they were going to ramp up their surveillance, but I mean, at this point we need to be testing every single positive case for B117, right?
00:01:30
Speaker
Yes. And still we can even testing every single positive case, knowing that not everybody is tested anyway, even for old COVID, we can easily miss five cases or 10 cases. Like this number is so small that even if we're like, if we test everybody, we wouldn't detect it. I mean, if we test every positive case of old variant.
00:01:59
Speaker
Which we're not doing at the moment. We are not testing every single positive case for B1-1-7. No, so we have around 1,000 daily new cases. And if we are testing 150, that's 850 that are not tested. So the five cases can easily be there.
00:02:20
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. We're one of just many excellent left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and a new episode on the network that I want to recommend is the latest from Habib T. Pleas, where James Wilt and Sarah Jama join host Nashua Lina Khan to explore what defunding the police looks like in Winnipeg and Hamilton.
00:02:38
Speaker
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00:03:15
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report.
Introduction to Dr. Gosha Gasperovic
00:03:18
Speaker
I am your host, Duncan Kinney, and we're recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skuygen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory. Joining us today is Dr. Gosha Gasperovic. She is a biologist and a general associate with the University of Calgary. Gosha, welcome to the show. Good morning. Nice to talk to you today.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yes, it's a pleasure. So, Doctor, you have been kind of one of the key figures, I think, on Twitter and in the media when it comes to public education about the pandemic on those formats and in those worlds. And I think we're very lucky to have you on today. The reason why I brought you on today is recently you've been sounding the alarm and trying to tell anyone who will listen about a hyper-viral strain of COVID-19
00:04:03
Speaker
that originated in the UK. It's called the B.1.1.1, sorry, the B.1.1.7 variant. But before we get into that, let's just get to know you a little bit better. We're going to have a pretty long and involved and scientific talk about COVID-19. But I'd love to understand a bit more about your science and medical background. So you're not a medical doctor. You're not necessarily, you're not an epidemiologist. What part of your expertise in science background relates to this pandemic?
00:04:32
Speaker
I am a developmental biologist with a background in biophysics. So basically since I have 20 years experience with multiplicative biodynamic processes. So for example, how fast do tissues grow, how fast bacterias or stem cells grow on the Petri dish, what conditions make them grow fast and what conditions make them wither and die.
00:04:55
Speaker
And mathematical principles of this do carry over to dynamics of virus spread. And, well, the virus grows exponentially or declines exponentially. So for me, it's like biophysics just in a macro scale.
00:05:12
Speaker
Very cool. And the other reason why you've caught my eye as well is that you were making accurate predictions about things that happened when it came to the pandemic here in Alberta. You predicted in early 2020 that the virus would come to Alberta. Of course it came.
00:05:28
Speaker
you predicted a second wave. You were accurately predicting how many cases we would have during that second wave. And people were calling you a witch, though I assume it's relatively not simple, but it's like a relatively simple process for you to figure out, again, these multiplicative processes of spread.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yes, it is. It's exponential growth and exponential decay, which is pretty easy to calculate and project. Well, easy for you. I failed math in high school, but easy for a PhD in biophysics.
00:06:10
Speaker
So, Dr. Gasparevich, the big reason I want to do on today is because of the alarming news that's coming out of the UK and Ireland around this new version of the virus that's spreading.
Understanding B117 Variant's Threat
00:06:21
Speaker
So, what is this B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant and what do people need to know about it? So, B.1.1.7 variant, okay, it's new. So,
00:06:34
Speaker
We have some data about it, but it's not studied super, super well yet. But what from UK studies, they estimate that this new variant is around 50% to 75% more transmissible than the old variants.
00:06:53
Speaker
which is super dangerous because this transmissibility comes, goes into the exponent. So Adam Koharski really nicely summarized it saying that while increased transmissibility of a virus is much more dangerous than increased pathogenicity and it's because it affects growth exponentially.
00:07:16
Speaker
And he also gave a really nice, straightforward example. So if you have something that kills 1% of people, but a huge number of people get it, that's going to result in more deaths than something that a small number of people get, but it kills 2% of them. So we're talking about something that is far more able to transmit itself from person to person, is what you're saying.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yes. There's no change in the symptoms necessarily. It's the exact same virus when people get it, but it's just far better at spreading itself from person to person. And because of that, that just factors into how fast this thing can grow.
00:08:01
Speaker
Yes, for now it seems that it's not more pathogenic, although it's not known for sure, but it seems that if somebody is infected by it, probably this person won't get more sick than he will get sick from the old variants. But yeah, it's much faster, and it's dangerously much faster. So basically, if we would have
00:08:29
Speaker
like if we would instead of all the variants so now our r in alberta is around one just just below one so if you add 60 more transmissibility to this the r of new variant would be 1.6 and that means it would grow it would double every six days so imagine starting from
00:08:54
Speaker
200 cases of new variant. In six days you have 400 cases, in 12 days 800 cases and 16 hundred cases in 18 days basically. So from 200 to 1600 it would grow in just 18 days.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, our value here is the important number, right? Our value from what I can recall from Dina Hinshaw briefs and from things I've read is the amount of the ability of someone who is infected with the virus to infect another person, right? Yes. The reproductive value. And so right now we're at one or just below one. But if the numbers on this B117 variant coming out of the UK and Ireland are true,
00:09:43
Speaker
There's no reason to think they're not. We are looking at a huge increase in the R value. Yeah, by around 50% to 75%. So 1 would be 1.6. 3, so estimated R0 for all the variants, which is 3, would be 4.8 for the new variant, which is huge.
00:10:09
Speaker
And we're already at one or just below one under a pretty, a relatively strict lockdown there. There are definitely stricter lockdowns in the world, but I mean, we're at one or just below one right now for in our value with all the things that are shut down and all the things we're not able to do right now. What do we have to do to make sure that B117 doesn't come to Alberta?
Controlling B117 Variant Spread
00:10:37
Speaker
So to make sure that it doesn't come, we should also make the travel control, supervised mandatory quarantine for all incoming travelers, both international and interprovincial, but make it as leak proof as possible. And I would stress here the interprovincial travel.
00:10:59
Speaker
Quarantining interprovisional travelers worked really well protecting Atlantic bubble from reintroduction of COVID-19. It worked in New Zealand. It worked in Australia.
00:11:14
Speaker
and also in different Australian states. For example, this famous Victoria outbreak in Victoria state in Australia didn't spill out to other states of Australia because they had this inter-state travel restrictions.
00:11:34
Speaker
But travel restrictions, travel like quarantines really, really work in protecting from reintroductions or introductions of viruses. So that's one thing. And the other is that probably we already, we might have some little B117 outbreaks burning. We might not detect them. So I think we should quench this potential
00:12:02
Speaker
outbreaks as strong as we can, so make as strong measures as possible and to prevent establishing of B117 or quench potential undetected B117 fires.
00:12:20
Speaker
So we know that the B117 variant is incredibly dangerous, that it spreads like wildfire, it's a hyper-virulent strain, it's a super strain, and it gets people far more people sick than the old variant. And we've seen that in incredibly huge case counts and steep vertical graphs of case counts in the UK and Ireland.
00:12:39
Speaker
And this B117 variant is kind of spreading out throughout the world right now. We know that the B117 variant is in Canada. I think yesterday or the day before in Ontario, there was eight confirmed cases of B117. We know it's in British Columbia as well. We haven't any confirmed cases in Alberta at the moment, but really, unless we're going to do the things that you're talking about when it comes to travel, it is inevitable that it would come here, right?
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, it is. It's as inevitable as it was with what could be now called the kitten variant, the old COVID, that it came here. So with even faster one, we shouldn't expect that it won't come here. That's almost impossible. Yeah, the virus doesn't have wings. It's not able to drive a car or it's not a pilot. It has to come here.
00:13:33
Speaker
from with someone, you know, hitched to a sick person. And so that's why you're recommending that we lock down the province when it comes to inter-provincial and international travelers. Yeah, well, not necessarily locked down, locked out.
00:13:50
Speaker
Not quarantine them. Quarantine folks who show up here. Quarantine. Two weeks of quarantine really supervised, mandatory, controlled. And so people can still travel, but they need to quarantine. And that's what is now happening in Australia. That people can travel, but then they have to come back. When they come back, they have to be in a special hotel, pay for it, and to have this two weeks quarantine.
00:14:18
Speaker
So the thing we haven't really discussed is how bad could it get? And if B.1.1.7 gets to Alberta, as it inevitably will, if we don't change how we are dealing with inter-reventional international travelers, what is the worst case scenario when it comes to the B.1.1.7 variant in Alberta?
00:14:41
Speaker
So as I said Snappers before, just from 200 cases, which would be 20% of our current cases, it could grow to 1600 in just less than 18 days, so less than three weeks. And then the next step in six days is 3,200 cases. So doubling every six days, our search in the fall was two and a half weeks.
00:15:08
Speaker
doubling time, now it's for this one under current restrictions, it would be six days doubling time. So basically our hospitals, ICU units would fill up in an instant.
00:15:22
Speaker
And then to control it, to just slow it down, we would need New Zealand type lockdown. So sooner or later, we will need such strong, strong lockdown anyway. But once this virus, this new variant takes off, the super strong lockdown will just slow it down, but not super effectively.
00:15:50
Speaker
So once B117 gets here in any serious way, it starts doubling every six days and our healthcare system becomes rapidly overwhelmed, even worse than what we saw in November and December. And then in order to stop this, we institute stricter lockdowns, the strictest lockdown probably that we'll have ever seen in this province and in Canada, because we will be forced to, right?
00:16:15
Speaker
And then those lockdowns would reduce R maybe to, will result in halving time of maybe 19 days. So maybe it wouldn't be too bad. It would be still decreasing. Probably like our cases were decreasing around Christmas, but it wouldn't be with the lockdown we have right now. It would be with the lockdown much, much, much stronger.
00:16:41
Speaker
And so the feeling that I'm getting now, having this conversation with you about the B117 variant is, and how I'm feeling right now is a lot how I felt back in August and September when
00:16:52
Speaker
the second wave was incoming and we knew it was coming. And the government of Alberta chose to not do anything about it. And we saw what happened. We saw nearly 600 people die in five weeks. We saw our healthcare system stretch to the breaking point until finally
00:17:12
Speaker
a quasi lockdown was instituted and numbers are still quite high, but we seem to be on the other side of that particular peak. But then I look at what you're saying about B117. We look to Ireland and UK and other places around the world that where B117 is getting established and I'm sick to my stomach. I like that it's coming and we know what to do to stop it.
00:17:41
Speaker
But is anyone going to listen to you? Is there any indication that this government is taking B117 seriously? Well, that I don't know. They open schools, so it doesn't seem they take it seriously. And we know that there is spread in schools. We know that children
00:18:02
Speaker
can get infected with the virus that they can transmit the virus, so loosening the restrictions. Now with B.1.1.7 looming around, it doesn't signify that they take it seriously.
00:18:18
Speaker
And so we have a government that is choosing to not take the B117 variant seriously, that didn't take the second wave seriously. And the rhetoric that they trot out is that they're trying to save lives and livelihoods. And they're laser focused on the economy is the line that you hear quite often. But the economy suffers
00:18:43
Speaker
regardless with B1 on seven, right? It's a question of whether you want the human harm and damage that comes with an out of control pandemic or not, right?
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. And I think there's more and more analysis and reports showing that actually virus is bad for the economy, like report from International Monetary Fund. And so I think it's absolutely like false dichotomy, lives or livelihoods, it goes together. So virus is bad for both.
00:19:21
Speaker
And what's the worst that can happen if, say, we overshoot and we're far too cautious and we institute these international travel quarantines and a harsher lockdown in order to keep B117 out of Alberta? What's the worst possible scenario there?
00:19:39
Speaker
So the worst possible scenario, let's say that we overshoot totally, we don't have B117 here. So okay, we can prevent importing B117. And if we institute this New Zealand style lockdown and travel controls right now, in 45 days, we can get rid of B117.
00:20:01
Speaker
of community transmission of the alt types of the virus, basically go to stop the community transmission of it and then slowly reopen and have normal seabag. So basically normal seabag is the worst thing that can happen.
00:20:21
Speaker
That, that doesn't, that sounds terrible. That's a, I definitely don't want to get back to normal. So no, no, no. That's heresy. Like to have, like to be able to party with your friends and like, you could give your friends a hug. Yeah. Oh no, no. Come on. Let's not talk about this things. Just too bad. No. So again, if we institute a strict lockdown now, because we know that B1 1 7 is coming,
00:20:50
Speaker
the worst that could happen is that we get to normal sooner with or without the vaccine, right? Like the vaccine is always going to be there regardless, but the vaccine rollout is nine to 12 month process. It seems kind of at minimum, right? Yes. And I think I don't know what the most recent estimate is, but wasn't it that like 40% of Albertans will be vaccinated by September? It's many months.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, there's all of the big, big chunk of 2021. We could just be dealing with an out of control B117 pandemic here.
Vaccine Limitations Against B117
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah. You know, unless we decide to take it seriously. And also with the vaccine, the problem is that.
00:21:37
Speaker
We know the efficacy against the symptoms. That's the efficacy that was measured and evaluated in controlled trials, in clinical trials. But we don't know what is the efficacy against transmission. And with quenching the spread, that's the number, that's the value that is important. And we just don't know it. And probably it's lower than 90% on the basis how immunology of this vaccine works.
00:22:08
Speaker
And I made some short calculations about it. So with the new variant, if we would rely only on a vaccine, like, okay, we throw our hands up and say, okay, vaccine can save us.
00:22:22
Speaker
So for the new variant with 60% more transmissibility, the efficacy against transmission of the vaccine would need to be 90% and the population vaccinated would need to be, oh, sorry, that's for all variant. So efficacy for the transmission would need to be 90% and population vaccinated would have to be 97%.
00:22:51
Speaker
to get as quickly to, so to get our value from 4.8 to 0.6. That means in two months to stop the transmission of B.1.1.7. So essentially what you're saying is the vaccine isn't necessarily the cure-all to this hyperviral strain.
00:23:13
Speaker
Just by itself, no. When it's added to non-pharmaceutical interventions, it will help tremendously. But just by itself, no, it won't. Okay. So we've established that there is this super strain hypervirus out there, this B117. The only way it can get here to Alberta, if it's not here already, is via a traveler who is infected with it and then comes here and then infects people in Alberta.
00:23:43
Speaker
If that's the case, doesn't Jason Kenny's very confusing statements on international travel in the past couple of weeks put everyone here in Alberta in incredibly danger? Well, so we are like, if you travel, you make, you are a danger to other people because you make them like,
00:24:14
Speaker
There is a risk, infinitely higher, because I think he said something that it's more safe to travel. Yeah, I have the quote. I have the quote right here. Here it is from a global news report. Here's his clarifying statement on the matter.
00:24:29
Speaker
Premier Jason Kenney reiterated on Thursday that he believes traveling by air during the COVID-19 pandemic is safer than going to a grocery store, but clarified he does not encourage Albertans to travel during the health crisis. Quote, I'm not telling people to travel, the premier said, while speaking to reporters for the first time after firing or demoting government officials who traveled abroad over the Christmas holidays. The position of our government has been to facilitate safe travel because travel is happening and it's best that when it happens, it be safe.
00:24:59
Speaker
Okay. But there's no safe travel. Yeah. There's no such thing as safe travel right now. No, there's also no such thing as going safely to grocery store. But in the grocery store, probably you have just all the variant of COVID. When you travel, you can bring here the new variants. And so it's infinitely more dangerous for the community when you travel than when you go to grocery store.
00:25:28
Speaker
You don't have to say it, I'll say it. He's putting us in danger. The B117 variant, the literature on it is clear. I mean, you've studied this. The literature is available for our public health officials to read. Those public health officials have a direct line to Kenny. International travel right now is incredibly dangerous because you could bring B117 to Alberta. And once it's here, it spreads faster, far faster than the old variant of COVID-19.
00:25:58
Speaker
There's no such thing as safe travel right now. And, and you really only have to look to Ireland and the UK and the damage that the pandemic is wreaking there to realize that. Right. And, and compared to the old variant, like all the variant was a kitten compared to this one. So what was it described as by, uh, by in one of your threads? I think it was, it was described as the beast.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yes, yeah, because it's so fast. It's so fast. I mean, we use that descriptor to describe the Fort McMurray wildfire, right? And because again, it's spread fast. And here we have another version of the beast that will also spread fast if we let it get established, right? Yeah. And so with COVID, with old COVID, or especially with the new variant,
00:26:54
Speaker
I think the important thing of understanding what type of dynamic of the spread it is or what type of phenomena in terms of its properties and dynamic of spread, you can compare it to like, think about metastatic cancer, like how fast it can spread when it starts. So basically if you have few melanoma moles, you cut all of them because you don't want the risk that something will spread.
00:27:23
Speaker
Right. Like wildfire is another like this mice infestation in the basement. It's similar thing. You want to get rid of all the mice and not just leave few couples to reproduce further. Right. So our, yeah, bacterial infection that is not treated completely.
00:27:48
Speaker
And I think there's one last point I want to close on here, Gosha, and that is, you know, the whole COVID zero strategy in general, you know, our political leaders and the leaders of our.
00:27:58
Speaker
of our public health system here in Alberta have simply refused to entertain the idea of a COVID zero strategy. But you've been a big proponent of it for a while now, at least as far as I've seen. What does COVID zero mean as a strategy and why is it the option that we should be pursuing as opposed to our current strategy, which seems to just accept a certain level of baseline infection?
00:28:24
Speaker
So COVID zero is a strategy that assumes that in short time you go, you put as strong measures as possible to get as effective as possible to get to zero community transmission. So basically to stop the chain of transmission, which I think is in a description of public health.
00:28:49
Speaker
reaction to pandemics and epidemics. But okay, so you go to zero community transmission as fast as possible and then sustain this level. So sustain the zero by control of
00:29:10
Speaker
travel, so by quarantine, so you make sure that the new importations won't be brought in. And as soon as you monitor the community, and as soon as you see some little outbreaks, you stamp them out.
00:29:28
Speaker
And this works. So basically, on mathematical and physical level, it makes more sense that, let's say, getting to one daily cases or 100 daily cases and trying to keep it at this level. Because it's not possible to keep this virus. It either declines exponentially or it grows exponentially. It can be just kept at the standard level. The physics of it just don't allow to do it.
00:29:57
Speaker
And so you have to put super big effort to try to have this little waves that actually nobody achieved. Much smaller effort you will have to do to keep cases at zero once you get there.
00:30:22
Speaker
So what are the places in the world that have done COVID zero and how are they
COVID Zero Strategy Success
00:30:28
Speaker
doing right now? How is this strategy worked in other places around the world? So New Zealand did it, Australia did it, Atlantic and Northern Canada did it.
00:30:43
Speaker
I think they are happy. When you go to the tweets of people living in these places, their life looks like our 2018. It doesn't look like 2020 or 2021. In New Zealand and in Australia, they had football games with full stadiums just a month ago. Something like Western Australia hasn't had a case of community transmission in nine months, I saw.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. Western Australia didn't have it for nine months. I mean, this is a world that is like, this is the world we want, right? I simply don't understand why we would not pursue a strategy that gives us a world where I can hug my friends or have a party or my child can go have a play date at another person's house. Yeah. I think about my child that she's deprived of her grandparents.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah, mine too. For me, it's big because I think the grandparents, when there is a good relationship with grandparents, they are almost as important as parents for children.
00:31:55
Speaker
I cannot, with all my grandparents, I had such a great relation. So if I'm thinking back that somebody would deprive me of my grandparents for one or two years when I was five or six, it's just crazy. I just don't even want to imagine that. And so this is the big question, is why has our political and public health leadership refused to entertain these COVID zero strategies and instead
00:32:26
Speaker
embraced alike, we'll accept a certain amount of COVID strategy. I don't know if there's a pithy way to summarize their current strategy, but it certainly seems willing to just accept a certain amount of infection because it doesn't want to make the effort of stamping out every case.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't understand it because for me it's inhumane, like you accept constant deaths and constant level of danger and people having been then probably injured for the whole life, like thinking about long COVID and long-term consequences of having COVID, which are not super well studied, like they are studied, but we still don't know much about it. Yeah, it's early days, right?
00:33:16
Speaker
But more and more reports are showing up and for previous SARS from 2003, actually there are reports, there are studies on people done 10 years later and a lot of people who had it still have debilitating effects of those. Some people, I think like 40% of those who have the lung effects cannot go back to work because
00:33:45
Speaker
whatever they have, it's not making them, it's not making them fit enough to work. So basically they, they, life is partially ruined and that's not, and so many less people had previous SARS. Yeah, it was not nearly, it didn't affect nearly as many people.
00:34:06
Speaker
It's a question I think we have to continue to ask our leaders, both our public health leaders and our political leaders, is that the strategy that they have embraced is cruel and inhumane. It puts us all under tremendous physical and mental strain.
00:34:23
Speaker
and accepts a certain amount of death and damage to the people of Alberta. And for what? So that the shareholders of a certain company could continue to pocket their dividends, so that the flow of goods in the economy could continue unabated. It's psychopathic stuff, to be honest. And I
00:34:48
Speaker
There's no other way to be but furious at this government for what they've done to us. But those are my feelings at the moment that you don't necessarily have to sign on to those, Koshia.
00:35:05
Speaker
But on that cheery note, I think I want to thank you for coming on the show, Koshia, and for informing us and educating us about this incredibly dangerous and important variant of the COVID-19 virus. What's the best way for people to follow along with your work on this on this matter?
00:35:27
Speaker
So, okay, can you rate it? So, follow along, it means like... What's the best way for people to like, if your Twitter account, if you want to plug your Twitter account right now, or if you have a place where you publish your thoughts, that kind of thing? It's Twitter, it's my Twitter account. Yeah, what's your Twitter account? How can people follow along with that? What's the URL? Just a moment, what's my URL? Sorry.
00:35:53
Speaker
Well, I've got it right here. It's at Gosha Gospero PhD, but we will put it in the show notes too. But if you're not following, if you're on Twitter, I would recommend you follow Dr. Gosha on Twitter. She is a fountain of useful information about the pandemic. And again, at Gosha Gospero PhD, and we'll put that link in our show description as well. Gosha, thanks so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.
00:36:21
Speaker
Thank you very much for inviting me. It was nice to talk to you. And folks, if you like this podcast, if you want to keep hearing more podcasts like this, there's a very simple thing you can do. Please share it with your friends. Please like us on your various social media channels. And one of the biggest things is sharing. Like if word of mouth advertising is incredibly important to kind of building our audience,
00:36:47
Speaker
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00:37:02
Speaker
There are 350 other folks who help keep this little independent media project going. So go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons, put in your credit card number and become a regular donor. We would really appreciate it. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, you can reach me on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email at DuncanK at ProgressUbrata.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.