A new dichotomy has begun dogging the pandemic discourse. With the rise of the über-transmissible Delta variant, experts are saying you’re either going to get vaccinated, or going to get the coronavirus . It’s tempting to surround yourself with people who are both competent and similar to yourself, but that’s a mistake. The best way to capitalize on the value of other people is to consult with those who are fundamentally different from you.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter | Waterstones

Join us for a conversation between NYU Stern professor Scott Galloway and bestselling author Adam Alter, where they’ll discuss: A few months before, the woman had terminal cancer, but she had just been told that she was in remission. Today, more than a decade later, she remains cancer free and works as a fitness instructor. It was a breakthrough of monumental proportions and one that would make Allison world famous. The road to breakthroughs is a series of Zen paradoxes. One of my favorites is the idea that pausing is the best way to move forward in the long run. The idea here is to take a beat—whether a minute or a day or a week—before you act. That’s why collaboration is becoming a key competitive advantage. Clever individuals working alone can tweak around the edges, but to solve a really big problem requires a collective effort. You need experts and outsiders, managers and researchers, engineers, marketers, logistics specialists and others as well. When Jim Allison walked into that office in 2004, it didn’t mark the beginning or the end of the journey, but the middle. We still have a long way to go. After the debut of his 1952 novel “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison spent 42 years writing a follow-up—only to leave it unfinished when he died in 1994. Truman Capote, by the time of his death in 1984, was still working on his self-hyped novel “Answered Prayers”—decades after publishing his 1965 masterpiece, “In Cold Blood.” Fran Lebowitz has been wrapping up a book since the year Ellison died.The renowned painter who overcame paralysis and relearned to create masterpieces with a brush strapped to his wrist. Breakthroughs, especially symptomatic ones, are still uncommon, as a proportion of immunized people. But by sheer number, “the more people get vaccinated, the more you will see these breakthrough infections,” Juliet Morrison, a virologist at UC Riverside, told me. (Don’t forget that a small fraction of millions of people is still a lot of people—and in communities where a majority of people are vaccinated, most of the positive tests could be for shot recipients.) Reports of these cases shouldn’t be alarming, especially when we drill down on what’s happening qualitatively. A castle raid is worse if its inhabitants are slaughtered and all its jewels stolen; with vaccines in place, those cases are rare—many of them are getting replaced with lighter thefts, wherein the virus has time only to land a couple of punches before it’s booted out the door. Sure, vaccines would be “better” if they erected impenetrable force fields around every fortress. They don’t, though. Nothing does. And our shots shouldn’t be faulted for failing to live up to an impossible standard—one that obscures what they are able to accomplish. A breached stronghold is not necessarily a defeated stronghold; any castle that arms itself in advance will be in a better position than it was before. Yet it is just as clear, as Allison is happy to point out, that he didn’t do it alone. Many prominent researchers contributed to our understanding of immune regulation. It was a team of French researchers that discovered CTLA-4. Sarah Townsend showed that the immune system can fight cancer. Jedd Wolchok and his team recruited patients and performed clinical trials.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck and Thrive When Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck and Thrive When

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. Readers will find many stories, situations and examples on how to "breakthrough" tough spots in life, jobs, creativity, and so much more.

Summary

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters

Great book to listen to (I had the audiobook) cycling to and from work. A lot of applicable wisdom for day to day life and life rules and lessons for a more long term overview of upcoming goals and breakthroughs. Books, Comics and Novels Public Administration Political Theory International Relations IGNOU IGNOU Solution For MPS-001 Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds. Prepped by a vaccine, immune reinforcements will be marshaled to the fore much faster—within days of an invasion, sometimes much less. Adaptive cells called B cells, which produce antibodies, and T cells, which kill virus-infected cells, will have had time to study the pathogen’s features, and sharpen their weapons against it. While the guard dogs are pouncing, archers trained to recognize the virus will be shooting it down; the few microbes that make their way deeper inside will be gutted by sword-wielding assassins lurking in the shadows. “Each stage it has to get past takes a bigger chunk out” of the virus, Bhattacharya said. Even if a couple particles eke past every hurdle, their ranks are fewer, weaker, and less damaging. Jim Allison’s journey began a long time before he walked into that office. When he was finishing up his graduate work in the early 1970s, researchers had just discovered T-cells, which were largely a mystery at the time. Allison, who told me that he always liked “figuring things out,” was intrigued and thought the immune system was something he could spend his career studying.One of the most insightful books I’ve read lately. The information is greatly applicable to one’s own situation. Some of the info I knew, some I suspected. Read more I was impressed with this book from the beginning to end. Alter's writing style is easy to understand. Post-vaccination infections, or breakthroughs, might occasionally turn symptomatic, but they aren’t shameful or aberrant. They also aren’t proof that the shots are failing. These cases are, on average, gentler and less symptomatic; faster-resolving, with less virus lingering—and, it appears, less likely to pass the pathogen on. The immunity offered by vaccines works in iterations and gradations, not absolutes. It does not make a person completely impervious to infection. It also does not evaporate when a few microbes breach a body’s barriers. A breakthrough, despite what it might seem, does not cause our defenses to crumble or even break; it does not erase the protection that’s already been built. Rather than setting up fragile and penetrable shields, vaccines reinforce the defenses we already have, so that we can encounter the virus safely and potentially build further upon that protection. Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom and David Kelley (2013) These four attributes, deep domain expertise, skepticism, persistence and a collaborative approach don’t guarantee a breakthrough, but one rarely happens without them.

The Atlantic What Happens When Vaccinated People Get COVID-19? - The Atlantic

If anything, he thought, CTLA-4 wasn’t a gas pedal, but a brake. So, just as he always had, Allison returned to his lab to figure things out and his research confirmed his suspicions. CTLA-4 didn’t stimulate the immune response, but shut it down. The best examples of this come from elite athletes who sacrifice immediate performance for long-term dominance. For example, the greatest soccer player today (and perhaps ever), Lionel Messi, walks for the first few minutes of every game as he soothes his nerves and develops a sense of how the other 21 players on the field are behaving. He has never scored during the first two minutes of any game but has scored during every single other minute from three to ninety. That two-minute sacrifice pays dividends during the remaining eighty-eight-plus. “The idea here is to take a beat—whether a minute or a day or a week—before you act.” The same is true in the worlds of business, art, and film-making: before you strike gold, you need to spend a period of time exploring different options, approaches, and techniques. According to one study, most of us experience at least one hot streak during our careers—a period of unusual progress and consistent success—and those periods almost always follow a burst of exploration, followed by a concerted attempt to exploit or mine the best option that emerges during that first phase. The lesson from Berkoff and these hot streaks: assume nothing till you’ve considered the alternatives, and once you’ve sketched the lay of the land, pursue the best option with laser focus. 5. Different is often better than good.

This was the first audiobook that I have ever read and I want to recommend it to everyone Read more