Progress in 2021

2021! Whoa — from the frying pan into the fire? COVID-19 numbers are worse than ever, the vaccine rollout is delayed, and the nation is in turmoil — did someone forget to tell 2020 that it’s over? So far, 2021 is an ugly duckling, but it has every chance of becoming a beautiful swan: the vaccines should impact the pandemic dramatically over the next several months; the nation’s financial woes should be mitigated by current and upcoming stimuli; the clinical trial just completed should be published, hopefully leading to many more preventions and reversals of cognitive decline, and more general acceptance of precision protocols for neurodegeneration; the Ark Project should help to adapt the precision medicine approach to other neurodegenerative diseases; the ReCODE app should collect key longitudinal data and help to enhance the overall efficacy of the protocol; new international efforts in South Africa, the UK, Mexico, and Japan should help to impact dementia prevalence worldwide; additional use of quantified-self instruments should reveal new associations with outcome data; and expansion of the ongoing metabolism project should reduce both insulin resistance and risk for future cognitive decline. For all of these developments and others, I hope, and believe, that 2021 will be a year of great hope, progress, and revelation.