How Humanity Unleashed a Flood of New Diseases

Four potential consequences of wearing face masks we need to be wary of

PUSH-ME-PULL-YOU: There is no clear evidence that surgical masks protect the public from getting or passing on these sorts of infections – most likely because of incorrect use.

 

"Lo and behold, I stumbled across an enigmatic picture in the rock ... I thought, that's a strange looking thing in the rock."

Mr Nelson said he took some images of the fossil and sent it to a number of friends who also share an interest in palaeontology.

"I was bouncing off the ceiling, once I sensed the excitement of those experts in the field I was pretty excited too," he said.

Million Years Old

Motherboard: ‘The Room Where it Happened’ is tearing up the charts on sites where people download the book for free. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s memoir The Room Where It Happened is set to release tomorrow, but it’s already a huge hit on pirate sites. According to Torrent Freak, The Pirate Bay, Google Drive, Drop Box, and various other private trackers are moving thousands of copies of the book. Two copies of the memoir are now the most popular e-books on The Pirate Bay. Writing a memoir of the troubled Oval Office has become de rigueur for anyone who witnessed it firsthand, and we’ve known Bolton’s book was coming since Trump forced him out of the White House. When House Democrats pressed him to testify under oath during the recent impeachment hearings, Bolton declined saying he was under orders from the White House not to speak. Democrats never subpoenaed Bolton, and Bolton said he’d fight any subpoena that didn’t come from the Republican-controlled senate. He later criticized the impeachment for being too narrow in scope and too hastily thrown together. He reportedly got a $2 million advanceto write a memoir publisher Simon & Schuster rushed to print. As copies of the 500-page manuscript made its way to reviewers and the press, the White House sought an injunction to stop the book’s publication.

The New York Times – What do Covid-19, Ebola, Lyme and AIDS have in common? They jumped to humans from animals after we started destroying habitats and ruining ecosystems. “…There is much we don’t know about the origins of the ongoing pandemic and some details that we may never learn. Though genetic sequencing currently indicates that horseshoe bats are the ultimate source of SARS-CoV-2, it’s possible another animal will eventually prove to be the vector. Bats may have initially infected livestock or more exotic captive creatures raised on one of China’s many wildlife farms. Perhaps the bats (or another vector) were smuggled across the southern border from a neighboring country, like Myanmar or Vietnam. Or maybe the virus was intermittently infecting animals and people in rural areas for years before finally finding a route to a major city. Regardless of SARS-CoV-2’s precise trajectory, experts agree that Covid-19 is a zoonosis, a disease that jumped from animals to humans. Between 60 and 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases in humans come from other animals. Many zoonoses — rabies, Lyme, anthrax, mad cow disease, SARS, Ebola, West Nile, Zika — loom large in public consciousness; others are less familiar: Q fever, orf, Rift Valley fever, Kyasanur Forest disease. More than a few, including influenza, AIDS and the bubonic plague, have caused some of the deadliest outbreaks in recorded history. Although zoonoses are ancient, thought to be referencedin Mesopotamian tablets and the Bible, their numbers have increasedin the last few decades, along with the frequency of outbreaks…”

 

SATURDAY’s GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND

By IAN MCAULEY | On 20 June 2020

What people in other forums are saying about public policy Continue reading →