Oly Hellerwork

05/02/2024

I appreciate your nominations, and votes! 💕

Vote once per day from April 22nd through May 10th!

02/09/2023

It’s been well over a decade—including a pandemic that forced much time off and massive loans, not to mention inflation—since insurance rates have improved for small health care providers. This is one big reason we’re quitting insurance and no one can get an appointment. Please support this legislation!

03/19/2022

I have a favor to ask.
On March 21st I will be traveling to Przemysl, Poland. I will be volunteering with the non-profit World Central Kitchen, feeding Ukrainian refugees.
Never in my life have I felt so strongly about needing to do something.
As many of you know, I am Jewish. I am fortunate to be here today because my great grandparents were able to flee persecution in Eastern Europe. Many of my family members weren’t able to leave and, sadly, were murdered in the holocaust.
Both of my paternal grandparents’ side of our family lived in shtetls in the region of Kyiv. My maternal grandfather’s side of our family lived in Drohobych, an area near Lviv. Most of my ancestors lived in the area that is now Ukraine.
My heart hurts everyday
due to Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. I follow the news daily with sadness and pain for the people of Ukraine, my people.
Immediately I felt a need to do something, to become involved in some way. Several weeks ago I watched a news story of several Ukrainian women working in churches cooking food for soldiers. I thought, how amazing it would be to go and help feed people in need. Two days later José Andrés was on the news, setting up a kitchen in Przemysl, Poland to feed Ukrainian refugees through his nonprofit, World Central Kitchen. I immediately knew what I had to do, I sent them an email that day.
Over the last few weeks I have corresponded with World Central Kitchen and just last week got accepted as a volunteer at the Przemysl site. I am responsible for all expenses related to the trip, including travel and accommodations. I have purchased my plane tickets and am in the process of finalizing additional arrangements. I have family in Europe and friends in Poland. They are a tremendous resource and have been very helpful as I navigate the best choices for my journey to assist in any way I can, but especially to Feed The People and be a grounding presence, even if for just a moment.
There is a huge need for volunteers in Poland, to help with the millions of refugees who have crossed fleeing the war in Ukraine. We easily see that watching or listening to the news, and my friends in Poland have confirmed this need.

My business, The Gyro Spot closed abruptly in June 2021. The city’s sewer line backed up into my restaurant and flooded The Gyro Spot with raw sewage. I was forced to throw away thousands of dollars worth of products. Everything had to be removed and sanitized. The walls, floors and sub flooring were torn out to be replaced. The city refuses to accept any amount of responsibility and my insurance company has denied making any payment on the claim. I have spent most of my life’s savings and taken out business and personal loans that will take years to repay. Most of the repairs have been completed. I plan to re-open in May 2022, almost a full year since the flood. You can imagine, this has been incredibly difficult for me financially.

Will you help support me on my mission to Poland, as well as the final push to re-open The Gyro Spot?

I have gift cards available to The Gyro Spot, which you can purchase online here:

https://squareup.com/gift/76YNTH3N2J8WP/order

For friends and family who would like to support the mission and re-opening of The Gyro Spot without purchasing a gift card, you may send funds directly through Facebook Pay:

https://m.me/pay/Kfro50/

Or Venmo:
https://venmo.com/code?user_id=2979409443160064165&created=1647279723.116702&printed=1

Or paypal:
https://www.paypal.me/kfro50

You could also make a donation directly to World Central Kitchen, the organization I am volunteering with.
https://donate.wck.org/give/396273/ #!/donation/checkout

And for a fun in-person opportunity, weather and time permitting, I will be having a yard sale this coming weekend. My intention is to part with many of my worldly possessions in hopes to raise funds for this mission, so that I may be of aid to those devastated by war in Ukraine.
Keep an eye out for details about the yard sale later this week.

If you have more ideas on how to support this mission, I invite you to reach out to me.

If you are unable to support financially, but would like to support this mission. Please feel free to like and share this post.
Thank you,
Kenny Trobman

12/30/2021

*This

If you're here in the Pacific Northwest (and other places in the US), you've likely been shoveling a lot of snow recently.Snow shoveling requires a lot of yo...

11/11/2021

How it started/how it’s going: I mostly owe this transformation to my family, beginning with Keenan of Olympic Tiny Homes https://www.facebook.com/TinyBoysTinyHomes declaring "it'll be done in 2 days!". They've sweated and scrubbed and had everything we own upside down and put up with me becoming a DIY'er. Thanks, Fam~~

10/29/2021

Trick-or-treating: It's different this year

Last year I pled not to cancel Halloween. We could celebrate safely by implementing innovative public health mitigation measures, like candy chutes made of PVC pipe, wearing masks with costumes, and keeping trick-or-treat gangs small.

This year’s a lot different. As parents, it may seem no different because kids don’t have vaccines and 2,953 counties (out of 3,216) are still in high transmission. But our understanding of the virus has evolved. We’re learning more and more every day. And this evolving science can inform us how to lead a more strategic life, like celebrating Halloween. This year I would place trick-or-treating far less risky than last year.

But this morning I was surprised when the Kaiser Family Foundation published some statistics:
-1 in 8 parents say their kids will not go trick-or-treating because of COVID19
-Lower income, Hispanic, and Democratic-leaning parents are more likely to have their kids stay home
Some of these green bars below are pretty big.

This hesitation could be due to a myriad of things. Some may be playing it safe because of low vaccination rates their county or maybe some families recently lost loved ones to COVID19 and the trauma is raw. I also think these numbers are partially driven by the fact that we haven’t explained how the science has evolved since last year…

***So, how has our understanding changed since last Halloween?***
Last Halloween we were scrambling to still understand the virus. We didn’t have a centralized, coordinated, well-funded public health response, so we couldn’t quickly learn, for example, common transmission routes. Since, the science has slowly come out and we have a much better grip on patterns:

Outdoor transmission is very rare. You may have heard the 10% rule—10% of viral transmission happens in outdoor settings. The White House has even referenced this number. The 10% came from a large, peer-reviewed study in Nov 2020 which pooled all transmission studies ever done at the time. But the authors of that paper later clarified that this was a very conservative estimate and the “real risk” was far lower. There are many studies that show that

10/22/2021

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-olympia-yoga-sanctuary-get-started?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet

All funds will go towards: + The first 2-3 months of rent so the teachers … Kristi Lyons needs your support for Help the Olympia Yoga Sanctuary get started!

09/19/2021

J&J folks: This is what we know…

There are 14.6 million people in the United States left in the dark about their Johnson and Johnson (J&J) shot. Does it work against Delta? Is it safe and effective to get a second J&J shot? Can J&J folks mix shots? If so, which mix is the best?

We don’t know much and I’m incredibly frustrated about this. The lack of guidance or just plain communication from the private (J&J) and/or public sector is unacceptable.

I put together this post based on all the evidence we have today. I realize it’s data heavy, but I wanted to be sure you had a clear understanding of what we have and don’t have so you can make a data-driven decision. I also (reluctantly) provided some insight on what I would do if I had J&J…

***Pre-Delta***
Before Delta, J&J was doing fantastic. In the U.S. clinical trials, there was a 72% efficacy rate against infection. There was a 100% efficacy against hospitalization and death. In the real world, we saw an effectiveness of 76.7%. And, they seemed to hold up against previous variants (although we are still a bit worried about Beta).

***Delta Infection***
Then Delta came. We needed to quickly assess how well our vaccines (including J&J) were working. But, the U.S. doesn’t have the public health infrastructure to watch this in real time. We are reliant on other countries, like the UK and Israel, that do have these systems in place. Unfortunately, these countries don’t use J&J. So we were/are flying blind.

On July 2, J&J announced that their one dose regimen worked against Delta. Scientists took blood samples from 8 of their clinical trial participants. Then, in petri dishes, they infected the blood with Delta. (I reviewed the study in detail before here).

There was a 1.6-fold decrease in neutralizing antibodies. This is a very little decrease, which is great news. This means that the vaccine could still protect against Delta.

The problem was this is only 8 people. And this was a petri dish study. How did the vaccine work in the “real world”?

***Delta Hospitalization***
South Africa answered this question on August 7 when Glenda Gray, the president of the South African Medical Research Council and co-leader of the trial in a YouTube broadcast. There were 477,234 vaccinated healthcare workers who received the J&J vaccine in South Africa. Scientists looked at how the vaccine was holding up against Delta. What did they find?

-91-96% protection against death
-71% protection against hospitalization

In the United States, we got a great look on Friday (September 17). The CDC published a study that assessed vaccine effectiveness across all three vaccines. They analyzed data from 3,689 hospitalized adults at 21 hospitals across 18 states during March-August 2021. Immunocompromised patients were excluded. What did they find?

-J&J effectiveness against hospitalization was 71% (Moderna was 93% and Pfizer was 88%)
-Over time, there was a small decrease in protection against hospitalization (68% vaccine effectiveness). But the math told us that this wasn’t different than 71%.
-J&J folks also had significantly lower number of antibody levels compared to mRNA folks. Unfortunately, we don’t know what a “good” antibody level is; we just know that sometimes lower numbers means not as protected.

Unfortunately, the number of J&J people in this study is very small (only 113 hospitalizations). So, we couldn’t accurately examine how vaccine effectiveness differed across risk factors (like age, comorbidities, etc.).

***Booster Effectiveness***
So, naturally the next question is… does an addition shot help?

On August 25, J&J announced a preprint study. They conducted a randomized control trial of people previously vaccinated with its single-shot vaccine. Scientists wanted to answer three questions:

1. Does a second shot (same regimen as first shot) help increase antibodies?
2. Does a booster shot (smaller regimen that first shot) help increase antibodies)?
3. Does this differ by age (

08/28/2021