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The Pandemic Speaks

May 23, 2021

The Pandemic Speaks

Are you finally ready to listen to me now? If so, here are my 10 timeless truths.

RomanPlaguePicture.jpg
The angel of death striking a door during the plague of ancient Rome. Engraving by J.G. Levasseur after J. Delaunay. Image via Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons.

Audi, vide, tace. I have been trying to engage you in conversation for more than a year, but you have not listened.

Perhaps you don’t want to grasp the truths I have to offer. They are gifts really, but I know you will never see my generosity in that light. Such fear. Such ignorance. Ad altiora tendo.

But I am bound by ancient oaths and I must deliver these few plain lessons as I have faithfully done for thousands of years.

I read confusion on your face.

Did you think that I would speak with the rage of Moses, the indignation of Isaiah?

Or did you think I would appear in Marvel cape on a TikTok video?

Did you expect me to play chess with your armoured ego like Death in The Seventh Seal?

No matter. Let me start my instruction by reminding you of my curriculum vitae. I earned it at the finest university: the diversity of life over the history of time.

For millennia, I have laboured in the natural world, imposing limits and borders in places you seek to globalize with your technologies and economies. Do you really think the world will be more secure when bits of plastic outnumber fish?

I have but one non-linear mission, and that is to celebrate and restore diversity.

Your rising and falling civilizations cultivate fragility, and that is simply the way of things. While you seek to build great walls of stability, I bring volatility. This tension explains why we collide like two rams on the mountain of history.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses

August 29, 2020

How our food choices cut into forests and put us closer to viruses

As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths of monocultures.

From cattle farming to oil palm plantations, industrial agriculture remains the greatest driver of deforestation, particularly in the tropics. And as agricultural activities expand and intensify, ecosystems lose plants, wildlife and other biodiversity.

The permanent transformation of forested landscapes for commodity crops currently drives more than a quarter of all global deforestation. This includes soy, palm oil, beef cattle, coffee, cocoa, sugar and other key ingredients of our increasingly simplified and highly processed diets.

The erosion of the forest frontier has also increased our exposure to infectious diseases, such as Ebola, malaria and other zoonotic diseases. Spillover incidents would be far less prevalent without human encroachment into the forest.

We need to examine our global food system: Is it doing its job, or is it contributing to forest destruction and biodiversity loss — and putting human life at risk?

What are we eating?

The food most associated with biodiversity loss also tends to also be connected to unhealthy diets across the globe. Fifty years after the Green Revolution — the transition to intensive, high yielding food production reliant on a limited number of crop and livestock species — nearly 800 million people still go to bed hungry; one in three is malnourished; and up to two billion people suffer some sort of micronutrient deficiency and associated health impacts, such as stunting or wasting.

Forest cut down for an agricultural field
A large soy field cuts into the forest in Brazil. (Shutterstock)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Rising Temperatures Will Help Mosquitos Infect a Billion More People

March 29, 2019

Rising Temperatures Will Help Mosquitos Infect a Billion More People

Mosquitoes are unrelenting killers. In fact, they are among the most lethal animals in the world. When they carry dangerous viruses or other organisms, a bite can be unforgiving. They cause millions of deaths every year from such infectious diseases as malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow feverand at least a dozen more.

But here’s the really bad news: climate change is expected to make them even deadlier. As the planet heats up, these insects will survive winter and proliferate, causing an estimated billion or more new infections by the end of the century, according to new research.

“Plain and simple, climate change is going to kill a lot of people,” said biologist Colin J. Carlson, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgetown University’s biology department, and co-author of the study, published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. “Mosquito-borne diseases are going to be a big way that happens, especially as they spread from the tropics to temperate countries.”

Climate Nexus

The study predicted an amenable climate could prompt some of these new cases within regions not previously regarded as vulnerable, including the U.S. These viruses can result in volatile outbreaks when conditions are right, as was the case with Zika. “We’ve known about Zika since 1947, and we watched it slowly spread around the world until 2015, when it arrived in Brazil and suddenly we had an explosive epidemic on our hands,” Carlson said.

“Chikungunya has done something not too different from that,” he added. “These viruses proliferate quickly in populations that don’t have any immunity — and we’re very scared about that. If you only have one month that’s warm enough for outbreaks, the question is: ‘how much damage you can do…?’ For viruses like these, it’s a lot.”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Next Generation Of Warfare: Genetically Engineered VIRUSES

November 3, 2018

The Next Generation Of Warfare: Genetically Engineered VIRUSES

Genetically engineered viruses could very well become the next generation of warfare. Deadly viruses modified in labs could be released eliminating entire communities of people as they infect making them a valuable asset to militaries worldwide.

As dystopian as that sounds, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is already working on a project called Insect Allies which will use insects to infect crops with genetically modified viruses that edit the crops’ genetic profile to make them more resilient against disease, as well as natural and manufactured threats to the food supply.

Joe Joseph of The Daily Sheeple said a quick Google search would give you enough information to let you know how horrific this kind of technology can be. “…and you’ll find it fascinating just at how unbelievable a weapon this could be, how unintentionally mistakes can be made that can cause irreversible damage…irreparable damage…to the human race. And I mean, FAST!” Joseph said. “A gene drive…if let’s just say there’s a mistake, you could feasibly wipe out the human race in a very very short period of time. It’s an unbelievable tool at the disposal of madmen.” –SHTFPlan

DARPA attempted to squash rising fears about their Insect Allies project and issue reassurances after German and French scientists voiced questions and concerns about the program’s efficacy earlier this month.  Those scientists also suggested that it could be “widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery, which—if true—would constitute a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention.”

If the know-how and means exist to transmit genetic viruses that supposedly create beneficial crop mutations, the opposite will also be possible.  DARPA will be able to use insects to deliver gene editing viruses that destroy crops, ruin harvests and adversely affect the wider ecosystem, RT accurately pointed out.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The risks of synthetic biology in the information society

October 21, 2018

The risks of synthetic biology in the information society

Knowledge is power. The instructions for making viruses from synthetic strands of DNA are on the internet. And, the strands themselves are available for purchase online. It’s called synthetic biology. Right now it’s not easy to get the strands to you need to make dangerous viruses or to put them together. But it is becoming easier.

That’s the issue that exploded concerning the synthetic construction of an thought-to-be extinct horsepox virus. The problem is that the instructions for making horsepox are distressingly useful for constructing a smallpox virus, a virus responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century alone until its eradication. Smallpox, you’ll recall, was eradicated through a successful worldwide effort led by the World Health Organization. After 1980 it was no longer necessary to vaccinate people against the disease and very few people alive today have been vaccinated against it.

Not surprisingly, an outbreak resulting from, say, the inadvertent or possibly intentional release of a synthetic smallpox virus from a lab could prove devastating worldwide.

Synthetic biology perhaps most clearly illustrates that the benign assumption most modern people share about new technology is dangerously misguided. We have many other examples. Recently, we’ve learned that propagandists and true believers alike have exploited Facebook to propagate obviously misleading information and outright falsehoods, an outcome that shouldn’t be all that surprising given the open nature of the platform.

We’ve now been disabused of the notion that social media will always and everywhere be a force of liberation and enlightenment. Facebook’s ongoing purge of what it regards as “fake news” and unreliable information continues; but this purge is accompanied by howls of protest from those affected who don’t agree with Facebook’s assessment, some justifiably so.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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