Omicron on the rise: Pandemic as a life lesson for the human species
The COVID-19 pandemic is sending the human species important messages. But are we as a species capable of hearing them?
coronavirus
How Wildfire Smoke Supercharges the Coronavirus
It’s as if we exist in a thick haze, trying to understand how to piece together the effects of climate change, a mutating coronavirus and connected threats.
Vaccine passports, globalism and the threat to humankind
The Biden administration is about to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all U.S. visitors. The plan is likely to become unworkable in very short order. It is an attempt to get around a now very clear fact about widespread international travel: That travel has become a threat to all humankind.
Invisible workers, invisible systems
We have to make profound changes to the way we all live, and that includes work. The problem is getting a toehold on the system whose parts are mutually reinforcing and and locks in destruction with its incessant expansion.
Earth Abuse and the Next Pandemic
Earth abuse is also at the root of the Covid-19 pandemic and the grim likelihood that new pathogens will continue to emerge from other animal species to infect humans.
COVID variants reach escape velocity
The dense worldwide transportation network constructed by humans is now powering so-called variants (mutations) of COVID-19 across the world from their countries of origin. The British variant (called B.1.1.7), the Brazilian variant (called P.1) and the South African variant (called B.1.351) are all racing across the globe.
Variations on a theme: COVID-19 mutations turn problematic
We pandemic-weary humans are ready to be done with COVID-19. But apparently, it is not done with us
Making America ungovernable
Adaptation will require leadership and social cohesion. Instead, America may be lurching toward further political division and violence.
Is Denmark about to export a more dangerous form of COVID-19?
Unfortunately for the minks and the mink industry, the Danish government has now pledged to kill every mink in Denmark is order to eradicate a mutant strain of COVID-19 carried by mink that is transmissible to humans.
Why am I feeling so anxious? The end of modernism arrives
Underneath all the disorder we see in our pandemic-plagued economic, social and political lives is the crumbling of key assumptions about what we call modernity, a period of “enlightenment” that has supposedly freed us from the past.
Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities?
Many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less crowded towns and rural landscapes. The wealthy, at least, are seeking “bugout” homes away from major cities as places to ride out the pandemic, the economic downturn and the civil unrest that are gripping the world.
The Coronavirus-Climate-Air Conditioning Nexus
The severe heat is driving almost all social gatherings and group activities into enclosed, air-conditioned spaces. Getting together these days in the cool indoor world can dramatically raise the risk of coronavirus infection.