Events

Venyei Angh will provide a brief background about how Lamling Vista Elementary School came to exist and the school budget.  He'll also talk about how Lamling Vista is dealing with global COVID-19 pandemic.

Venyei is married and has two boys--one is 8 and the other just turned 5. He came to the US in 2008 on a fiancé visa and later became a naturalized citizen. He has a graduate degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and currently works for Solano County Behavioral health. He also has a part-time private practice. In his free time he loves reading, playing with his boys, gardening and working on backyard projects.

Abbie Morneault will speak about the Malawi Water Project. Abbie has lived in Malawi for 5 of the last 8 years, starting as a volunteer teacher after earning her bachelor's degree in education from Kent State University in 2012. After receiving her master's degree from American University in International Training and Education, she returned to Malawi to spearhead the opening of Wasambo Boys High School and served as the inaugural Head Teacher for the first three years. This month she is handing over her position to a Malawian Head Teacher and is staying on as Development Director, overseeing projects for the high school and Determined to Develop. Abbie is originally from Ohio and is a member of the Mzuzu Rotary Club. Joining her are Elvira DiGesu and Birttney Lawrence from the LaSalle Centennial Club in Windsor, Ontario Canada. Both Elvira and Brittney visited Malawi last summer and have been instrumental in getting this project going. 

They will discuss how they've invested donations made by Rotary to improve Girl Scout programs.

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief (Clinical Operations/Education) of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic has received a great deal of attention, we'll discuss for one of the first times the hypothesis that universal masking reduces the “inoculum” or dose of the virus for the mask-wearer, leading to more mild and asymptomatic infection manifestations.  Masks, depending on type, filter out the majority of viral particles, but not all. We first discuss the near-century old literature around the viral inoculum and severity of disease We will then include examples of rising rates of asymptomatic infection with population-level masking, including in closed settings (e.g. cruise ships), outbreaks, and countrieswith and without universal masking. Asymptomatic infections may be harmful for spread but could actually be beneficial if they lead to higher rates of exposure. Exposing society to SARS-CoV-2 without the unacceptable consequences of severe illness with public masking could lead to greater community-level immunity and slower spread as we await a vaccine

Joel Ernst trained in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and in Hematology and Oncology at the University of California, San Francisco.  He joined the faculty at UCSF where he established a research program in host-pathogen interactions and immunity, and cared for patients with infectious diseases, including the earliest AIDS patients, at San Francisco General Hospital.  He was recruited to the NYU School of Medicine in 2003, where he was Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology as well as Director of the Graduate Program in Immunology and Inflammation, and Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Microbiology.  In 2018, he was recruited to UCSF where he is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Experimental Medicine. 

COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has changed every aspect of life for billions of people.  The cause is an RNA virus, termed SARS-CoV-2, that is transmitted by the respiratory route and that leads to diverse clinical consequences.  Global control of COVID-19 will depend on development and deployment of vaccines that are safe, able to be produced rapidly in hundreds of millions (or billions) of doses, and inexpensive.  Likewise, preventing complications and mortality requires development and clinical use of drugs that control the infection and that prevent and treat the complications.  This presentation will feature general information about the infection, general principles of antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs, and principles of vaccine development, testing, and implementation.  It will also provide a summary of the present status of drug and vaccine development for COVID-19.