Pinning this 🙏 Simple argument, as COVID-cyberpunk as it gets. Add a shade of climate and you're good to fly: Reverse the global trend of supervillainy that SARS will usher into unless we stop it. - We CAN, by simple effective policy. Just as in all the WHO/UN superhero stories.
2. We also forgot those who will end the pandemic: lawyers!
Not scholars or practitioners of international law alone -- but it follows from the structure of our systemic problems that no solution can work without them.
4. 'Wie SAGS ich meinen Kindern?,' we say in German.
Very useful way to structure the problem: make sure you understand what we can lose AND, because all this is positive and constructive, what we can learn.
6. Superhero stories always come with SURPRISE plot twists because David has to slay viral Goliath in the end by following the precautionary principle and WHO's core components in Infection Prevention and Control (IPC). who.int/teams/integrat…
As Dr. Leonardi has, I believe, previously said: looking back at three years of experts being humbled by a virus, expect to be humbled further until we ourselves change fundamentally.
We see the same social dynamics as in climate science and policy, at greatly accelerated pace.
10. How do you wrap a thread like this?
Whatever someone cares about, there's an angle to grab their attention. Not just insurance companies or parents, but the hardestcore car fetishists will care about accidents for example.
11. Learning will be highly nonlinear, perhaps even within months or by 2025, or so I claimed. People may not [be in a position to] care for 'the world', but we all have a super finely attuned sense of smell for hypocrisy and inequity. @GeorgeMonbiot:
@GeorgeMonbiot I stated that we may hit 425 ppm CO2 by 2025, pushing the climate system into a Miocene state beyond even our current state, the Pliocene.
2025 can also see the end of the pandemic, bringing us within reach of living our hottest, best lives SARS-free yet.
@GeorgeMonbiot 13. A question is Covid in China and former ZC countries.
Now (1) #ZeroCovid policy is politically dead (?) but scientifically the only way out (=math). (2) The west is largely uninformed on SARS and China's challenge.
@GeorgeMonbiot 14. Another question is why we need to repeat so much. This thread by @AndrewEwing11 aged so exceptionally for example, I'd guess it's minus three days old.
@GeorgeMonbiot@AndrewEwing11 15. Drosten 12/2022: "This winter is the first endemic wave (?) of Sars-Cov-2, ending the pandemic"
Fantini 01/2023: "Convergent evolution dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV surface envelope glycoproteins driven by host cell surface receptors and lipid rafts" mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/3…
Entire fields like public health and epidemiology are idling - or in despair - when they should be working on their lifetime challenge, because politicians are in denial.
We can do better than this.
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This letter criticizes the end of SARS (‘Corona’/‘Covid’) protections in schools. What @LEK_NRW can improve: every child is at risk. Everyone is vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infections. Vaccines provide statistically irrelevant protection.
@LEK_NRW 2. Children once or repeatedly infected with SARS-CoV-2 may be harmed for life; school and kita are key to SARS-CoV-2 transmission and evolution.
Fantini et al. apply 40 years of HIV research to SARS. Parents & students, you need to read for yourselves. mdpi.com/1422-0067/24/3…
Astute observation. Part of our problem is most western folk & elites have limited international working & policy delivery experience especially in the global south.
Many may struggle to imagine public health information being suppressed in their own nations; hard to blame them.
Fortunately everyone aware of climate dynamics, or trained in development economics, should be free from such troubles.
We sometimes call our socially constructed lack of imagination ‘the Unthinkable’ (@GhoshAmitav). One of the reasons he argued middle-class westerners and academics may be less prepared for the future than far poorer people in the global south, even Indian farmers.
HIV-1 is the best researched virus in biology. SARS-CoV-2 stands on the giant shoulders of 40 years of research, winning us decades in a tight race. - Please take it seriously; never fear language over biology. I invited HIV/SARS scientists to collaborate. 👍
3. These questions strike the heart of both social and natural science perspectives in this pandemic. Fascinating to see things develop so fast, well done everyone!
A legal puzzle: @RealCheckMarker warned that states may try muzzling science by cutting funding and genetic surveillance (PCR tests and sequencing). Lack of data will force WHO to declare the pandemic over.
Yet SARS is a notifiable event. The PHEIC would be back within 24 hours.
Look at the drop in sequencing volume in most countries over the past four weeks. It is dangerous and completely unacceptable. We are blinding ourselves.
Journalists, it’s your job to call this out, not mine.
Silver Check Mark if your quantitative reasoning skills are sharp enough to tell how many states test BELOW the volume needed for variant determination at 5% prevalence.