Publishing and running a fully digital magazine has its benefits as well as downsides. We, here at GBV, are generally used to working remotely. In fact, we have a diverse group of people who oil the wheels, based across the world, covering topics of interest for our readers. Countries where our staff are based include Luxembourg, New Zealand, France, Hungary, and the U.S. So, how has our work changed during COVID? Not a great deal, is the short answer. We have been ahead of the curve with video conferencing, our publisher, Eric Muller-Borle has been running the show online for the last 5 years now. We have a fully integrated online process to manage each monthly edition of the magazine across editors, writers, contributors, and graphic design. Each segment of the process has sub-processes and online meetings to discuss breaking trends in the sector: we are in touch with leading insurers and EB providers, who are now also facing work from home regimes, and implementing processes which necessitate social and business distancing. Some of the products we have been using to facilitate the flow of information across our organisation include Adobe Creative Cloud, Zoom, Microsoft Exchange, Bitlocker, and Microsoft Office 365 (and a working internet connection, of course). These and others are becoming more widespread and Zoom’s valuation has increased exponentially as people realise value and necessity during these times. We see how our correspondents in the industry are now working from home, using remote working tools despite confidentiality issues and overloaded telecommunications. It can be done, is the simple answer. Businesses can be run, savings can be leveraged (expensive office space can be dispensed), and functionality over form, at least in terms of processes, can be implemented. In fact, we are under the impression that most of our counterparts work harder than ever, with travel, commuting, and coffee machine chats all gone. At GBV, we have had weekly slots for each segment of the business for quite some time – coordinated by our publisher, who manages the hub of GBV completely online and remotely. Content calendar meetings, content strategy, magazine design, marketing, and publishing all require detailed task management and guidance, especially in a fast-paced world where uncertainty is becoming more common. When we launched GBV five years ago, we decided to try and dispense with physical offices. As it turns out, we never looked back. Working from home offices all around the world, using loaned meeting rooms when necessary, our only permanent physical location is a 12-square meter room with a desk, three chairs, a cabinet, and, most importantly, a high-performance file server which strangely enough, is only used for backup purposes. For daily operations, we use a combination of off-the-shelf cloud solutions, i.e. DropBox, OneDrive, and Creative Cloud. As soon as the law catches up with the reality of modern digital work, we will dispense with even that room, digitize whatever is now in the filing cabinet (accounting records and the like, I am told), and move the file server to the basement. 4 Tips for successful remote work and cooperation In essence, we have found that working remotely works well – as does flexibility (technology is still catching up with what and how we want to achieve things – which applies to large as well as small and medium organisations). And given that we have 5 years of total remote work experience, or running everything through the medium of technology, here are some tips from us: Patience: technology does have to catch up with us. We have to work with glitches that happen for no reason apart from conflicting software or overloaded telecoms. Be patient. Be organised. Flexibility: meetings are often delayed, overrun. This seems to be happening less and less as social distancing and home isolation gives us time to sit in one place and do things. Need to change: we have realised – looking from the outside as early implementers of the fully remote work environment – that acceptance of change is important. We do not waste time on meetings about meetings, but rather have learnt to be concise, utilise necessary tools and ditch the long meeting structure of corporates. The trick is: trust team members to do the right thing. Direction: organisation is the key to have remote working parts of any organisation work smoothly. Task division and allocation become more and more important (this means not general tasks, but detailed task and goal identification. And, again, trust in all team members). While these are all things that organisations are implementing now, we feel greater implementation and leveraging technology will prove to be more important as time progresses. This necessity, we have seen, is filtering into large organisations and technology providers who are innovating at breakneck speed to come up with solutions to working remotely (which is a positive step all round). Process, product, and client re-engineering is something which still needs work. Data and technology are pervasive in business, now more than ever. GBV sees this as a positive outcome of these unfortunate times. Large EB providers are publishing guidelines and advice at breakneck speed – answering calls from clients, regions and industry sectors. We feel this is all a positive step in the corporate psychology and development and encourage working more efficiently. And while it has taken a pandemic for this to happen, we do feel that complacency has given way to more cooperation among divisions of companies, and at the (very important) social level. This can only be beneficial to most industry sectors in the long run.

As we are reaching near global consensus that business needs to resume, and countries ease lockdown, Global Benefits Vision explores the possibility of a link between COVID-19 and CFS/ME, highlighted by BM Systems of France led by Francois Iris and Manuel Gea, and how employers and insurers can prepare for such an outcome from an employee wellbeing perspective.

While millions of people are under orders to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic, water is sitting in the pipes of empty office buildings and gyms, getting old and potentially dangerous.

Disease has afflicted humans ever since there have been humans. Malaria and tuberculosis are thought to have ravaged Ancient Egypt more than 5,000 years ago. From AD 541 to 542 the global pandemic known as “the Plague of Justinian” is estimated to have killed 15–25% of the world’s 200-million population. Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the native population dropped from around 30 million in 1519 to just three million 50 years later. Today we are battling to control the spread of COVID-19, which has the potential to cause the most deadly pandemic in human history.

Regardless of whether we classify the new coronavirus as a pandemic, it is a serious issue. In less than two months, it has spread over several continents. Pandemic means sustained and continuous transmission of thedisease, simultaneously in more than three different geographical regions. Pandemic does not refer to the lethality of a virus but to its transmissibility and geographical extension.

Christian Yates University of Bath Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology I’m a Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Biology and also an author. In my first book, the Maths of Life and Death (https://amzn.to/2MkmdcM) I explore the true stories of life-changing events in which the application (or misapplication) of mathematics has played a critical role: patients crippled by faulty genes and entrepreneurs bankrupt by faulty algorithms; innocent victims of miscarriages of

Andrew J. Whelton Purdue University Associate Professor of Civil, Environmental & Ecological Engineering Dr. Whelton is nationally recognized environmental engineer. Dr. Whelton has applied his unique skill set for 20 years to uncover and address problems at the interface of infrastructure materials, the environment, and public health. Topics pertaining to disaster response and recovery as well as construction site safety are just two of many topics his research has

William Rhoads Virginia Tech Research Scientist Ph.D. Student in civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech

Caitlin R. Proctor Purdue University Lillian Gilbreth Postdoctoral Fellow Caitlin R. Proctor currently works at Purdue University. She was previously working at the Department of Environmental Microbiology, Eawag, where she completed her PhD through ETH Zurich. She completed her master’s degree at Virginia Tech. Since 2012, Caitlin has been involved in research at the nexus of civil engineering, molecular microbiology, and drinking water. She is concerned with the safety

Dr. François Iris francois.iris@bmsystems.org BMSystems Chief Scientific Officer Founder of BMSystems; Chairman, CSO-CTO – Geneticist, physiologist & molecular biologist; Inventor of the CADI methodologies and tools. He holds a Ph.D. in Zoology and is in charge of all model-building activities within the company. Creator of Millennium Pharmaceuticals’ (USA) high-throughput DNA sequencing unit. Former collaborator of Nobel Laureate Prof. Jean Dausset. Inventor of new technologies in molecular biology (6 issued patents). MRC Overseas

Dr. Athanasios Beopoulos athanasios.beopoulos@bmsystems.org BMSystems Integrative Biology Director Integrative biologist Director- Biochemist with a PhD in Biotechnology from INA-PG, France. He worked for several years on the metabolic engineering of yeast and bacteria for the production of oleochemicals, pharmaceuticals and antibiotics at CNRS and INRA genetic engineering departments. After a short period in the R&D of AKK Sweden, he joined the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT (USA), where he worked

Manuel Géa manuel.gea@bmsystems.org BMSystems Chief Executive Officer Co-founder of BMSystems, CEO and VP R&D Information Systems – Information systems specialist. Played key roles in the development of BMS and of the computing firm Formitel. Scientific Engineering (operational research specialty) degree from Ecole Centrale Paris. Dregree in sociology (General semantic specialty) Paris IX Dauphine University. Former Chairman of the Supervisory board of Pherecydes-Pharma (anti-bacterial bio-agents pharmaceutical company). Former McKinsey executive, creator of Practice Pharma services

Ignacio López-Goñi University of Navarra, Spain Professor of Microbiology Prof. Dr. Ignacio López-Goñi is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Navarra in Spain. He holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Navarra (1989). For several years he was a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) in the departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology of the University of California – Berkeley and Molecular Microbiology at Columbia University.