RIP Virgil Abloh

 

RIP 

Virgil Abloh

WASARA

 

Returning to the earth what it graciously gave.

WASARA is proud to use 100% tree-free, renewable materials, specifically, bamboo and bagasse. Bamboo grows extremely fast, and is a hardy plant that is readily renewed. Bagasse is the by-product of extracting juice from sugarcane, approximately one hundred million tons of which are produced every year. While some is burned for fuel, much of it is simply discarded as waste. However, with fiber very similar to broadleaf trees, the intrinsic properties of bagasse make it perfect as a paper base. And because it is softer and more pliable than wood pulp, the energy required is significantly less than traditional paperware production. Based on bamboo and bagasse, our fully biodegradable and compostable WASARA products reduce environmental burden and can be produced without fear of exhausting our natural resources.

available at www.EVRI-DEI.com

Coronavirus World Map

 

Hot spots

AVERAGE DAILY CASES PER 100,000 PEOPLE IN PAST WEEK

4

12

20

28

40

68

FEW OR NO CASES

Hope this becomes all Grey soon

This Neat Design Could Make a Plane’s Middle Seats Tolerable

Who would prefer sitting in the middle seats to travel?

Probably closer to none. I hate the spot and I will do everything I can to avoid middle seat.

I think people enroll the frequent flyer mileage program just to secure better seat. Of course being upgraded would be a big benefit being member but biggest reason is not to sit in the middle?

Now Molon labe seating is trying to convince airline companies to provide comfortable seating experiences for the middle seats.

These seats put the middle seat 2" lower and 3" pushes it back from side seats.

This layout allows for a middle expanse up to 23" wide as side seats at 18" standard size.

Also the armrests are staggered in height- the front half is a few inches higher than the back. That creates a natural divide where the passengers in the middle seats gets to use the back bit and neighbor gets the front. No more elbow wars!

The down sides is the lower seats might not be great for long-legged passengers.........Ok get someone to swap spots then!!

Make travel safe and comfortable for every single passengers.

KITH 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

 

Food for Thought: 10 Years

39 years on Earth. 26 years in product. 10 years feeding a unicorn.


All the words people use to describe what Kith is or what it has become, confuse me most of the time. Over the last decade I’ve noticed that when people can’t identify something, they start comparing it to other things. When I ask friends of mine to give me the first three words that come to mind when thinking of Kith, the answers are always so different. Even I find it impossible to choose three words. I don’t know how to describe what we do or what we’ve built. Whenever I meet someone for the first time and they ask what I do, I still say that I sell shoes. I just can’t find the words. Like this exact moment right now. How can I summarize what we’ve done with a post, a book, a conversation? The only way to look at the last decade would be experiencing the spaces we’ve built, the product we’ve produced, and investing in the stories we’ve told. It’s a lot. So how can people label us when even I don’t know where we’re going just yet? I have ideas. And they don’t fit in a box.


The truth is, I never imagined getting to this point. The original idea of wanting to open the greatest people’s champ footwear shop in New York has evolved into whatever you want to call this. “This” had no blueprint to follow. It’s an example of maximizing potential tastefully and with tact. Tact is one of the most important words in our business. Knowing what to do and when to do it has been the toughest challenge in growing. It comes with experience, but the more I learned, the more I wanted to explore. I’m still exploring.


You hear this a lot: team is everything. Trust this, you don’t hear it enough. This business is difficult to run. The end result doesn’t show the effort every single person puts in. Those that know me, know I am a firm believer in hard work and dedication. The most challenging part was building a team of this many people that believe in those same values. Which only continues to get more challenging as we grow. So, while ten years is a major milestone, building the Kith team is my favorite career achievement.


So, what now? Well, now we celebrate by doing what we do. Remain uncomfortable and continue evolving by exploring the unknown. 6 years ago, it was our first show. To celebrate our tenth anniversary, I felt that a show would have been too short lived. It would have come and gone. I decided a book, a tangible item that people could experience and keep, would work best.


Having great ideas is the easy part. How would we make this book as impactful as our shows? How would we get the book into people’s hands? How could we cover ten years? Will people go back to print? Will they see the value of print? All those questions will be answered soon. We start by showcasing the cover of the book on Madison Square Garden’s digital billboards which went live for this morning’s rush hour. Jim Moore convinced me to be on the cover so here we are.

 

- RF

Moderna vs. Pfizer: Both Knockouts, but One Seems to Have the Edge

It was a constant refrain from federal health officials after the coronavirus vaccines were authorized: These shots are all equally effective.

That has turned out not to be true.

Roughly 221 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine have been dispensed thus far in the United States, compared with about 150 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine. In a half-dozen studies published over the past few weeks, Moderna’s vaccine appeared to be more protective than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the months after immunization.

Research published on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against hospitalization fell from 91 percent to 77 percent after a four-month period following the second shot. The Moderna vaccine showed no decline over the same period.

If the efficacy gap continues to widen, it may have implications for the debate on booster shots. Federal agencies this week are evaluating the need for a third shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for some high-risk groups, including older adults.

Scientists who were initially skeptical of the reported differences between the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have slowly become convinced that the disparity is small but real.

“Our baseline assumption is that the mRNA vaccines are functioning similarly, but then you start to see a separation,” said Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s not a huge difference, but at least it’s consistent.”

But the discrepancy is small and the real-world consequences uncertain, because both vaccines are still highly effective at preventing severe illness and hospitalization, she and others cautioned.

“Yes, likely a real difference, probably reflecting what’s in the two vials,” said John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. “But truly, how much does this difference matter in the real world?”

“It’s not appropriate for people who took Pfizer to be freaking out that they got an inferior vaccine.”

Even in the original clinical trials of the three vaccines eventually authorized in the United States — made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson — it was clear that the J.&J. vaccine had a lower efficacy than the other two. Research since then has borne out that trend, although J.&J. announced this week that a second dose of its vaccine boosts its efficacy to levels comparable to the others.

The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines rely on the same mRNA platform, and in the initial clinical trials, they had remarkably similar efficacy against symptomatic infection: 95 percent for Pfizer-BioNTech and 94 percent for Moderna. This was in part why they were described as more or less equivalent.

The subtleties emerged over time. The vaccines have never been directly compared in a carefully designed study, so the data indicating that effects vary are based mostly on observations.

Results from those studies can be skewed by any number of factors, including the location, the age of the population vaccinated, when they were immunized and the timing between the doses, Dr. Dean said.

For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was rolled out weeks before Moderna’s to priority groups — older adults and health care workers. Immunity wanes more quickly in older adults, so a decline observed in a group consisting mostly of older adults may give the false impression that the protection from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine falls off quickly.

Given those caveats, “I’m not convinced that there truly is a difference,” said Dr. Bill Gruber, a senior vice president at Pfizer. “I don’t think there’s sufficient data out there to make that claim.”

But by now, the observational studies have delivered results from a number of locations — Qatar, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, several other states in the United States — and in health care workers, hospitalized veterans or the general population.

Moderna’s efficacy against severe illness in those studies ranged from 92 to 100 percent. Pfizer-BioNTech’s numbers trailed by 10 to 15 percentage points.

The two vaccines have diverged more sharply in their efficacy against infection. Protection from both waned over time, particularly after the arrival of the Delta variant, but the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine’s values fell lower. In two of the recent studies, the Moderna vaccine did better at preventing illness by more than 30 percentage points.

A few studies found that the levels of antibodies produced by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were one-third to one-half those produced by the Moderna vaccine. Yet that decrease is trivial, Dr. Moore said: For comparison, there is a more than 100-fold difference in the antibody levels among healthy individuals.

Still, other experts said that the corpus of evidence pointed to a disparity that would be worth exploring, at least in people who respond weakly to vaccines, including older adults and immunocompromised people.

“At the end of the day, I do think there are subtle but real differences between Moderna and Pfizer,” Dr. Jeffrey Wilson, an immunologist and physician at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville who was a co-author of one such study, published in JAMA Network Open this month. “In high-risk populations, it might be relevant. It’d be good if people took a close look.”

“Pfizer is a big hammer,” Dr. Wilson added, but “Moderna is a sledgehammer.”

Several factors might underlie the divergence. The vaccines differ in their dosing and in the time between the first and second doses.

Vaccine manufacturers would typically have enough time to test a range of doses before choosing one — and they have done such testing for their trials of the coronavirus vaccine in children.

But in the midst of a pandemic last year, the companies had to guess at the optimal dose. Pfizer went with 30 micrograms, Moderna with 100.

Moderna’s vaccine relies on a lipid nanoparticle, which can deliver the larger dose. And the first and second shots of that vaccine are staggered by four weeks, compared with three for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The extra week may give immune cells more time to proliferate before the second dose, said Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s chief medical officer. “We need to keep studying this and to do more research, but I think it’s plausible.”

Moderna’s team recently showed that a half dose of the vaccine still sent antibody levels soaring. Based on those data, the company asked the F.D.A. this month to authorize 50 micrograms, the half dose, as a booster shot.

There is limited evidence showing the effect of that dose, and none on how long the higher antibody levels might last. Federal regulators are reviewing Moderna’s data to determine whether the available data are sufficient to authorize a booster shot of the half dose.

Ultimately, both vaccines are still holding steady against severe illness and hospitalization, especially in people under 65, Dr. Moore said.

Scientists had initially hoped that the vaccines would have an efficacy of 50 or 60 percent. “We would have all seen that as great result and been happy with it,” he said. “Fast forward to now, and we’re debating whether 96.3 percent vaccine efficacy for Moderna versus 88.8 percent for Pfizer is a big deal.”

text by 

By Apoorva Mandavilli

SATURDAYS WOMENSWEAR COLLECTION

Coming soon

SATURDAYS first ever womenswear collection

Stay tuned!