2. The evidence of the transmission-virulence tradeoff theory is not that clear. This fantastic paper explains it well. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
The devil is in the details. For example, in the early stages of a pandemic, when most ppl aren't infected (the case now with COVID), virulence tends to increase.
Virulence also tends to increase when the population is highly connected, as we are with COVID, which travels worldwide.
That means we need to turn to specifics.
3. The specifics of COVID make it an unfortunate candidate to increase virulence. Look at this graph of contagions per day after initial infection. Most infections happen before getting symptoms or early thereafter.
If the virus reproduced more quickly, the peak of the curve would be higher, but the right leg would be cut. On balance, would the curve be bigger or smaller? Potentially bigger, which means infectiousness could easily increase.
You could get more virus more quickly, thus infecting other people more and more quickly. Sure, you'd fall sick more quickly, but by that time you're not infecting as many people.
Another factor is asymptomatics. They're probably ~50% of infections but don't cause more than 5% of them. A virus that reproduces faster would make many more of them infectious, potentially exploding the number of cases.
And more people sicker would also mean more deaths. But these happens weeks after infection.
Death and contagiousness are so disconnected with COVID that there's no pressure for the virus to become less deadly.
4. Changes in the spike protein (what the virus uses to hack into cells) have already shown to increase contagiousness. This happened early during the pandemic.
For the new strain, we know it has 3 mutations in the spike protein, we know the strain is winning, and we know those with it have more virus than others.
Why do Jamaicans speak English, when most of its neighboring countries don’t?
Why was the pirate capital there?
Why is it underwater now?
Why did pirates drink rum?
Why are most Jamaicans black?
This map of shipping lanes today gives you a hint:
Jamaica is in the middle of all these shipping lanes, but isn't a major shipping hub today
This is not new: Back in Spanish colonial times, Jamaica was not in the main trade routes either
Spain's main goods were silver from Mexico and Peru and luxury goods from China
Spaniards gathered them in Panama, Portobello, Cartagena, and Veracruz
Ships arrived from Spain to Puerto Rico and left via Habana (Cuba)
Jamaica was not a main port
Why?
This machine makes fuel from thin air
It's carbon neutral
And it does this at record-low costs
Energy and the environment will look completely different in 10 years
Here's why: 🧵
The problem with fossil fuels today is not that we burn them, it's where they come from: They had been locked in the ground for millions of years and now they're back in the atmosphere. The pbm is the "fossil", not the "fuels"
If we make fuels out of thin air, we can burn them
How can we do it?
Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4)
You just need some energy to force some carbon (C) to bing to hydrogen (H)
Carbon can come from air (CO2)
Hydrogen can come from water (H2O)
The energy can come from the sun (solar panels)
This video of the Rock of Gibraltar gives an intuition for why some areas of the world have deserts next to rainforests
What's happening here?
How can you use that to predict where there will be deserts or rainforests?🧵
Look at the map below: In some places, deserts and lush forests are side by side. Why?
The mountain chains between them
The effect is called the Rain Shadow:
• Air comes wet from the sea
• As it hits mountains, it goes up
• Higher altitudes are cooler, so the air cools
• That condenses water (like the droplets on you Coke glass)
• Rain falls
• Air is dry past the mountains
Egyptian pyramids are not where they're supposed to be. Why?
Why is Cairo, the biggest African city, where it is today?
Alexandria?
Why do over 100M Egyptians live so densely clustered?
These questions all have the same answer. Look:
1st map: population density
2nd map: satellite
The "flower" is the inhabited part of Egypt, which is basically the Nile
It makes sense: outside of the Nile, Egypt is like the rest of the Sahara desert, an inhospitable hell for humans
Global warming is accelerating
There's only one thing we can do today to delay it before we burn, enough to solve the pbm: SO2 injection
Some ppl are squeamish about it but they shouldn't be. SO2 is so obviously the right solution that we should do it now. Here's why:
There is no way we can stop carbon emissions on time
The Earth is reaching 1.5ºC of warming, but carbon emissions are higher than ever, carried by emerging economies that won't stay poor just for the environment
Solar, wind, nuclear, batteries, electric vehicles... All of these will curb CO2 emissions soon, but not soon enough. They will take decades
And extracting CO2 from the atmosphere is very expensive: ~$100 per ton
This is the ghost of Poland's past
Poles call this type of map "widać zabory": "You can see the partitions"
What partitions?
Why is Poland like that today?
What does it tell us about the country?
About Russia? Germany?
Let's explore:
You might have seen this map already: It overlaps Poland's election results with the old German empire borders
So is that region different because of German influence and investment? That's only a tiny part of the story. This can be quite misleading!
Consider these other maps: They highlight not one internal border, but three—between the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian parts