How scared should you be of bird flu?

by Jennifer B. Nuzzo in The New York Times….No one knows whether H5N1, if left unchecked, will become the deadly pandemic that public health experts like me worry it could. Many of us have been watching H5N1 with alarm for more than 20 years.

Here’s what is wrong with the national academies’ long COVID definition

by Leonard Jason in MedPage Today…Because a large percentageopens in a new tab or window of primary care patients have unexplained symptoms, healthcare workers often do not know what is causing their symptoms or how to help them. Physicians might feel better providing a nebulous diagnosis like the proposed National Academies long COVID definition, but in the long-run, I doubt this helps patients.

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic

by Chris Bing and Joel Schectman in Reuters….The U.S. military launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation – payback for Beijing’s efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic. One target: the Filipino public. Health experts say the gambit was indefensible and put innocent lives at risk.

Canada’s big worry: A US civil war

by Alexander Burns in Politico…Justin Trudeau probably won’t ask Joe Biden if the U.S. is headed for a war between the states. But a report from within his government says it’s time for Canada to get ready.

Shrink the economy, save the world?

by Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times….Economic growth has been ecologically costly — and so a movement in favor of ‘degrowth’ is growing.

The case for hope

by NICHOLAS KRISTOF in The New York Times…The truth is that if you had to pick a time to be alive in the past few hundred thousand years of human history, it would probably be now.

More in this tag

Jul 06 2023

Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement

by Dr. Michael Lawrence at The Cascade Institute….. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combines with...
Nov 29 2024

Trees as infrastructure

from Dark Matter Laboratories…An open source model to support municipalities in transitioning toward resilient urban forest management practices

Nov 28 2024

An emerging third option: Reclaiming democracy from dark money & dark tech

by Otto Scharmer in Medium…What does that tell us about democracy? Democracy is under strain globally, with mass misinformation eroding citizens’ ability to...
Nov 27 2024

Heat-related mortality in Europe during 2023 and the role of adaptation in protecting health

by Eliso Gallo, et al. in Nature…The year of 2023 was the warmest on record globally and the second warmest in Europe. Here we applied epidemiological models to...
Nov 26 2024

A logic for the future: International relations in the age of turbulence

by Stephen Heintz in the Rockefellerl Brothers Fund…Many of the causes and consequences of present-day turmoil are transnational or even global in nature. These...
Nov 26 2024

A brittle network

by Steve Lohr in The New York Times…The biggest and most valuable companies also carry the most risk to the economy as a whole. They are linked to more users, so...
Nov 23 2024

He’ll try, but Trump can’t stop the clean energy revolution

by Matt Simon in Grist…The cost of renewables is plummeting, heat pumps are selling like crazy, and red states are raking in cash from the IRA.

Nov 22 2024

I’m finally into ‘prepping’ and ready for the apocalypse

by Eva Wiseman in The Guardian…Piles of loo paper, a years worth of tinned goods and snake-proof boots. No wonder prepping has become a lifestyle choice

Nov 21 2024

Extreme weather cost $2tn globally over past decade, report finds

by Ajit Niranjan in The Guardian…US suffered greatest economic losses, report commissioned by International Chamber of Commerce finds, followed by China and...
Nov 20 2024

The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life

A leading radical historian looks at the global resurgence of the commune and asks how they can become sites of liberationWhen the state recedes, the commune-form...
Nov 20 2024

Risks on the horizon: Insights for a resilient future

by the Joint Research Centre of European Commission in the EU Policy Lab…In a world where the only constant is change, policymakers are faced with an accelerating...