A Farewell to CurveFlattening (Part I)
Mitchell Shannon
Chronicle Companies Owner | Publishing, Education, Marketing Communications
The?NPC Healthbiz Weekly?is here to keep on informing you through 2021. Your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives is published in cooperation with?Peak Pharma Solutions.?
? Issue #199 (In numerology, 199 suggests ever-present humanitarian potential.)
? Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/23:?179,639,390*
? Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/23:?3,892,872*
? Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/123:?1,418,467*
? Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/23: 26,144*
??Number of?vaccine doses administered to?Canadians?as of?06/23:?33,585,366*
June 23, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. It’s Chronicle publisher?Mitch Shannon?at the keyboard today. You’re currently eyeballing edition number 199 of this publication. As we divulged earlier, tomorrow’s newsletter, number 200, will be the last issue. (One thing you learn in the freshman class at the Famous Publishers’ School is that it’s always best to schedule your exit around a nice, round number.)?
The CurveFlattener archives will be preserved at?https://curveflattener.chronicle.org?for future historians to cluck their tongues over. This statement assumes that there will be a place in the days to come for historians, along with some form of future – and we’ve seen what happens when we assume, haven’t we? Along comes something very much like a global pandemic to make an ass of you and me.
So, following that theme, I’ll ask the question: Where were you, reader, on March 17, 2020??
I can tell you exactly where I was: sitting in the parking lot of the Loblaw store on Burnhamthorpe Road, a couple of blocks from the Chronicle office. Along with most of the community, I had been trying to buy a supply of toilet paper, and the shelves were bare. I settled for a giant box of No Name coffee pods and a machine-assembled turkey sandwich, which I wound up eating in my car. I realized it was getting past three p.m., and I’d forgotten about lunch.?And there I was in my Mini Cooper, watching the panic-buying through the windshield, while talking on the phone to a business acquaintance named Smith, for the first time. The call went on for more than an hour. We gabbed about every conceivable subject. It started with some blarney about the need to defer St. Patrick’s Day, and it ended with reminiscences of past jobs we’d both had in midtown Manhattan. It was our first, and thus far, only conversation and a classic example of two strangers finding dozens of things in common, forming a bond brought about through general anxiety. We both seemed to feel, as much as know, that something was on its way, and it wasn’t anything good.
On that day, the Ontario government?declared a provincial emergency?ordering the public to remain at home for 14 days. As the Chronicle group packed up what we needed from our workplace and dispersed, many of us wondered how we might possibly manage through the next two weeks.?
What emerged is that most of our team would thrive, and, speaking frankly, several would not. We quickly found a collective middle-ground. Creating this newsletter, which?sprang to life on March 30, became the first of a series of new collaborations and shared exercises we undertook using digital tools.?
We’ve enjoyed sharing our experiences with you through this forum. We appreciate the supportive feedback we’ve received. Tomorrow, I’ll summarize what we’ve learned through this 16-month experiment in deadline-writing that we called CurveFlattening. And you’ll get a preview of our two new e-newsletters, which will arrive next month.
领英推荐
The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is?Ronnie Miller, boss of?Roche Canada. Listen?here?now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with?Impres Pharma.
COVID CHRONICLE 06/24/21
WHAT CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY
We're excited to begin the "Summer of Dialogue on the Black and Brown Dermatology Patient." This will be an eight-week program featuring weekly themed e-newsletters and a brand new Skin Spectrum Summit podcast, culminating with a live colloquium featuring the?Dr. Mercy Alexis?Keynote Lecture by?Dr. Ncoza Dlova, dean of the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa. Speaking for our entire group at Chronicle, I'm honoured to collaborate with brilliant physicians such as?Dr. Yvette Miller-Monthrope, Dr. Marissa Joseph,?Dr. Neil H. Shear?and many other healthcare leaders. Like everything we do, the purpose of this series is to encourage optimal health outcomes for Canadian patients of all backgrounds, circumstances, and ethnicities. It's coming soon to?this space.
TONIGHT I'M READING
Ben Bradlee Jr.'s "The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America"?(2018: Little Brown, Cdn$36.50.) It's going to take a very long time to understand how America's disadvantaged regions came to identify in 2016 with the draft-dodging, atheistic, tax-avoiding, short-fingered vulgarian they elected to their nation's highest office. The author travelled to central Pennsylvania to talk with overlooked voters representing various opinions. Through the discussions, the extent of their resentment toward past leaders is made clear, and their anger about their perceived lot in life is made understandable. Alas, Bradlee's reporting offers no indication of any available solution, nor any means of preventing a return to power by President Trump or similar tin-pot despot assisted by an insurrectionist?group. That omission makes this book the very opposite of inspirational.?
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW
As?Sydney Greenstreet?said in his role as?Kasper Gutman, the best goodbyes are short. We'll say adieu tomorrow when we fill you in on our new plans. Till then.