Top 6 questions answered about fall vaccines
By Katelyn Jetelina, Your Local Epidemiologist…The bottom line is: Get your fall vaccines—it will cut your risk of diseases by half.
New paper: Polycrisis Research & Action Roadmap
by the Cascade Institute, et al….The authors define the core characteristics of polycrisis
(emergent harms, multiple causes, deep uncertainty, systemic context, and new knowledge and action) and
identify gaps, opportunities, and priorities across four dimensions (theoretical foundations, empirical
research, practical applications, community building).
‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world
by Yuval Noah Harari in The Guardian… Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new book
Apple Intelligence is coming. Here’s what it means for your iPhone
by Kate O’Flaherty in The Guardian…Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone – and how does it affect your privacy?
WHO leader and Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborator clashed in ‘ugly’ meeting
by Emily Kopp in US Right to Know…Tedros told the lawmakers then that “understanding the origin of COVID is a scientific and moral obligation, and it requires China to cooperate, share data, access and information fully and urgently,” the WHO said.
Global Displacement Forecast 2024
Danish Refugee Council writes in Global Displacement Forecast 2024…The fighting that has torn across Sudan since 15 April 2023 has turned the country into one of the
world’s largest displacement and protection crises, and one of the most dangerous environments for
humanitarians to operate in. The stage has been set for a long war.
Chartbook 310 The shock of the new: Dollar dominance and modern monetary macro in the 1920s. (Hegemony note 5)
by Adam Tooze in Chartbook…The denaturing of the gold standard and the emergence of the new field of monetary macroeconomics combined to pose the question of global financial leadership in a way it had never been posed before, compounding the shock of discovering that the United States was the obvious answer to that question of leadership. Basic questions of monetary governance would never again have the feeling of stark novelty they had at that moment.
Eric Schmidt’s AI prophecy: The next two years will shock you
by Azeem Azhar in Exponential View…While he doesn’t say it explicitly, it seems that Eric expects the next two years to be faster and more turbulent than the previous two.
We now have a chance to stop the most deadly infectious disease — if we act
by Atwal Gawande in The New York Times…In a place with one of the highest TB rates on Earth, I saw that the disease could be stopped with the new tools available. And still more are coming. Clinical trials of five TB vaccines with promising early results are now underway. After decades without major advances, we now have a steady stream of innovations. But they won’t matter unless the world commits to deploying them.
Selling American bombs
by Tim Barker and Dylan Saba in Phenomenal world.com…An interview with Sarah Harrison on the mechanics of US foreign military sales
W.H.O. declares global emergency over new Mpox outbreak
by Apoorva Mandavilli in The New York Times….The epidemic is concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the virus has now appeared in a dozen other African countries.
A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing
by UNEP in Navigating New Horizons…As the leading global authority on the environment, the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) plays a critical role in keeping the environment under review and finding solutions that inspire,
inform and enable nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
Report of the Roundtable on the Human Future 2024
from the Roundtable on the Human Future 2024…The Roundtable on the Human Future was an online gathering of the world’s most influential
thought-leaders on what is to be done about the human predicament. Recognising that a wide
diversity of opinion and advice exists globally, which is confusing to governments and citizens alike,
it sought common understandings of the nature of the crisis and the solutions it demands.
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.