Operating theaters, bowling alleys and home cinemas: Not happy with safe rooms, the super-rich are building luxury fortresses
by Simon Usborne on CNN.com…At the richer end of the spectrum, billionaires are increasingly paranoid about threats to their health, whether from bioterror attacks, viral pandemics or old-fashioned heart failures and accidents. Covid gave a big boost to this part of SAFE’s business, which Corbi’s wife Naomi, a registered nurse, now heads up.
Chartbook 307 To live or not to live with polycrisis: The USA, Mexico and the need for a regional policy in Central America and the Caribbean.
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook…What is needed is not more border controls and militarized policing, but a pooling of governmental resources amongst the stronger players in the region including USA, Mexico the richer Caribbean states and Colombia, not to oppose, but to facilitate, support and invest in the extraordinary human energy, grit and determination that is the counterpart to those remittance flows.
About 400 million people worldwide have had Long Covid, researchers say
by Pam Belluck in The New York Times…The condition has put significant strain on patients and society — at a global economic cost of about $1 trillion a year, a new report estimates.
The ‘perfect storm’ of climate risks that is sinking your net worth
by Andrew Behar in Impactalpha…If we don’t all wake up – as a nation – to climate risk, homeowners will soon literally and financially be underwater.
Animal apocalypse: Deadly bird flu infects hundreds of species pole-to-pole
by Sharon Guynup in Mongabay…The threat posed by H5N1 extends far beyond the frozen South. Few people realize that the world is currently gripped in another serious pandemic — or, to be exact, a panzootic, the animal equivalent. This virus has now infected more than 500 bird and mammal species.
‘Polycrisis’ threatens planetary health; UN calls for innovative solutions
by Sean Mowbray in Mongabay…Environmental, technological and social challenges are colliding to create a global polycrisis. This confluence of issues is in turn placing increased pressure on the already existing environmental challenges of rapid climate change, rampant pollution and biodiversity loss — ultimately threatening planetary health and human well-being.
Americans’ struggle with mental health
by Ellen Barry in The New York Times…We explore why rates of anxiety and depression are higher than they were before the pandemic.
The wide boundary impacts of AI with Daniel Schmachtenberger
by Nate Hagens in The Great Simplification…Artificial intelligence has been advancing at a break-neck pace. Accompanying this is an almost frenzied optimism that AI will fix our most pressing global problems, particularly when it comes to the hype surrounding climate solutions.
The harms of promoting the lab leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 origins without evidence
by James Alwine, et al in The Journal of Virology…Many questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 remain unanswered and may never be fully resolved. We cannot currently disprove the lab leak hypothesis. Nevertheless, the lines of evidence needed to validate one hypothesis over another are not epistemically comparable (16). Validating the zoonotic origin is a scientific question that relies on history, epidemiology, and genomic analysis, that when taken together, support a natural spillover as the probable origin.
Are journalists reporting the global polycrisis?
by Gabi Mocatta in Earth Journalism …This study clearly
establishes that
the term ‘global polycrisis’
is not widely recognized,
or used by journalists.
NEOM is a city of the future. The land is the cost.
by K.O. in Atmos…NEOM has been hailed as the future of the climate-resilient, smart city. But, for local communities, its construction threatens displacement and exploitation.
Silicon dreams and carbon nightmares: The wide boundary impacts of AI
by Nate Hagen in The Great Simplification…What are the environmental implications of a tool with unbound computational capabilities aimed towards goals of relentless growth and extraction? How could artificial intelligence play into the themes of power and greed, intensifying inequalities and accelerating the fragmentation of society? What role could AI play under a different set of values and expectations for the future that are in service to the betterment of life?
The indomitable Covid virus
by Eric Topol in Ground Truths…The Sato Lab in Japan recently characterized KP.3.1.1, as having the most immune evasion and infectivity of any of the variants derived from and including JN.1. And previously Ben Murrell showed clearly (below, right) KP.3.1.1 had the most prominent growth advantage of all circulating variants out there. No surprise it is rapidly rising to dominance here and elsewhere around the world.
Long Covid defined
by Dr. Ely et al, in The New England Journal of Medicine….We hope that the 2024 NASEM definition will facilitate communication among patients, such as those described in the clinical vignettes, and with family members and clinicians. A standard definition should enable better tracking of the burden of long Covid and facilitate the design and conduct of robust clinical trials that produce better treatments for this and other infection-associated chronic conditions. Above all, we hope that this definition contributes to compassionate and effective care for all patients in whom long Covid is diagnosed.
Food as you know it is about to change
by David Wallace-Wells in The New York Times…It can be tempting, in an age of apocalyptic imagination, to picture the most dire future climate scenarios: not just yield declines but mass crop failures, not just price spikes but food shortages, not just worsening hunger but mass famine. In a much hotter world, those will indeed become likelier, particularly if agricultural innovation fails to keep pace with climate change; over a 30-year time horizon, the insurer Lloyd’s recently estimated a 50 percent chance of what it called a “major” global food shock.
Why shifting from prediction to foresight can help us plan for future disruption
by Roger Spitz in World Economic Forum…As the world becomes more complex, foresight methodologies account for a greater set of possible futures.
Scenario development, a foresight methodology, is an alternative to prediction which can help map new possibilities.
Foresight may predict possible futures but more importantly, it allows for preparation.