611 lines
72 KiB
HTML
611 lines
72 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
|
||
<html lang="" xml:lang="" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
|
||
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
|
||
<meta content="pandoc" name="generator"/>
|
||
<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes" name="viewport"/>
|
||
<title>27 August, 2021</title>
|
||
<style type="text/css">
|
||
code{white-space: pre-wrap;}
|
||
span.smallcaps{font-variant: small-caps;}
|
||
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
|
||
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
|
||
</style>
|
||
<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
|
||
<body>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Afghanistan, Again, Becomes a Cradle for Jihadism—and Al Qaeda</strong> - The terrorist group has outlasted the trillion-dollar U.S. investment in Afghanistan since 9/11. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/afghanistan-again-becomes-a-cradle-for-jihadism-and-al-qaeda">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Have You Already Had a Breakthrough COVID Infection?</strong> - The question of what “infection” means is just one of the riddles posed by the late-stage pandemic. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/have-you-already-had-a-breakthrough-covid-infection">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Meeting “the Other Side”: Conversations with Men Accused of Sexual Assault</strong> - In 2011, I helped launch a movement to aid survivors on college campuses. That meant I also had to think hard about the rights of those under scrutiny. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-activism/meeting-the-other-side-conversations-with-men-accused-of-%20sexual-assault">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Mayoral Candidate with a Mouth That Roars</strong> - Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, expects his opponent to paint him as racist, sexist, and homophobic. But he’s ready to strike back. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/the-mayoral-candidate-with-a-mouth-that-roars">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Daily Cartoon: Thursday, August 26th</strong> - “There you are.” - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/thursday-august-26th-cooling-off">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>My nemesis, the piano</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="An illustration of a woman playing piano and a larger figure in repose." src="https://cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/thumbor/ZQxJ2UbwnjggPomGw9u_XNgBvbw=/524x0:3191x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69733863/sol_cotti___vox_2.0.jpeg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Sol Cotti for Vox
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Learning to not be perfect, one note at a time.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-left">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Zzw2ZJ">
|
||
Part of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/e/22392894">Leisure Issue</a> of <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-
|
||
highlight">The Highlight</a>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="R5wpJ8"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z7A4nZ">
|
||
A few years ago, my husband Matt offered to get me a digital piano for my 41st birthday. A digital piano is like a keyboard, except the keys are weighted and it feels more like playing a real piano than the Casio you might have had in the corner of your bedroom as a teenager. Matt knew that I had taken piano lessons as a kid, but I’d stopped in seventh grade, right around the age when the idea of spending Saturday mornings at music school started to feel less appealing than, say, going to the mall.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ldZCvB">
|
||
I was game for a digital piano, but skeptical — it was a really extravagant gift, and I wasn’t sure I was actually going to play it that often. But Matt was persistent. He reminded me that I’d idly mentioned wanting to play the piano again, but to me, I’d brought it up in the same way that I might casually say I wanted to try skydiving, which is to say it was something I would never actually follow through on. Still, when he suggested we go to a music store just to look, I agreed. At Guitar Center, we found one that seemed, well, perfect. I sat down and tested it out. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get it.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="680F3N">
|
||
We bought it and set it up in my office. I bought some sheet music — some classical stuff that seemed around the same level I was at when I’d stopped playing, and a book of “easy” rock and pop songs.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZEYeJY">
|
||
Matt collects guitars and will often just pick one up and start strumming the Beatles; I think he had it in his head that once I had a piano, we would be able to duet, like other famed husband-and-wife duos such as Sonny and Cher, John and Yoko, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. … Really, our potential was endless.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yYMpgF">
|
||
But I was rusty — very rusty — and I’d been classically trained, which meant I was more comfortable reading music than just jamming. After a few painful renditions of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” I gave up, and the piano sat, mostly untouched, in the corner of my office for the next couple of years.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cuGHsu">
|
||
Besides, I was too busy to take up an actual hobby; the idea of having a hobby — something I did just for the enjoyment it brought me — seemed almost confusing. You mean to say that I could do things that weren’t some kind of side hustle or attempt at social media clout? I could do something that was … just for me?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZzwR9c">
|
||
I’d made half-hearted attempts over the years to take up various hobbies, mostly craft-related ones like knitting, cross-stitch, and even paint-by-numbers, as a way to unwind and relax. Nothing really stuck; I still have a half-finished scarf I started more than 20 years ago, which has moved with me to no fewer than 10 apartments, and a plastic storage container marked “NEEDLEPOINT” that contains an embroidery hoop, various patterns, and some thread — as though I would one day be inspired to finish the scarf and/or figure out how to cross-stitch something more complicated than a pattern intended for children.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xehuvm">
|
||
My methods of unwinding and relaxing remained thus unchanged: yoga, reading, watching TV.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DAK2Fp">
|
||
I had enough to do, I told myself. There was no point in adding another thing to my plate that was probably just going to stress me out.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="HVGKB5"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jm7bZX">
|
||
I started taking piano lessons in second grade through a music program in my town. The lessons were held in a music classroom at the high school, and classes were always letting out as I maneuvered my way through the halls. A few years later, when I was 10, I enrolled in a Saturday music program at the New England Conservatory that included private piano lessons, a music theory class, and choir. There were levels and evaluations and recitals where we had to play from memory the pieces we’d learned. The program took itself extremely seriously. On my year-end evaluation, when I was 11, my piano teacher wrote, “Good work, has made the transition from trying to do just enough to get by, to preparing adequately for performance.” (“Preparing adequately” was what counted as praise.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XEVbTM">
|
||
My teacher wasn’t wrong — I <em>had</em> generally practiced only out of sheer obligation, or when my mother cajoled me into sitting down at the baby grand we’d inherited from my great-grandmother, which was always slightly out of tune.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="leLwSU">
|
||
I suffered from the classic gifted child cliché of simultaneously being a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3408483/">perfectionist</a> and also expecting everything to come easily to me, because a lot of things <em>did</em> come easily to me. But being able to pick up something quickly is not the same as mastering it, and I had a tendency to lose interest once whatever it was that I was doing became a little bit difficult, and so I was kind of good at a lot of different things. I had quit ballet when we got to pointe shoes because it was too hard, and I was a decent swimmer but not a great one, and so on.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XI139Q">
|
||
As I got older, I wondered whether it was laziness or, in some twisted way, my perfectionist tendencies coming out again: I didn’t want to fully commit to something, to really give something my all, because what if I did and I <em>still</em> wasn’t the best at it? Better to just jump ship before I put in any real effort.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="0szbjF"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VtarDe">
|
||
In April 2019, I had a baby, and the piano became even more of an afterthought as I became consumed with breastfeeding challenges and poop diapers and trying to get him to sleep; the idea of having a “hobby” was the furthest thing from my mind. Just a few months after I’d stopped breastfeeding and was starting to feel like a human again (I was going out to dinner! With friends! And not worrying about having to pump!), we went into lockdown. I had time on my hands that I’d never had before, and I needed things to fill it. I learned how to play mah-jongg. I read every <em>Bridgerton</em> book. I got a Peloton. I didn’t feel like I needed to go on a self-improvement quest, exactly, but I was also trying to stave off anxiety and depression, and finding activities that weren’t doomscrolling seemed important. Then, this past March, a woman in a local parenting group I belong to on Facebook posted that she was looking for someone to teach her piano, and another person responded with the name and website of her daughter’s harp teacher, who also teaches piano.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UChBdy">
|
||
At that point we had been in lockdown for more than a year. I was working, and I had a <a href="https://www.doree-shafrir.com/thanks-for-waiting">memoir coming out</a> in a few months, but my nights were generally free after I put my son to bed — and, of course, there was the matter of the expensive keyboard sitting in the corner of my office, taunting me. My son, who was now almost 2, had figured out how to turn it on and loved to bang on the keys. <em>At least someone’s getting some enjoyment out of this thing</em>, I thought every time he gleefully marched over and started pounding away. Maybe, I thought, piano lessons were what I needed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="2c0Ezh">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="raO2gE">
|
||
I started lessons with Emma a couple of weeks later over Zoom. “I haven’t taken lessons in literally 30 years,” I said by way of introduction, “so I have no idea how this is going to go.” Even as I said it, I realized I was qualifying myself, prepping Emma for my imperfections. We started with some scales and arpeggios, and then I had a book of sonatinas that I’d bought when I got the piano, and we decided to work from there. She chose one by the composer Anton Diabelli for me to start with. Cautiously, I went over the first few lines with her, playing each hand individually, picking out the notes one by one. I could still read music, which was reassuring, although there were some notes I no longer knew by sight. I found myself getting anxious as I tried to figure them out quickly. <em>Breathe</em>, I thought. It was just a piano lesson. No one else was watching; no one else cared. It was just me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xZEozA">
|
||
“I’d try to practice 15 to 30 minutes a day,” Emma told me, “but of course, whatever you can manage will be fine.” I nodded. Surely I could handle 15 minutes a day?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jg6vB0">
|
||
It turned out that I could handle 15 minutes a day. I could also handle 30 minutes a day, and sometimes, I could handle 45 minutes a day. I started practicing at night, after my son went to bed, and found myself looking forward to that time. It was time when I wasn’t on my phone, but it was also time when I could plug in headphones and be totally, completely immersed in the piano.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o0CFMM">
|
||
Practicing now, as an adult, was completely different than when I had practiced as a kid. To the extent that I felt obligated to practice, it was an obligation to myself — not to anyone else. The repetition calmed me; going over tricky bits in each piece I was learning was incredibly satisfying. I also found that I loved to listen to the pieces I was learning and follow along on the sheet music — there was something almost religious about it, like I was following along with the Hebrew text at synagogue. I don’t plan on ever performing for an audience, I’m not monetizing it in any way, I’m not doing it for anything other than sheer enjoyment and the satisfaction of seeing myself get better at something solely for the sake of getting better at it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qyPmbs">
|
||
To my great surprise, at age 44, I have an actual hobby. I don’t duet with my husband (yet), but I <em>did</em> recently buy the sheet music for the Roxette rock ballad “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fGLiIvKKys">Fading Like a Flower</a>,” which has an earworm-worthy piano melody and a driving guitar, so I wouldn’t rule anything out.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TMl9QD">
|
||
<em>Doree Shafrir is a writer and podcaster whose work has appeared in the Cut, the New York Times, Slate, and elsewhere. Her new memoir, </em><a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.penguinrandomhouse.com%2Fbooks%2F616953%2Fthanks-
|
||
for-waiting-by-doree-shafrir%2F&referrer=vox.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2Fthe-
|
||
highlight%2F22621995%2Fhobby-piano-lessons-adulthood-free-time" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><em>Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer</em></a><em>, was published in June by Ballantine Books.</em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>We can prevent the next pandemic without settling the lab leak debate</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/thumbor/wz6fBEsFjGb3NZJSz3oiKnF4480=/60x0:2727x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69782793/GettyImages_1334761710_copy.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Medical workers examine samples from local residents to be tested for Covid-19 at a mobile test lab in Yangzhou, China. | Meng Delong/VCG via Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Covid-19’s origins are murky, but how to reduce the risks of another pandemic is clear.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JGVss1">
|
||
The origins of the novel coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic remain a mystery. US intelligence agencies have now completed a 90-day probe into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, but their classified findings, according to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/us/politics/us-intelligence-agencies-
|
||
delivered-a-report-to-biden-on-the-viruss-origins.html">New York Times</a>, were inconclusive as to whether the virus <a href="https://www.vox.com/22453571/lab-leak-covid-19-coronavirus-hypothesis-wuhan-virology-china">escaped from a laboratory</a> in Wuhan, China, or made a natural jump from an animal into a human.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pgK9a8">
|
||
Yet to prevent the next pandemic, scientists don’t need a definitive answer about the genesis of Covid-19. Regardless of how the coronavirus outbreak started, researchers say the world urgently needs to do more to prevent both lab leaks <em>and</em> so-called “spillover” infections from animals. Tracing the route of the virus is an important scientific question, but countries can and should take steps to reduce these risks now, even without a final answer.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GFN4ZE">
|
||
“We don’t have to wait for all these results to start acting,” said <a href="https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/about/leadership/andrew-weber/">Andrew Weber</a>, senior fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks and a former assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs under President Barack Obama. “There’s some big policy decisions that we can make now.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="UpHYHV">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Usd7ix">
|
||
Right now, the Covid-19 pandemic is continuing to rage around the world; dozens of countries are fighting the spread of the highly contagious <a href="https://www.vox.com/22547537/delta-
|
||
coronavirus-variant-covid-19-vaccines-masks-lockdown">delta variant</a>, and many are struggling to get enough vaccines to protect themselves. Figuring out just where the virus came from would do little to mitigate the current crisis.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sg4lVA">
|
||
It may be years before the world gets a satisfying answer, and one may never emerge. But in the meantime, from regulating wildlife markets to transparency around biological research, there are many measures that can reduce the risk of future outbreaks.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="cbvkTy">
|
||
Both spillovers and laboratory leaks of pathogens have happened before
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y9wsVv">
|
||
There were warnings that humanity was at risk of a pandemic even before Covid-19, and at several points the world has come scarily close.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1ni673">
|
||
Several dangerous pathogens have <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly-pathogens-escape-lab-smallpox-bird-flu">escaped laboratories</a> in the past and gone on to infect people. In 1977, an outbreak of <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26286690/">H1N1 influenza</a> erupted on the border between China and the Soviet Union. Based on a genetic analysis of the strain, many researchers concluded the virus escaped from a lab. Smallpox, meanwhile, was eradicated from the wild in 1977; the following year, Janet Parker, a photographer at Birmingham Medical School in the UK, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly-pathogens-escape-lab-smallpox-
|
||
bird-flu">became infected and later died</a>. The building she worked in housed a research laboratory where scientists were studying smallpox.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qmjaL5">
|
||
In 2004, at least <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC416634/">two unnamed researchers contracted the SARS virus</a> at the Chinese National Institute of Virology in Beijing. One of the researchers went on to infect her mother, who later died, as well as a nurse at the hospital where her mother was treated. The outbreak led to 1,000 people being quarantined or placed under medical supervision. At the time, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported there may have been similar outbreaks of SARS in Taiwan and Singapore that also may have originated in labs.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/U7Xqa-cdGh173eUf6i4SxS8eetk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22807887/GettyImages_1234335793_copy.jpg"/> <cite>Li Bo/Xinhua via Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
The “Falcon” air-inflated testing labs for Covid-19 nucleic acid testing in China’s Jiangsu Province on July 27.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aKehOH">
|
||
There have been even more <a href="https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-laboratory-escapes-self-fulfilling-prophecies/">alarming close calls</a> where scientists were exposed to dangerous pathogens due to equipment failure or lax adherence to containment protocols.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pmr2EM">
|
||
However, every known lab leak to date has involved a pathogen that was previously identified. There has never been a confirmed case of a never-before-seen virus escaping a research facility.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wTvgza">
|
||
At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, virologists point out that the vast majority of pathogens that infect humans originate in nature, and almost all come from interactions with animals. Over the past century, about <a href="https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/preventingfuturepandemics/">two new viruses per year</a> have been discovered in humans, most of which spilled over from animals, according to a 2012 paper in <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0354"><em>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B</em></a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OfeFeT">
|
||
“All these spillovers, wherever they are, it’s because human activity is encroaching upon animal activity,” <a href="https://microbiology.columbia.edu/faculty-vincent-racaniello">Vincent Racaniello</a>, a virologist at Columbia University, told Vox in June.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JHraTv">
|
||
<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/flu.html">Influenza</a>, for example, is found in birds, poultry, pigs, and seals. HIV likely originated in <a href="https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-
|
||
aids/origin">chimpanzees</a>. Measles has an ancestor in <a href="https://ph.ucla.edu/news/press-
|
||
release/2020/jun/research-origins-measles-provides-insight-dealing-current-future">cattle</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TOtE29">
|
||
In fact, another coronavirus, the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/fs-sars.html">2003 SARS virus</a>, was found to have jumped from bats to civet cats before making the leap to humans. And scientists have warned for years that another bat coronavirus could <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985">trigger an outbreak in people</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="IEh2UN">
|
||
The debate over Covid-19’s origins may never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b59uCo">
|
||
Many researchers in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic were quick to attribute the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to a natural occurrence, likely a human contact with a bat coronavirus via an intermediary. Two recent papers, one in the journal <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/08/16/science.abh0117"><em>Science</em></a> and one in the journal <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(21)00991-0.pdf"><em>Cell</em></a>, emphasized this conclusion, citing genetic evidence tracing both the lineage of the virus and the circumstances in China in late 2019 that increased the likelihood of humans coming into contact with wild animals that could harbor the pathogen.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z4Y6yn">
|
||
Still, some scientists have argued for closer scrutiny of the possibility that the novel coronavirus escaped from a lab. The most basic hypothesis is that a worker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was infected by a naturally occurring virus under study there. There is no direct evidence for this, nor any indication that SARS-CoV-2 or a progenitor was being studied at the lab, let alone that someone who worked there was infected. Wuhan is about 1,000 miles away from where the bats that harbor a similar virus are found, raising the question of how SARS-CoV-2 crossed that distance. The laboratory was also known to handle its<strong> </strong>viral samples at a lower safety level than most scientists recommend for such a pathogen. In addition, no one has found an animal that clearly hosted the virus or a precursor just before it leaped into humans.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
|
||
<aside id="kVgpdx">
|
||
<q>“All these spillovers, wherever they are, it’s because human activity is encroaching upon animal activity” —Vincent Racaniello</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZkGUn">
|
||
More fringe ideas are also circulating, like the notion that the virus was deliberately engineered to be more dangerous or deliberately released as a bioweapon. There’s no evidence for these claims.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MYF9uS">
|
||
With the passage of time, however, it’s becoming more difficult for scientists to study the origins of Covid-19. In a recent article in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02263-6"><em>Nature</em></a>, WHO researchers warned that time is running out: “The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5HZPHC">
|
||
Another complication is that the question of where the virus came from has become a political issue domestically and internationally. Within the US, some politicians have been eager to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-republican-report-says-coronavirus-leaked-chinese-lab-scientists-
|
||
still-2021-08-02/">blame a lab for the pandemic</a> and shift the blame to China.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yIwgjR">
|
||
That, in turn, has become a major source of friction between the United States and China. Chinese officials <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/22/1019244601/china-who-coronavirus-lab-leak-
|
||
theory">stopped cooperating with a WHO investigation</a> into the origins of the coronavirus earlier this year and responded with their own allegations that the virus originated in a US lab (<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/china/china-covid-origin-mic-intl-hnk/index.html">for which there is no evidence</a>).
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HbxzB7">
|
||
And without cooperation from Chinese authorities, it’s unlikely that a definitive answer — one way or the other — will emerge anytime soon.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="kLudAt">
|
||
Scientists already know how to stop lab leaks
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5T9gCd">
|
||
There are many ways to improve safety in laboratories and install safeguards to prevent dangerous diseases from escaping and wreaking havoc. Even scientists who think the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 was a natural event say that preventing lab leaks should be a high priority.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4lfaYp">
|
||
<a href="https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-people/gronvall/">Gigi Gronvall</a>, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said it’s important to think about two key concepts: “Biosafety” is about protecting people who work with pathogens from the things they are studying, usually through accidents. “Biosecurity” is preventing misuse of pathogens via deliberate actions.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TkzosQ">
|
||
Both are essential to prevent leaks of biological agents, but they’re often afterthoughts when it comes to conducting research on pathogens. “It’s hard to make this exciting,” Gronvall said. “That is why very often the money goes to research, and biosafety is less emphasized.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aHLaFO">
|
||
One way to enhance biosafety is to deploy several different methods of containment in a laboratory. For instance, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/lab-biosafety-
|
||
guidelines.html">biosafety level 3</a> precautions for handling pathogens that can spread through the air include only handling samples in “biological safety cabinets” that filter air, controlling lab access with two sets of self-locking doors, and wearing respirators, eye protection, and lab coats. It also includes routine medical screening of lab workers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RacjOM">
|
||
“Ideally, if there is any kind of accident, there are still multiple layers before it becomes an issue for anyone outside a laboratory,” Gronvall said.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Tyybix5aSQI9y2Hrd9BpMZvh5RU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22807903/AP21034209534777_copy.jpg"/> <cite>Ng Han Guan/AP</cite></p>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Journalists and security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a visit by a team from the World Health Organization on February 3.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UvoPLY">
|
||
Biosafety also hinges on the type of studies being conducted. Of particular concern is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/5/1/21243148/why-some-labs-work-on-making-viruses-deadlier-and-why-they-should-
|
||
stop">gain-of-function research</a>, in which pathogens are deliberately modified to become more dangerous to humans. The goal is to map out potential changes that could emerge in the wild and develop ways to counter them before they become major threats. It’s a controversial form of research, and some have alleged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting such experiments — though, again, there is no evidence this occurred. US officials have also been adamant that they have not funded any gain-of-function research, either in the US or abroad.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y7fvdM">
|
||
Some scientists say this kind of research should not be conducted at all because the risk of an escape is too great, but others say gain-of-function studies can be conducted safely with appropriate precautions.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3T81hu">
|
||
“Lab incidents will still occur. A robust biosafety and biosecurity system, along with appropriate institutional response, helps to ensure that these incidents are inconsequential,” biosafety experts David Gillum (Arizona State University) and Rebecca Moritz (Colorado State University) wrote for <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-gain-of-function-research-
|
||
matters-162493">the Conversation</a>. “The challenge is to make sure that any research conducted — gain-of-function or otherwise — doesn’t pose unreasonable risks to researchers, the public and the environment.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1C21AW">
|
||
Building a robust biosecurity system requires cooperation from institutions ranging from laboratories to regulators to governments. It demands rigorous oversight to enforce safety standards. Transparency among institutions about the kinds of biological research they’re conducting, as well as potential mishaps and accidents, is also critical. But there’s a pervasive fear among laboratories and the individuals who work there that disclosing problems will hurt their reputations.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LwKc3H">
|
||
“If there is a biosafety incident, it is very hard to get that addressed in a way that doesn’t cause problems for an institution,” Gronvall said. “They have a lot of incentives to keep it under wraps.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZVeEk">
|
||
That’s also why it’s been hard to know whether China is stonewalling investigators because of a potential lapse in laboratory protocol or out of general distrust of other countries and institutions like the WHO. “A bat could’ve walked out of a cave wearing a name tag and China would behave the same way,” Gronvall said.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gXyzE3">
|
||
Fixing this requires a change in the culture surrounding biological research to create an environment where mistakes and problems are discussed openly and addressed immediately. Inspections, monitoring, and documentation would also make it harder to sweep any problems under the rug.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ebndQ">
|
||
What’s tougher is enforcing these principles around the world. There is an international agreement restricting research on biological weapons, the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/biological-weapons/">Biological Weapons Convention</a>, but there’s no similar agreement for general biological research. Many countries have their own research programs for pathogens, and it’s the Wild West when it comes to what standards are used and what studies are done.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8JksT6">
|
||
“There’s really no international body that has the authority to oversee biological security or biological safety,” said Weber, from the Council on Strategic Risks. “We should work with [the] international community to adopt real standards for biosecurity and for high-risk research.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KuPPhs">
|
||
Some pathogen laboratories, like the US Army’s Fort Detrick in Maryland, already have exchange programs with researchers around the world. More exchanges and international inspections of biological research labs could help ensure that every facility adopts best practices and upholds the highest safety and security standards. But setting up such a regime requires trust and cooperation, and that’s in short supply.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="9k3oMV">
|
||
“Natural” spillovers, which often have human causes, can be prevented, too
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x4IO8P">
|
||
Pathogens found in the wild have infected people for millennia, but there are ways to tame this force of nature. “What we can do is reduce the rate of exposure of humans,” said <a href="https://dobber.princeton.edu/">Andrew Dobson</a>, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IiCtA4">
|
||
For example, a key route for new human diseases is contact with wildlife. Such interactions increase as cities sprawl into the wilderness and people venture further into remote areas in search of food, fuel, and raw materials. When humans destroy habitats, especially through deforestation, they force animals to flee to new areas and interact with people in cities and suburbs. In one paper published in the journal <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6502/379"><em>Science</em></a> in 2020, Dobson reported that when more than 25 percent of original forest cover is lost, it’s much more likely for humans and their livestock to come into contact with wildlife that may carry diseases.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right c-float- hang">
|
||
<aside id="oyYD5d">
|
||
<q>“There’s really no international body that has the authority to oversee biological security or biological safety” —Andrew Weber</q>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="seDSk4">
|
||
“That’s what’s exposing people to the hosts and the carriers of these viruses,” said Dobson. Drastically reducing deforestation and placing strict limits on how much people can encroach into forests, grasslands, and deserts can slow the emergence of dangerous new parasites, viruses, bacteria, and fungi.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jkbtYW">
|
||
Domesticated animals, particularly livestock, can also be a source of new diseases. The combination of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3666729/">changes in land use</a> and factory farming of cattle, chicken, and hogs can <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00285-x">increase the risk of a pathogen</a> hopping between species.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oAiZ9i">
|
||
Another way to reduce the chances of a spillover is to close unregulated markets that sell wildlife as food, ingredients for medicines, or materials for clothing. Phasing out legal wildlife markets and screening the health of animals that humans do come into contact with would also reduce the risks of new diseases jumping into people. “There needs to be [many] more international treaties around that to protect people,” said Dobson.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/thumbor/ImHlaFiFLMDyGtOAyINzu1WgtmU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22807919/GettyImages_1239113754_copy.jpg"/> <cite>Amilia Roso/The Sydney Morning Herald via Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Live animals, including local wildlife, on sale in a bird market in Bali, Indonesia. Live animal markets have come under international scrutiny since the Covid-19 outbreak.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Bt26mC">
|
||
The hurdle is that the wildlife trade is quite lucrative. The legal wildlife market is worth about <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-wildlife-trade-and-what-are-the-answers-to-
|
||
managing-it-136337">$300 billion</a>, while estimates of the value of illegal wildlife trading can be as high as <a href="https://www.iisd.org/articles/evolving-war-illegal-wildlife-trade">$23 billion</a>. So reducing some of the highest-risk forms of wildlife trade also demands an economic solution for people whose livelihoods would be affected, such as helping them find new jobs.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3lSCze">
|
||
<a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n485">Surveillance</a> — actively looking for dangerous pathogens in the wild to stay ahead of outbreaks — is another important tactic, but there are some risks. Sending researchers into remote areas to collect samples and study them could expose them to dangerous diseases.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p7DKcj">
|
||
“We need to think more about the precautions people take and the security level in those labs,” Dobson said. “[But] the amount we’ll learn will significantly reduce the risk of future outbreaks.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="97l6tN">
|
||
The history of narrowly averted pandemics is full of crucial lessons
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uAg8Si">
|
||
Beyond probing the roots of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s also worth investigating close calls of the past. Viruses like the original SARS virus in 2003, for example, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636331/">had the potential to go global</a> but didn’t. The virus itself had some traits that prevented it from spreading further, and while many of the countries most acutely affected by the outbreak, like China and Vietnam, learned critical public health lessons, much of the rest of the world remained complacent.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yUTzyT">
|
||
In a 2013 paper in the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0149206313498905"><em>Journal of Management</em></a>, researchers looking at problems with uncrewed NASA missions highlighted the important lessons that can be found in near-miss scenarios like this. “Disasters are rarely generated by large causes,” the authors noted. “Instead disasters are produced by combinations of small failures and errors across the entire organizational system.” So whether SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab or a natural event, a lot of other things also had to go wrong for it to become an international crisis.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="RIrsY4">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DXkBbM">
|
||
When all these factors don’t align in a particular instance and fail to produce a disaster, it’s easy to take the wrong lesson — that humans were adequately prepared or that the status quo of science and public health is good enough already. But it’s dangerous to ignore close calls, whether it’s a near collision between satellites or a new pathogen that was narrowly contained.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fTktrV">
|
||
“If near-misses masquerade as successes, then organizations and their members will only learn to continue taking the risks that produced the near-miss outcome until a tragedy occurs,” the researchers wrote.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DZd4pA">
|
||
That’s why it’s important to study the factors behind not just the Covid-19 pandemic but also other outbreaks like those of Ebola, SARS, and MERS, which raised alarms and revealed weaknesses in national and global public health systems.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xciTyh">
|
||
We may not unravel the origins of SARS-CoV-2 anytime soon — if ever. But by treating both spillovers and lab leaks as urgent risks right now, scientists, health officials, and governments can protect us all from outbreaks of the future.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ryiuGf">
|
||
</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>It’s time to rethink air conditioning</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="A vintage photo of a woman relaxing in front of a window-mounted air conditioner in her home." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-ZCD81SyFH4DHXV-V-fGN_nhZAM=/0x0:5731x4298/1310x983/cdn.vox-
|
||
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69779807/GettyImages_1220341976.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Debrocke/ClassicStock via Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Air conditioning warms the planet. Here’s how to break a vicious cycle.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XjhwMx">
|
||
What if the most American symbol of unsustainable consumption isn’t the automobile, but the air conditioner? In cool indoor spaces, it’s easy to forget that billions of people around the world don’t have cooling — and that air conditioning is worsening the warming that it’s supposed to protect us from.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d0nyas">
|
||
There are alternatives: We can build public cooling spaces and <a href="https://www.vox.com/22557563/how-to-redesign-cities-for-
|
||
heat-waves-climate-change">smarter cities</a>, with fixes like white paint and more greenery. Some experts have hailed <a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/12/why-heat-pumps-are-the-answer-to-heat-waves/">heat pump technology as a more efficient option</a>. But as the planet warms and more of its inhabitants have spare income, AC sales are increasing. Ten air conditioners will be sold every second for the next 30 years, according to a United Nations <a href="https://www.ccacoalition.org/en/slcps/hydrofluorocarbons-hfcs">estimate</a>.<strong> </strong>Access to air conditioning can literally <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-extreme-heat-is-so-deadly/">mean life or death</a> for the young, elderly, and those with medical conditions such as compromised immune systems.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EJd6TV">
|
||
The rise of ACs has an enormous cost: Over time, chemicals known as refrigerants leak out of AC units and accelerate climate change.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right">
|
||
<div id="TdLRNQ">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NaFWYb">
|
||
International treaties have tried to fix this. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol banned the production of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that were rapidly depleting the ozone layer and damaging forests and croplands. The typical narrative is that as scientists sounded the alarm, the world came together and set binding targets for phasing out the chemicals. In doing so, we averted a catastrophic threat to life on Earth.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wTPtDN">
|
||
The chemicals that replaced CFCs are called hydrofluorocarbons. While HFCs don’t deplete the ozone, they are powerful heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Phasing out HFCs, which are thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is one of the most <a href="https://drawdown.org/solutions/refrigerant-management">critical actions</a> the world can take this decade to curb climate change. Earlier this year, the United States belatedly <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/5/4/22417242/air-
|
||
conditioning-refrigerators-epa-michael-regan-regulation-hfcs-hydroflurocarbons">signed</a> the 2016 Kigali amendment, which extends the Montreal Protocol to almost entirely phase out HFCs over the next 30 years.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vH3Fu8">
|
||
Eric Dean Wilson, the Brooklyn-based author of the book <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/After-Cooling/Eric-
|
||
Dean-Wilson/9781982111298"><em>After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort,</em></a> is skeptical that phasing out these chemicals will be easy. He’s concerned that a form of protection from a warming world should involve swapping out one chemical for another.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oD13Kp">
|
||
He also made a more radical argument that, in the United States and even around the world, a big cultural shift could lead to a more communal idea of cooling, instead of a retreat to our separately cooled homes. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="4UrjdM">
|
||
Why air conditioning is becoming<strong> </strong>a climate disaster
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R6Juwk">
|
||
<strong>What drew you to writing about ACs?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5O2iKv">
|
||
It’s easier for us to understand climate violence in terms of things like hurricane damage or wildfires. They’re very spectacular. But what’s actually happening is a lot more tedious and really difficult to narrate.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r1VNaZ">
|
||
I realized air conditioning was a way to get at the very material nature of the climate crisis — but in a way that is quite unspectacular, because the refrigerant is literally invisible to all the senses. The paradox is that we’re surrounded by air conditioning, but hardly anybody thinks about it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h8canL">
|
||
What I hoped to do with the book was by tracing this history people could consider a radically different way of living, one that doesn’t have to be suffering. It can actually be pleasurable. I think a lot of people are too afraid to even try that because they think they have to give something up. I hope that it can open the door just a little bit for people to really re-contextualize what it means to be comfortable. I think there’s something to be said about making us a bit more comfortable with the discomfort of outside air.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7l8XrL">
|
||
<strong>The Montreal Protocol has been hailed as such a success at phasing out ozone-destroying CFCs that I didn’t even realize there’s still clearly a market for these chemicals in the United States. </strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kMT7Ns">
|
||
The Montreal Protocol worked. It took years and years of revision, but it started with the international community coming together and deciding that this was a crisis, that they needed to act on it now. It wasn’t an easy win for international policy, but it was and remains the only international environmental treaty whose target emissions are legally binding.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="M2gvLQ">
|
||
The Montreal Protocol was a lot easier because it targeted a Western world. The ozone crisis was seen as targeting, first and foremost, white people (even though that narrative wasn’t actually true). The US government thought that because they banned production of CFCs, and most of the world was going to follow quickly behind, the supply of CFCs would run out by the year 2000. That didn’t happen. And there’s really no government program, still, to clean it up.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XJWUXr">
|
||
<strong>You profile Sam Schiller, who is in the business of tracking, reclaiming, and destroying this refrigerant, Freon, that is technically illegal to produce. What did his work tell you about the world’s mission now, to phase out climate pollutants in air conditioners</strong><s><strong>?</strong></s>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zFdMtl">
|
||
Sam’s work reveals a huge gap in federal policy. The federal and international focus was on stopping production of a dangerous refrigerant. For a material like Freon-12 (CFC-12), which is what Sam was looking for, there’s a finite amount of it as material that is no longer produced. But there’s really no government program to clean it up. And once it’s been smuggled into the country, then it can be bought and sold legally.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O3w2q7">
|
||
It’s really difficult to actually destroy the refrigerant, or even contain it. And you can imagine why because you basically have to do what Sam did — which is to trawl the corners of the United States looking for this material God knows where.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YAPKiD">
|
||
<strong>And Sam deals with some hostility along the way while buying these refrigerants to destroy them safely — some people who distrust environmentalists and who don’t believe in climate change. What did you learn from him?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2g9Y2r">
|
||
The last section of the book is about Sam’s relationship with “The Iceman,” a guy who was particularly hostile and also a big shot in the refrigerant reclaimer business. That section tells the story of Sam being told to get off his property because he was a “carbon guy” and that he didn’t want Sam to buy it if he was going to destroy it. Sam is bold enough to try to have a conversation with him, and he was able to convince the guy that there was no reason why he shouldn’t sell it to him.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4akCjC">
|
||
Over the years, they got to be actually really good friends, and just before he died he told Sam that he had really changed his views. I think talking to those communities is sometimes seen as a lost cause and a waste of energy, and Sam didn’t see that.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3q1jJr">
|
||
Sam shows you need radical systemic change, but if you don’t have cultural change along with that, it’s many, many times harder to actually do it — and maybe even fails.<strong> </strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ud2eoW">
|
||
I’ve gotten death threats in my DMs from people, daring me to come to their house and take their air conditioner. The actions of the federal government or policymakers are going to be seen as an infringement on individual rights.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="X7umKh">
|
||
Air conditioning has a racist history and present
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gM8Khq">
|
||
<strong>You cite New York City’s statistics that even though Black residents make up 22 percent of the population, they account for half of all the heat fatalities in the city. What are the ways we see racism play out in the disparities in air conditioning and cooling today?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lRJIX9">
|
||
From the very beginning, even before air conditioning’s invention, people who were enslaved in the 18th century were denied any cooling.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RpMZdV">
|
||
After World War II, the GI Bill famously gave mortgages to white homeowners and denied them to Black homeowners and basically anyone who wasn’t white. It was a lot easier for white homeowners to have access to cooling. So that left a huge gap, especially in the South, between Black homeowners and white homeowners.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lUnF8s">
|
||
It’s never really closed entirely. That is a huge issue in a city like New York, in working-class neighborhoods where there’s a higher percentage of Black and brown residents than there are white residents who are shut out from air conditioning. That’s because even people who can afford air conditioning may not be guaranteed they’ll have the energy to power them during a heat wave.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BD89kZ">
|
||
In a heat wave, because of the strain on the energy grid from climate disasters, a private, monopolized energy company will sometimes <a href="https://grist.org/article/during-deadly-heat-wave-new-
|
||
york-utility-cut-power-to-high-risk-neighborhoods/">deliberately shut off</a> the energy grid in order to preserve the integrity of the whole, and the neighborhoods that they choose to do that in are the ones that generate the least profit — which are usually working-class neighborhoods of color.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="go6250">
|
||
And then there’s the wealth disparity that we’re seeing, especially in developing countries: that air conditioning units have become a marker of class and sometimes ethnic divisions, of who can and cannot afford AC. That’s why an approach to cooling justice — ways to make sure that everyone has access — is super crucial because AC has really become a dividing tool.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="zsGnyL">
|
||
“We don’t treat heat waves like the emergency they are”
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="llSrpe">
|
||
<strong>We’re all thinking a lot about the safety of indoor spaces because of Covid-19. What strikes you about those debates given your research on cooling?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="imGVje">
|
||
I had done all this research on what’s sometimes called the open-air battles of schools in the early 20th century, especially in New York. There were these really fierce ideological divisions between people who thought that school rooms should be mechanically ventilated, and others who thought that school rooms should have open windows. There was even a school in Chicago where in the winter they had to give students fur coats and put them on the roof. It was still seen that “fresh air” was healthier. “Healthy” and “fresh” air is a debatable term when you’re in a city where there’s lots of pollution.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jASj63">
|
||
That debate really died out once you had central air conditioning systems toward the end of the 1930s and ’40s. By then, it was mandated that schools were ventilated, and they’re supposed to have air conditioning — although some still don’t have it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="dP7u9O">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qfAMIs">
|
||
With the pandemic, we see all these questions again almost exactly 100 years later. It’s like we haven’t really solved this. What’s healthy? How much ventilation is healthy? Should public spaces like schools be cooled all the time?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kW1bnE">
|
||
<strong>Many of the people reading this may be sitting in an air-conditioned space right now. So what is the alternative vision?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HN4raz">
|
||
I’m interested in more radical changes so that the same technology that was bred in the United States, and that same definition of comfort, doesn’t just get carbon-copied and spread to the rest of the world.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aUMGHQ">
|
||
When you have open asphalt, which often falls in sections of the city with the working poor, you have hotter cities. Planting more trees and green space can lower the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22538401/heat-wave-record-temperature-extreme-climate-change-
|
||
drought">urban heat island</a> effect by several degrees. You can also have better-designed buildings, but that’s tricky because you need new materials and lots of money. You can provide heat pumps, but you also need to redesign the building’s air systems. And we also need more access to publicly cooled spaces so that we’re not all, individually, cooling our homes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ii8zh3">
|
||
And then there are the cultural solutions: It’s really worth looking at why heat waves cause so many deaths. We don’t treat heat waves like the emergency they are. In a heat wave, people assume you just keep working. It’s not just that people die because they get too hot. It’s often because the medical infrastructure is not there. It’s often that even the people who have air conditioning are too afraid to turn it on because they can’t afford it. It’s often because people are left alone.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Have enhanced raiding skills: Pawan Sehrawat ahead of Pro-Kabaddi League</strong> - The Bengaluru Bulls star player is confident that he will be able to deliver his best for the season</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Eng vs Ind third Test | India loses Rahul at lunch on Day 3, still trails by 320 runs</strong> - India will have to bat extremely well to first avoid an innings defeat and then try to save the game.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Paralympics Games 2020 | Rakesh finishes third, Chikara in top-10 in ranking round of archery competition</strong> - Jyoti Baliyan, who is the only female member to have qualified for the Paralympics, secured a 15th place ranking in the compound open event</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Pak PM Imran Khan nominates Rameez Raja as PCB chairman</strong> - Imran Khan and Raja were teammates on the 1992 World Cup squad that beat England in the final.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Hamilton chases 100th F1 win on Schumacher’s favorite track</strong> - Hamilton has won every title since 2014 except for 2016, when his then-Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg won the title in the last race.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>MP writes to CM seeking curbs on fan pages of IAS, IPS officers</strong> - This is the second time in recent days that Mysuru MP Pratap Simha has raised the issue</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Carefully monitoring developments in Afghanistan, says MEA</strong> - Arindam Bagchi said India is in touch with various parties regarding operating evacuation flights from Afghanistan.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>CPI (Maoist) divisional committee member surrenders before police in Khammam</strong> - Ekkanti Seetharam Reddy alias Naganna had been working underground for more than three decades</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kannada groups ask parties to stay away from MES</strong> - They accuse the party of provoking people on the basis of language and State affiliations</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Varavara Rao seeks extension of medical bail</strong> - Plea before Bombay HC mentions adherence to all court directions despite multiple ailments</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Austrian ex-far-right leader Strache guilty of corruption</strong> - The verdict comes two years after a video sting ended Heinz-Christian Strache’s political career.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French presidency: Michel Barnier joins race ‘to change France’</strong> - The former EU Brexit negotiator says he will take on Emmanuel Macron in the elections next spring.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Young Afghan mayor who fled Taliban hidden in car</strong> - One of Afghanistan’s first female mayors, Zarifa Ghafari, describes her dramatic escape to Germany.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Mass brawl erupts in Armenian parliament: Third violent bout in just two days</strong> - Security personnel were called in to remove several members after violence erupted on the parliament floor.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Micheál Martin to meet in Dublin</strong> - The DUP leader says the EU needs to “change its tune” on the Northern Ireland Protocol.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Overwatch’s cowboy will be renamed after namesake’s sexual assault claims</strong> - Announcement of name change comes day after new accusation in California lawsuit. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1790106">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Rocket Report: Webb telescope ready for launch, LOX shortage slows SpaceX</strong> - “Large NASA taxpayer investments are being thrown away.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1790054">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The 2021 BMW X5 xDrive45e—a big battery gives this hybrid a useful range</strong> - BMW has doubled the battery capacity compared to the old model. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1790077">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Apple will finally let devs tell users about non-App Store purchase options</strong> - Proposed settlement would make it a bit easier to avoid Apple App Store commission. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1790177">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>More people are poisoning themselves with horse-deworming drug to thwart COVID</strong> - Don’t make the FDA warn you again that you are neither horse nor cow. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1790157">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>Anyone know of a cure for sex addiction?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I’ve tried fucking everything
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/nothinlefttochoose"> /u/nothinlefttochoose </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcbws5/anyone_know_of_a_cure_for_sex_addiction/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcbws5/anyone_know_of_a_cure_for_sex_addiction/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Thanks to a very healthy lifestyle, a married couple live well into their 100s</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
One day they are both killed in a tragic accident, and go to heaven.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
On the first morning, they go up to God and ask where the gym is. “Gym?” God replies, “you don’t need to go to the gym here, you’ll always be in perfect shape even if you never exercise.” The wife says how nice that is, but the husband looks a little bit annoyed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
In the afternoon, they go back to God and ask where they can get high factor sunscreen. “This is heaven, you don’t need it anymore, the sun can’t burn you or give you cancer, enjoy the beaches.” The wife is satisfied, but the husband starts looking genuinely angry.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Later in the evening, they go to God and ask where they can find a health food restaurant for dinner. “We don’t have health food restaurants, you can eat as much as you want of whatever you want and never feel bloated or gain any weight.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Finally the husband snaps, and yells at his wife “You see?! You see?! If it wasn’t for your bloody bran muffins, I could’ve been here forty years ago!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Wolfblood-is-here"> /u/Wolfblood-is-here </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcalvf/thanks_to_a_very_healthy_lifestyle_a_married/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcalvf/thanks_to_a_very_healthy_lifestyle_a_married/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>A guy with no arms walks into a bathroom….</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
So there’s a guy washing his hands and the guy with no arms says “hey man I’m a lil embarrassed, do you think you could help me out.” So he says sure, unzips the guys pants for him pulls his wiener out for him and it’s just the grossest most disgusting thing he’s ever seen, it’s all red and has open sores on it. So the guy with no arms finishes pissing and the other guy zips him up and he says “hey buddy, I don’t mean to be rude or anything but what’s wrong with your dick?” The guy with no arms pulls his arms outta his shirt and says “fuck if I know, but I ain’t touching it!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/jaltringer"> /u/jaltringer </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcgew7/a_guy_with_no_arms_walks_into_a_bathroom/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pcgew7/a_guy_with_no_arms_walks_into_a_bathroom/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>A PESSIMIST sees a dark tunnel</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
An OPTIMIST sees light at the end of the tunnel
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
A REALIST sees a freight train
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The TRAIN driver sees 3 idiots standing on the tracks
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Usef89"> /u/Usef89 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pbxtmh/a_pessimist_sees_a_dark_tunnel/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pbxtmh/a_pessimist_sees_a_dark_tunnel/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>How do you get an antivaxxer to shut up?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
<em>Source?</em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/superdude4agze"> /u/superdude4agze </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pc1hc4/how_do_you_get_an_antivaxxer_to_shut_up/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/pc1hc4/how_do_you_get_an_antivaxxer_to_shut_up/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
|
||
<script>AOS.init();</script></body></html> |