I pray we all overcome the Covid-19 viral infection. I pray we all get through this period financially intact. I pray we all become better and grateful after this difficult period passes.

And as our own little contribution to helping you come out better, we have created free resources for you to use in improving your Excel, Power BI and Financial Modelling skills.

1. Weekly tasks to sharpen your real-world problem solving skills cutting across Excel, Power BI and Financial Modeling. If you haven't joined, then here's the link to enroll - (premium resource only for past participants of our training class)
2. Free registration to our Udemy course on Data Analysis (coupon expires on 2 April 2020) -- https://www.udemy.com/course/business-data-analysis-with-microsoft-excel/?couponCode=OVERCOMECOVID19 
3. Improve your template creation skills with this first part video to creating a Startup financial modeling template -- https://youtu.be/6HtJRZhTV4o 
4. Using Power BI to analyse stocks and macro-economic indices in Nigeria -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH4HzDzcFzI
5. XLOOKUP: Excel's new version of VLOOKUP -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8O_210q8NQ 
6. Power BI DAX UNION formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNCYmSLM2cg
7. Solution to Week 1 task using SUMIFS, INDEX, MATCH, SUMPRODUCT -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyrIi0hUFcQ 
8. New Excel Magic Formula: SORT -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8vJe9iW9VU
9. New Excel Magic Formula: UNIQUE -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLgwXVkALFg
10. Basic Investment and Financial Planning webinar -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEAA7ar6xfM 
11. Formula to generate random texts and paragraphs in Microsoft Word -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP1V9VUDE9k
12. How to autocreate table of contents and footer styles in Microsoft Word -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBNpiVrXOpE
13. Creating interactive dynamic forms in Microsoft Word -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUiFpbtBgQ 
14. Power BI DAX SUMMARIZE formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8mqjSQ9gOo
15. Automating report data update for analysis using PowerQuery -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKEHb0OWuP8 
16. Power BI DAX CALENDAR formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oodi9Vz0eeQ
17. Power BI DAX VALUES formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLZhm0R2KrU 
18. Power BI DAX CALCULATE formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzro-tgDr_8
19. Power BI DAX CROSSJOIN formula -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_2GM4Ig24k
20. Power BI Row Level Security for report access control -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PPa5-37V18
21. Fuzzy Lookup in Excel for matching inconsistently spelled entries -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGDo6k5KMkM
22. PowerQuery and PowerPivot -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzPRxfEd7UA 
23. Introduction to Excel Macros (VBA) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHzAPGqT4f8
24. Creating a Data Entry application in Excel using VBA -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb9gFpEbdo8
25. Planning Tools in Excel (What-If-Analysis) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE1yV9RNIko 
26. Create a Birthday Reminder in Excel using VBA -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrK3uBqnRBs 
27. Unpivot Column in Power BI -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6UeZCte9YM

Keep Excel-ling!

This evening I watched a special broadcast by BBC on the corona virus, Covid-19. It was a very detailed broadcast with some documentary components. They examined the original history of the virus, the misinformation that abound and the clinically right way to prevent yourself from being infected.

Using that primary information and many others I read on WHO's dedicated site to it (https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus), I felt it would be a good thing to help others be aware of these right information.

I have categorized what I'll share into three buckets: 

1. What you should do
2. What looks right but not advised 
3. What is very wrong or bad advice

What You Should Do

1. Wash Your Hands As Often As You Can

The corona virus has an outer membrane that breaks apart when in contact with soapy water or alcohol. This is why all the medical experts and health organizations are saying washing your hands very frequently is currently the best way to prevent the corona virus infection. And if you are not always around where you can wash your hands, then you should have a hand sanitizer that has at least 60% alcohol content. 

The part most of us will find a bit tough is that many of us do not wash our hands properly nor use hand sanitizers properly. It is recommended that you watch a YouTube video on how to wash your hand properly and use hand sanitizers properly.

Here's a very good and clearly illustrated video by WHO on how to correctly wash your hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PmVJQUCm4E

And here's another one on how to correctly use hand sanitizers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEAxP5sFYQ

Washing your hands will even do more than keep you from contracting the corona virus. Every day we touch surfaces other people have touched -- from the hand rails to toilet door handles to shaking other peoples' hands to stationery other people have held etc. Those surfaces are retaining germs that can cause us harm. Washing our hands ensure we wash them off and do not transfer them to our loved ones at home.

Lastly, it is not vital that the soap must be an anti-bacterial soap. Properly washing is the key thing. Whether you use an antibacterial soap or an ordinary soap, if you washed properly all the germs will go off.

 2. Do Not Touch Your Face or Pick Your Nose or Put Your Hand In Your Mouth/Ear Without First Washing Your Hands

One clear time to wash your hand is before touching your face, picking your nose (if you must) or putting your hands in your mouth/ear. I find that I get some tingling I need to make go away by touching my face, and can't wait till I wash my hands to do that. At worst, use your shoulder.

3. Sneeze And Cough Into Disposable Tissues.

Do not sneeze or cough into your hands or non-disposable handkerchiefs or non-disposable towels. If you do not have a disposable tissue with you then cough or sneeze into your elbow. That is much preferable than your hand.

4. For Now, Avoid Shaking Hands

Bump fists (chop knuckle) or do something else that doesn't involve hands or face touching. Luckily, people will understand and not take offence, they'll just see you as being extremely health safety cautious.

5. Eat Well, Sleep Well & Exercise Well

Everything that keeps your immune system in top condition is good. Even in countries with lots of infected people, they found out that it's usually the already sick or the elderly people you get fatal symptoms from the infection.

6. General Hygiene

Now is the time to have a refresher training and conversations at home and in the office about general hygiene. Ensure personal hygiene both directly (in what you do and where you live) and indirectly (selectively eating at hygienic restaurants, not buying (unbranded) groundnuts, doing more cashless transactions versus cash exchange etc).

7. Staying At least 1m Away From Anyone Sneezing Or Coughing 

The major method of transfer of the infection is via droplets from sneezes and coughs, and via hands. Washing your hands frequently helps with the prevention of transfer via hands, but if someone sneezes and some of the droplets fall on your face that can be very bad. You'll have to hope the person is not a carrier of the virus otherwise you are in high risk of contracting the virus. 

What Looks Right But Is Not Advised

1. Wearing A Face Mask

It is a bit tricky for people to understand why health workers must wear face mask to prevent getting infected and the rest of us must not. The main reason is in the proper use and disposal. Health workers are trained to properly use and dispose of the face masks. They wear it as part of their protective kit -- including hand gloves and other clothing. But for regular folks who are not that skilled and try to use it all day -- while engaging in all types of activities like talking, eating etc -- they increase the chance of transferring the virus (and other germs) from their hands to the face mask and ultimately into their body. 

Unless you are skilled properly in wearing it (without contaminating it), making it as snug as should be, ensuring no touching it (even to allow you eat or talk clearly) and can properly dispose it, you are much safer with washing your hands and staying 1m from someone sneezing/coughing. 

This is why the health organizations do no advise you to wear face masks. And some actively dissuade you from wearing it.

What Is Very Wrong

1. Use Of Drugs 

There are no drugs for treating this virus (or any virus). However, we have vaccines to train our immune system to adequately fight and eliminate viral infections. But for this Covid-19, there are no vaccines yet and none is expected to be certified generally safe+effective in the next 6 months. 

Do not believe any newspaper article or online publication or social media post that says there is a drug for the virus.

2. Corona Virus Is Caused By Corruption

No comment

3. Covid-19 Is An Engineered Virus That Escaped From A Chinese Lab

At first, health organizations debunked this because of the political implication and that no proof to ascertain this. Now, though, some scientists have evaluated the genetic signature of the virus and done other comparisons to other virus types, and they have concluded that the virus is exactly like the viruses generally referred to as corona viruses. That it has no sign of an artificial engineering. 

Right now that is the only verified fact. 

4. Don't Buy Stuffs From China Or Shop On Aliexpress

You can as well just relocate to a jungle and avoid all manufactured stuffs.

In summary, wash your hands properly many many times throughout the day, use hand sanitizers when not able to wash hands, do not touch your face, and stay 1m or more away from anyone sneezing/coughing. With these steps you are going to cut to almost negligible your risks of contracting the corona virus, Covid-19.

Stay safe.