As IR scholar I analyze such questions. Where are we, where are we heading?
After vaccines or reinfections decreased acute phase death ratios (aCFR), most experts now think the “pandemic’s over”. They are wrong.
USA vs. Taiwan, 0 : 1 ☺️
2. I am no Russia expert. (1) Can someone tell us how former SU states, above all Moscow, managed to drop life expectancy to 69 yrs in 2021, before Putin’s war? Now it’s lower yet again, with many young men being lost. (2) Read this thread as background.
6. If people care, they can easily find out what’s happening. Here my new favorite theory: we upgraded to « Vaccinated, Infected and Relaxed », putting the vir back into virology.
This is funny if you recall your high school Latin.
7. You need no advanced Latin skills to continue our cheerful little investigation of SARS-CoV-2 dynamics in different states and the international system.
Some basic math in this truth sandwich - teachable lessons aplenty.
8. To science up, follow @lajohnstondr for the getting old before/after rich journey.
China is getting old before getting rich.
By contrast, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong accumulated wealth to become rich first. <>More room to err. eastasiaforum.org/2012/12/22/get…
9. Southern Africa was missing from the graph: NOW we’re talking getting old before getting rich!
What do we make if the world average life expectancy dropping 1.8 years in two years (2019-2021)?
10. SARS should never have gone past summer 2020, had public health principles been heeded. The US, EU, UK made it a question of demographic transition. Fast forward to today: now everyone involved in policy or analysis needs to read up on comparative economics. Learn from China.
11. Here general, and #ZeroCovid specific, arguments I didn't see elsewhere. Worth elaborating.
13. Why look at the past 150 years to see the future? This is the fossil fueled explosion in human creativity and activity we usually look at in climate.
14. Sometimes we also look at the past 250 years; it makes little practical difference on climate.
15. This graph shows how the world grew from poor health in 1800 to great inequality in 1950 and again more equality at a higher level in 2012. Someone could update it with 2022 data: I expect we exceeded 2012, but now start moving down.
Both inequity and longevity are at stake.
16. Here we go. Ending #ZeroCovid policy dropped life expectancy in Shanghai by one year in 2022. Autumn/winter, if you recall. Depending on how close back to near-#ZeroCovid China gets, effect will be more pronounced going forward.
16. China is aiming to reach 79 years LE in 2030. This research note is interesting because China CDC estimates SARS-CoV-2 had no significant impact on LE 2020-2021 thanks to dynamic ZeroCovid policy. Its relaxation at the end of 2022 needs further M&E. weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/doi…
17. Biden & US embassy kids at Dublin airport
Boy: “What’s your top step to success?”
Biden: “well, making sure that we don’t all have Covid. Why are you talking about this?”
18. Long story short, we are collectively failing at the political science problem of our lifetimes. Good luck guys and girls, call us when you're tired of failing, and want to start working on solutions.
1. The structural parallels of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 were known already 20 years ago, from SARS-CoV-1. Yet COVID-19 policy and even most scientists ignore these parallels, failing to learn key lessons. Fundamentally, genetic recombination drives both pandemics—two typical articles
2. Don't worry about the specific article—there are hundreds more, and more relevant ones. The lesson here is we face syndemics, overlapping epidemics that cluster with inequity, not just distinct pandemics. All reinforce each other link.springer.com/article/10.118… frontiersin.org/journals/micro…
3. Background. There are literally thousands such articles; no one integrates them. That's why as political scientist, for years already, I've been arguing that only institutionalization can help with such complexity. We need a @UNAIDS for SARS-CoV, sorry
We’ve shared this for years, it was known or suspected even before the pandemic from SARS-CoV-1. Friends of we’re going to learn at this rate, ignoring prepandemic science, populations worldwide will get into serious trouble
I'd like to delete my account, but then a sizable fraction of the early Covid twitter scicomm documentation - to show what was known when - would be gone. As far as I know, no one else with even a moderately sized account (>10k followers) shares the same readily available science
“Bamboo is our best chance to slow climate breakdown. It can replace drivers of GHG emissions and biodiversity loss (food, construction, concrete, plastic), build soil & allow regrowing rainforest." - Let's test it. Grow bamboo as blueprint for a future ecological civilization 🧵
2. Giant bamboo dwarfs trees. As grass, it grows 30 times (!) faster and can be harvested every year. Timber takes decades; too slow. Stunningly, no one in the west described the unique climate mitigation potential of bamboo yet. - Note the rhizome system:
3. Climate relevant will be the use in millions of ha of plantations, just like other economically important crops. After two months on this, some significant progress: air pot kindly donated 1 m of their professional U system, so I can test it for bamboo.
SARS-CoV-2 reminder: The more immune compromised the population, the less symptoms, the ‘milder’ it appears, the more severe it really is (=Long Covid, long term damage). That’s what even most scientists seem not to get
Thanks for vivid discussion everyone. It really is a fundamentally important point. Since I deleted most references for lack of structure (and frankly, just being fed up repeating the same points for 3 to 4 years), I'll look for new references that must have been published by now
1. "Bamboo is our best chance to slow climate breakdown: it sustains societies, can protect soil and store carbon for 100 years in food, construction, bio-concrete and plastic." - Let’s test this. As our very German neighbors renew their English Gardens, we start growing bamboo👇
2. Three months ago I started on bamboo: no one else in Europe seemed to have systematically analyzed or even considered its global climate mitigation potential when used as agricultural crop rather than natural forests, which do little climate mitigation.
3. A bamboo focus isn't for the coming years. We are at least a decade early. However, since getting started will take decades, now is a good time. In 10 years, atmospheric CO2 will exceed 450 ppm. That's enough to fundamentally transform the Earth system.
Hybrid immunity was invented in 2021 to sell the idea of SARS-CoV-2 infections as a good. There is no literature pre 2021. The idea to infect the global population with a SARS virus, including all 2 billion children aged 14 yo and younger, didn't exist. scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22h…
You can repeat the same with "immune debt" or "immunity debt", the original flawed idea invented by French pediatrician Cohen in 2021, setting off the whole strain of argument. An incredibly effective PR campaign, less good science. scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…