Friday Takeaway: Counting down 5 things we learned this week

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions.

⇒ Issue #200 (In numerology, 200 will always stand for coexistence.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/24: 180,076,271*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/24: 3,902,018*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/24: 1,419,198*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/24: 26,162*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/24: 34,174,571*

June 24, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. Today the CurveFlattener presents a sneak peek of the Friday Takeaway, Chronicle's newest e-newsletter. Today and on subsequent Fridays, we'll count down five things we learned. The list below comes from the past 500 days of lockdown (and from assembling the previous 199 issues of the CurveFlattener.) In this edition, Chronicle’s Mitch Shannon offers "News Youse Can Use," curated from the past week’s organized assault on our collective senses and sensibilities.

5. The undeniable importance of companion animals

Beginning with the very first issue of the CurveFlattener, we’ve made a point of including updates on our editors’ pets, complete with photos. This series began with a pic of Kylie Rebernik’s best friend Snowy, and we’ll wrap up the CurveFlattener by featuring the same lovely feline face (left.) I’m still struck by how animals became a kind of lifeline for so many of us during this pandemic, including several previously pet-averse humans. My next-door neighbour, a somewhat taciturn heart surgeon, welcomed a small, furry person into his home late last year, a ginger toy poodle named Milo, who arrived directly from a kennel in South Korea at an obscene expense. Once, this unusual back-story might have invited some tsk-tsking around the block. Still, Milo is a welcome distraction from lockdown life here in Swansea, and he is invited to go ahead and shit on our lawn any time he deems it appropriate.

4. A bluffer's guide to how to be human: Reading for pleasure

Unlike Kylie, one of my best friends is not a cat, but a science guy, a doctor who once bragged to me that he has never read a work of fiction in his life. I challenged the assertion, and he stuck by his statement. What about assigned reading in high school English classes, I queried. Never did it, he replied. What about the dirty novels we’d all pass around when we were kids? Well, okay, he conceded; maybe he looked at those. My friend would disagree, but one of the positive things about the pandemic was the opportunity it provided to get around to reading some non-required books that have been collecting dust for too long. There’s one special treat I’ve been saving, and I’m going to enjoy it this weekend: a copy of an obscure 1971 Donald E. Westlake novel, I Gave at the Office, purchased in Seattle five years ago and never started. It’s time now. I feel sorry for the science guys who won’t take the occasion to enjoy this stuff prized by English majors. They’re missing a lot.

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.

3. Curve-flatteners' Masterclass: How to eat lunch at home every day for 16 months

I’ve got happy memories of enjoying long, not especially productive restaurant meals with clients and friends. I’m certain I can find my way back to Les Deux Magots on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés (left) if and when the time comes. I’ve also logged 16 months between visits to the closest Subway outpost near our office. Therefore, I cannot take a position on the recent controversy over whether their tuna sandwich actually contains any tuna. But one surprising consequence of the quarantine is the discovery that those President’s Choice frozen cod bites are actually pretty good if you have the patience to heat them thoroughly in the toaster oven. Power-users tip: Apply lemon wedge, if available. Share them with your spouse, and he or she might look at you with new admiration.

2. Everything requires care, maintenance, and periodic reinvention

That’s our prompt to introduce Chronicle’s two new e-newsletters. These will take the place of the CurveFlattener, beginning next month. Thursdays will now herald our “Women in Dermatology” newsletter, which will contain clinical and sociomedical items pertinent to female patients and the practitioners who treat them (as the title may imply.) 

And each Friday will offer “Chronicle's Friday Takeaway,” a curated list of five significant things our team learned during the week. If you received the CurveFlattener, both our new titles will begin to arrive in your inbox in a few weeks. Let us know if you like them, and please feel free to send along your ideas and suggestions.

1. You might see a McDonald’s drinking straw. He saw a medical breakthrough

Meet Dr. Ali Seifi (right). He's an internist and assistant professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio who took his kid to a Mcdonald's and ordered them both a McFlurry. So far, this will seem like an everyday occurrence in the Lone Star State. Then, Junior reached for a straw, the way McFlurry drinkers will do, and something happened to catch Dr. Seifi’s eye. That was his eureka! moment. From that everyday incident came the inspiration for a new medical device intended to cure – wait for this – hiccups. Dr. Seifi tells the Insider website: "For thousands of years, human beings, and all the mammals, they have hiccups, but nobody thinks that, 'Oh, this is a simple way you can stop the hiccup!'" With development dough from the Kickstarter crowd-funding site, he commercialized a medical device charmingly named HiccAway, which retails at US$14 on the company’s website. Dr. Seifi published a research letter on the science behind the HiccAway in the journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 

Chronicle's Friday Takeaway is published by Chronicle Companies: 555 Burnhamthorpe Road Suite 306, Toronto, Ont. M9C 2Y3. U.S. office: 701 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203.  Mitchell Shannon, Publisher; R. Allan Ryan, Editorial Director; John Evans, Senior Editor; Kylie Rebernik, Jeremy Visser, Katherine Brenders, Editors; Cristela Tello Ruiz, Business Development; Catherine Dusome, Operations Manager, Peggy Ahearn, Consultant. Content is copyright (c) 2021, Chronicle Information Resources Ltd., except as indicated. Interested in contributing to this newsletter or in learning more about Chronicle’s services? Write to us at health@chronicle.org