 You've probably heard more about microbiology, virology, immunology, disease, death than we have in our collective experiences, if you're not a microbiologist, that is. But a lot of that information is of a questionable nature. So pay attention, watch the hand. You have now been transported to the year 1494. You are living in Seville, Spain. This is just after Columbus has returned from the New World. A friend of yours will make up some fictitious name, I don't know, Graham Con Marty will say, okay. He's just returned with Christopher Columbus and he's got something that he wants to show you because it's incredible. And he brings this over to your place and he sets this in front of you. What is it? You've never seen it before because this is a new world thing. Is there more of it? Oh yeah, there's plenty more of it. Well, what do you do with it? Well, it's food, but you've never had it. So does it taste like watermelon or shrimp? Do you eat raw? Do you cook it? Well, you cook it. But how does it grow? How underground does it grow on a bush, a tree, a vine? You don't know. So Graham Con Marty pulls out and he says, this is corn. And millions of people in the New World have entire civilizations based upon this and this is a marvelous thing. This isn't corn. This is science. We collect nuggets of information little bit at a time and we assemble them into a comprehensive package where we understand finally and we build a model. And what's happened in the last few months and years is that quality of that model has deteriorated for a number of reasons. Now I'm a classically trained microbial physiologist. And when we're trained to identify something, we use something that's called the 90 percent rule. And we'll take an example of E. coli. And E. coli is defined as a gram negative non-spore forming rod that ferments lactose to produce acid and gas in 24 to 37, 24 to 48 hours at 37 degrees C and it's in because plus, plus, minus, minus and nobody gives a damn about that unless you're a microbiologist. But if you get one of these, you have a 90 percent confidence that that is E. coli. That also means there's a 10 percent chance it's not E. coli. This is biology. That is a good level of certainty. Now this 90 percent drives chemists and physicists and especially engineers, bonkers because you can't calculate it to the fourth decimal place on a long rhythmic chart. But apply this to your life. If you could predict the lottery number, the winning team in the Super Bowl or the score with a 90 percent certainty or even the weather in 14 days, wouldn't that be damn good? Welcome to biology. We use a 90 percent rule where we possibly can. And so when we build a model with good data, we get this. A model that reflects the real world. And when we use junk data, we build a model of corn on the cob and it looks like that. Now how does something like that happen? Well let's take an example. We take 100 people, some of them know each other and some of them don't know each other. And we use, for those that don't know each other, we give them something with a 100 percent data reliability. You walk up to somebody and you go, hi, I see your name tag, I know who you are. How do you scramble that? You start a stupid game at a mixer and the purpose of the game is to see how many times you can change cards and that 100 percent reliable data becomes zero. And we just described social media. So for those of you that participated last night in my impromptu game, thank you. And for those of you that I pissed off severely, Jocelyn, I'm sorry. But now you see how disinformation, miscommunication, poor communication affects your ability to understand science. So what are we talking about when we're talking about germs? Well most people talk about some really good terms like death, disease, decay, odor. So what you're missing is pepperoni. It's made by the bacteria called pediococcus, pickles, lactobacillus that create vitamin Bs in our intestinal tract like Flux was talking about earlier, bread. The original oxygen in the atmosphere that protoclera breathed came from bacteria. And there's something about that stuff, I'm not sure what it is. So let's talk about germ control. There are two methods that we want to talk about specifically. The initial one that many people use is the nuke them till they glow, where you try to kill every damn thing. The problem is if you don't kill every damn thing, they come back at you. Like COVID-19 today. We have selected for the hardier varieties because we didn't nuke them hard enough. Or you use another technique and you think like a germ. Where do they live? What do they eat? How do they reproduce? You understand the physiology of them, and in doing so you give me a long career. And you manipulate them. And with this approach, you don't have to win every play. You don't have to win every game, but every few years you win the Super Bowl. Yes, James, we don't have to win all seven, but you do win the Super Bowl because you have manipulated the environment using science. All right, now we are culturally, emotionally a diverse species, but when you graph our diversity compared to the biosphere, we don't even show up on the chart. We are one homogeneous physiological species compared to fungi, to plants, to bacteria, to even to other mammals. What does that diversity of physiology give us for control mechanisms? This is how we need to be thinking about microbial control for a variety of reasons. Okay, now we are going to play a game. I'm going to list some things and we are going to shout out an answer. And the first question that we are going to say and we are going to list all of these potentials and you are going to vote on what you can kill. The only wrong answer is not answering. There are no negative points. There might be positive points, but that will be at the reception tonight. All right, can you kill E. coli? Can you kill a chunk of granite? Can you kill SARS-CoV-2? Can you kill a beer? Can you kill E. coli? Yes, no, yell and answer. Most of you got that one right. Yes, very easily. Can you kill a chunk of granite? It's not alive. You can't kill it. Okay, first trick question. Can you kill SARS-CoV-2? Yes, no. I hear mixed answers. The answers, no. Viruses are not alive. Oh, damn right, that was tricky. Okay, can you kill a beer? Perfect example of the vagaries of terminology. You are not killing it physiologically. You are killing it physically. And in biology, we are an exclusive field that keep people out by changing terminologies and words that others don't understand. In reality, if you talk to psychologists that's probably what we really do. It's a vocabulary field. Okay, what do you need to be alive? Now you are not just a human being at this point. You are a representative of all living things on the earth at least. All right, so vote as a representative of the entire living earth. What do you need to be alive? Water, pizza, energy, oxygen, ability to reproduce, integrity. Do you need water? Yes, no. At least on earth, yes. Do you need pizza? I would go with that mixed answer. Not essential, but it sure does help, doesn't it? Do you need energy? Yes, especially with kids and customers. Do you need oxygen as a representative of all living things on the planet? Yes or no? Oh, I got somebody. No. We'll get to this in a minute. Do you need the ability to reproduce as part of the definition of life? Oh, mixed answers. Yes, part of the definition of life is the ability to reproduce your own species. Do you need integrity? Depends on how you define it at the cellular level, yes, but not at the philosophical level. I'm a physiologist. I'm teaching physiology here, not philosophy. OK, quiz number three. What properties can we use now that we're beginning to understand the life process? How can we manipulate the environment to maintain a healthy environment, not only in our float tanks, but in our homes, in our cars, with our families, with the earth in general? What can we use to manipulate and control the germs? Water, energy, oxygen, ability to reproduce, integrity. Can we use water? Yes, no. Yes. This is a picture of a Market Forge autoclave. I've used these in microbiology since 1978. It costs about $20,000, $25,000 a new. It heats water to 121 degrees C. That is well past the point of boiling. It creates steam, and it takes 15 minutes to autoclave something as simple as that ring on my finger. If you're using these little wand type things that put out a little bit of steam, think back 20 years. What were we using those same things for to get the wrinkles out of our shirts and our drapes? You're wasting your time. You're not using water properly. You haven't identified the properties of water you need to use. Can you use energy to kill bacteria? Yes or no? Universal answer is yes. This is a standalone UV light. We use them all the time in microbiology. But it produces light at 254 nanometers. It has a certain intensity, and it has to be so far away from the surface, and it has to have so many minutes of exposure. These little things that you see on TV, and you wave them over your purse, or your wallet, or your cell phone, and it sterilizes it. Thank you. You just supported a bogus sales operation. You're not doing a damn thing. Can you use oxygen? This is a picture of an empty oxygen bank in Indian Hospital about three weeks ago where people were dying because they didn't have oxygen, because they had COVID-19. They ran out of oxygen. So depending on the species, you can use oxygen, except that every bacteria I have ever studied grows readily in the absence of oxygen, if you know the trick. And by the way, all of the bacteria that we consider potential pathogens in float tanks grow readily without oxygen. Besides, there's that little factor that if you eliminate the oxygen in the float room, you might have a problem with your customer a little later. All right, ability to reproduce. Can you use the ability to reproduce to control microbes? Absolutely. You stop reproduction, and the species disappears. That's called extinction. How about integrity? Can you use cellular integrity? Absolutely. All right, if you went to an American school, you darn well know that George Washington did not lie. He did not cut down the cherry tree. That's because he was using those disinfecting wipes that dissolved the bacteria in his float tank at Monticello. It was an early model, by the way. So we can use cellular integrity. OK, which of these cannot be used for food? And you are a representative of the entire biosphere. Hydrogen sulfide gas, sunlight, glucose, gasoline, ethanol, as a sole energy source, not as an additional before or after dinner, as a sole energy source. So can you use hydrogen sulfide gas? The answer is yes. This is a picture of a subsurface oceanic volcanic vent where bacteria use hydrogen sulfide gas to create a biomass, which is eaten by clams, which is eaten by starfish, which is eaten by fish, an entire ecology based upon a gas that would kill everybody in this room at a level that you would not normally be able to detect. You can, in the right environment, use deadly compounds. Can you use sunlight? This is photosynthetic bacteria that live in the surface or in the mud of a pond. This is called the Winogrodzky column. And the different colors are the different kinds of bacteria. This is probably where the original oxygen came from in the earth. Can you use glucose as a food source? Of course you can. And what you really do is you grow up this plant called agave for about 20 years. And you crush it. And this bacteria called zymomonas makes this stuff called pulque. And you distill it. And you make tequila. Can you use gasoline? Can bacteria or fungi use gasoline? I've got to know. What have we got? What have we got? Come on. Go, go, go, yell out an answer. No. OK, no. How about, if I tell you, during World War II, planes crashed because they thought they were full of fuel. But growing in the wings were bacteria living on the gas-water interface. And the tanks felt full. They ran out of gas. Planes crashed. They can, under the right circumstance, use gasoline. And how about ethanol as a fuel, as a in-soul energy source? Yep. This is a picture of apple cider vinegar. You ferment the apple. You make alcohol. And this bacteria called acetylbacter xylenum makes mother of vinegar. And that is where the best flavors come from in apple cider vinegar. So now we're seeing that a whole variety of food sources, a whole different hundreds of thousands of different microbes live on totally diverse energy sources and food sources. So what does that mean? What that means is you're thinking of cleaning separately. And cleaning is actually part of your sanitation program. By limiting the amount of organics present, you limit the amount of growth that will occur. And an additional impact, by limiting that amount of organic, it makes the disinfectants, in general, work much better. So it is a vital component of your program. OK, so then you get into disinfecting. And there's all sorts of varieties. There's light duties. There's heavy duties. There's ready-to-use. There's dilutables. And guess what? There's something on that back of that package called directions for use that costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars to do high-quality studies. And that's what my career has been, is developing that data. And it is independently reviewed by the US EPA in this country. You can't get a label without proving that it works. And if you're not reading it, you are wasting your time, wasting your money, getting a false sense of security, and exposing yourself and your clients to dangers unnecessarily. OK, now we're thinking only as humans. And you think that, well, this SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 is a huge thing. This is just another day in biology. In my lifetime, 90% of the American elmetries have died due to Dutch elm disease. We've had polio, HIV, chronic wasting diseases, decimating deer, elk, antelope, moose, across the states in the United States. White nose syndrome is wiping out back colonies in the eastern United States. Frog malformations is a parasite making four and six and eight-legged frogs. Really weird looking stuff. The devil facial tumor disease is potentially causing an extinction of the Tasmanian devil. The human papillomavirus, SARS-CoV-2 is just another day. It's just another day. We've been through this before with multiple species. In fact, there's a perfect model of what's going on right now. And we're going to call it the 1918, 1919 Spanish flu. And so where did the 1918 Spanish flu start? Kansas, really at Fort Riley outside of Manhattan. And it was spread around the world by military movements. And perhaps as many as 3% of the world died. And you want to look at the graph? There it is. And guess where we are right now? Here, start to look familiar. And what did they do back then? Well, the health care workers wore masks. And there were mask population, masks for the general population. And there were efforts to get everybody to wear masks, but they didn't always work. And those areas where they wore masks, there were less deaths and there were less infections and there was less spread. And they recovered quicker. And where they didn't wear a mask, there were more deaths and there were more infections. And the recovery was delayed. That's not 90% reliability data. That's 100% data. And I don't care where the virus came from. It's here. All right, let's talk about immunology. Flux gave us an intro on this. When you're first exposed, you develop and you haven't been exposed before, you develop an immune reaction and you develop memory cells. And then when you're exposed to second time, your body is flushed with this immune reaction. And you're primed for this reaction. And your response to the second time is much stronger. And if you graph it, this is what it looks like. Your first exposure, you make a little bit of antibody. A little bit. The second time, you make a whole lot. New data? Nope. I drew that graph when I took immunology in 1980. Well-known, 100% known, nothing surprising to us microbiologists. Each person, and Flux has talked about this, I don't really need to spend a lot of time on it. We're all unique, we're all a little different. The way we respond is different. Diseases respond differently. Some give you permanent immunity, some give you temporary immunity. Vaccines are not necessarily designed to keep you totally well. They're designed to keep you out of the hospital as much as possible. And so what? You're vaccinated, and you feel like crap for a day. Is that better than three months in an ICU? And in general, let's be honest, most vaccine reactions are probably less than the hangover that some of you had today. OK, this slides a little bit out of date. New data came out Monday that was terrifying. Historically speaking, the vaccines that we've got today are in the 70s to 90% efficacious. But infants don't make antibodies. And as you get older, things like hair, immune systems, hearing, eyes don't work as well. Your body begins to wear out, and you don't respond as well. So there is factors that play into the immunity system. We have known this for decades. It came out after I had this slide written. I wrote that last bullet point 90 days ago. If you've had a Pfizer or a Moderna vaccine, your next booster shot will be eight months after your last one if you are getting the shot. And that's a personal view. You make the decision. This is 100% science. There's not 90. That's 100% confirmed data. OK, data from the 16th of August. How good are the vaccines? If you are vaccinated, your chance of getting seriously ill is 0.0043%. And in biology, that's about as close to zero as you're ever going to get. Oh, wait. Your chance of dying if you are fully vaccinated is 009%. Your choice, what you do. I'm vaccinated, and you've seen me wear a mask most of the time. And when I'm not wearing a mask, I'm a little nervous. This is my last trip until at least Thanksgiving, if not March. Where are we going? That's where we are. Where we came from? There are projections that the peak will be higher than where we are right now. These are the projections from the CDC from a week and a half ago. There is not a single projection that is pointed downward. Not a single projection that is pointed downward. OK, where do we go from here? Within the program. Identify reliable sources of information. If somebody has a name tag, you might can say, are you really Beth Jones, Roy? Probably I'm not Beth Jones. And then study the information. That does not mean pulling on your cell phone during your first cup of coffee and reading it for 30 seconds. It means study the data. And then you develop a plan. You develop a strategic and a tactical plan. And then you implement the plan. And you take records of it. And then you sit back and you analyze what worked. Crap, Kim. It kind of looks like I stole your slide on marketing from yesterday because this is exactly what Kim was talking about on business planning. You're already doing it. You're just not doing it. No science. I'm not telling you anything you don't know how to do. I'm just telling you you've got to work in a different area that you haven't been working in. I used to slide 2018. Something's coming. We didn't have enough data to know what it was. But boy, was I right. Something got here. OK, with good data, we get a good model. With bad data, we get junk. Your choice. It takes work. There's no shortcuts. No way around it. All right, closing thoughts. Life would be exceedingly boring without the microbial world around us, you know. Paparoni. Sorry, Jocelyn. And microbiology, like life, has twists and turns that we can't always predict, but we can kind of prepare for. So if I've made you think about anything about microbiology and how it might be impacting your life, your float center, stay tuned for part two, because we have two special guests that'll be joining me. And we'll start talking about how we might collaborate to do something just about like what Justin Feinstein talked about this morning, only for operational control, sanitation, developing and a stronger and improved float tank association standard for North American standard of operations and how we can share that with the world, including the CDC and the health department that's breathing down your neck with data. Thank you.