‘Immunity Passports’ Exist, But Are They a Bad Idea?

‘Immunity Passports’ Exist, But Are They a Bad Idea? It might seem counterintuitive that, instead of needing a negative COVID-19 test to cross international borders, you could offer proof that you’d previously tested positive? Yet, these so-called ‘immunity passport’ policies already exist in certain countries, operating on the assumption that, having been infected and recovered, a person can’t contract or carry the virus again.

“Este virus va a seguir entre nosotros para siempre”

“Este virus va a seguir entre nosotros para siempre”: Ian Lipkin, uno de los mayores expertos en virus emergentes del planeta, opina que será imposible erradicar el SARS-CoV-2

P. ¿Cuándo cree que terminará esta pandemia?

R. Vamos a vivir el resto de nuestras vidas con este virus; no va a desaparecer. Habrá que vacunar a los recién nacidos para siempre y probablemente tengamos que dar dosis adicionales de recuerdo a los ya vacunados. Va a ser un problema recurrente. No creo que la vida vuelva a ser del todo normal.

 

Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard

Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard
: Too many of the COVID-19 models have led policymakers astray. Here’s how tomorrow’s models will get it right

Here’s How the Pandemic Finally Ends

Here’s How the Pandemic Finally Ends: A vaccine by early 2021, a steady decline in cases by next fall and back to normal in a few years—11 top experts look into the future.

Coronavirus changes we might want to keep

Coronavirus changes we might want to keep: The coronavirus pandemic has caused hardship and sorrow around the world, but it has also forced innovations that might stick around after the pandemic is under control. 

Why it matters: Some of those changes have proven to be popular and may improve people's lives if they become permanent.

Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond

The Road Ahead: Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond:Then there were moments when the new reality arrived with the subtlety of a sonic boom. Take March 11: Trump halted most travel from Europe. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they had Covid-19. The NBA suspended its season.

Now — with health authorities saying it may not be until at least the end of 2021 before there’s a degree of post-Covid normalcy in our lives — look forward. Imagine the next 15 months and what life will be like.

Forecasting the COVID-19 recession and recovery

Forecasting the COVID-19 recession and recovery: Forecasting the recession and recovery from the COVID-19 crisis is of substantial policy interest. The pandemic shock shares both similarities and differences with previous crises, such as the financial crisis of 2007-2009. This column evaluates the ability of different forecasting and nowcasting approaches to predict the COVID-19 economic shock and forecast the potential recovery path. It shows that adjusting for forecasting errors made during the financial crisis of 2007-2009 better aligns the COVID forecasts with observed data. The results suggest a slow recovery to pre-COVID-19 levels, lasting several years.

Here's what Google trends can tell us about the spread of coronavirus

Here's what Google trends can tell us about the spread of coronavirus: No one—not even Google—is suggesting that Google Trends is proven enough to replace existing epidemiological models. Instead, the fact that the data are now public means that researchers can continue to evaluate how it stacks up to the real world.

In terms of fighting Covid-19, Google Trends might be most useful to scientists figuring out the disease’s secondary health impacts.

Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard

Why Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 Is So Damn Hard
: Too many of the COVID-19 models have led policymakers astray. Here’s how tomorrow’s models will get it right

Charting the pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond

Charting the pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond: In this project, STAT describes 30 key moments, possible turning points that could steer the pandemic onto a different course or barometers for how the virus is reshaping our lives, from rituals like Halloween and the Super Bowl, to what school could look like, to just how long we might be incorporating precautions into our routines.

How to ensure a green and just COVID-19 recovery

How to ensure a green and just COVID-19 recovery: (Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan)

• Cities have the power to cut 90% of emissions and create 87 million jobs by 2030.

• The C40 Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force brings together mayors from around the world to forge a strong, swift, green recovery.

• Priorities are green jobs; safe, affordable housing; resilient infrastructure; renewable energy and zero-carbon mass transit.

COVID Recovery

COVID Recovery: Forecasts from Good Judgment's Professional Superforecasters

We Don’t Have to Despair

We Don’t Have to Despair: Medical research director Eric Topol sees light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.

How the pandemic might play out in 2021 and beyond

How the pandemic might play out in 2021 and beyond: This coronavirus is here for the long haul — here’s what scientists predict for the next months and years.

The Sociologist Who Could Save Us From Coronavirus

What we do have is a book, Risk Society, published by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck with exquisite timing in the spring of 1986.

Beck argued that the omnipresence of large-scale threats of global scope, anonymous and invisible, were the common denominator of our new epoch: “A fate of endangerment has arisen in modernity, a sort of counter-modernity, which transcends all our concepts of space, time, and social differentiation. What yesterday was still far away will be found today and in the future ‘at the front door.’” The question, so vividly exposed by the crises such as Chernobyl and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, is how to navigate this world. The relevance of Beck’s answers are even more apparent in our day than they were in his own. (...)

If we go back to 1986, Beck anticipated three ways in which societies might deal with the risks he identified.

What Beck himself hoped for was what he called a cosmopolitan micropolitics. This was a logical extension of his model of reflexive modernity, in which not just science has been dethroned, but also the previously demarcated sphere of national politics, dominated by parliaments, sovereign governments, and territorial states. What Europe witnessed starting in the 1980s was a double movement which, on the one hand, dramatically reduced the intensity of  political conflict between parties in the parliamentary sphere and, at the same time, politicized previously unpolitical realms such as gender relations, family life, and the environment, spheres which he dubbed “sub-politics” or “micropolitics.” For Beck this was no cause for lament. The challenge was to invigorate subpolitics at whatever scale they operated. This could be intensely local, as in struggles over road projects or airport runways. But it could also be global in scope.

What’s on the agenda for post-pandemic meetings?

What’s on the agenda for post-pandemic meetings? Hundreds of conferences have been cancelled, postponed or moved online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Physical meetings can be replicated virtually to some degree, and this has many benefits, including making access easier for people who have limited budgets, family commitments or disabilities. Some people are also quick to point out that moving meetings online can save attendees time and reduce their carbon emissions. But although video-conferencing technologies are becoming more familiar, critics say that they don’t allow the chance encounters and networking that take place at face-to-face events.

COVID-19 is unlikely to mean the end of physical conferences entirely. Yet many hope, or think, that the global health crisis will change meetings forever.

Why a worldwide Marshall Plan can create healthier cities

Why a worldwide Marshall Plan can create healthier cities

Pandemic Planning Scenarios

COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios | CDC: CDC and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) have developed five COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios that are designed to help inform decisions by public health officials who use mathematical modeling and by mathematical modelers throughout the federal government.

Working from Home During COVID

Working from Home During COVID: New cautions for HR managers on worker surveillance

The death of the city

The death of the city: Teleworking, not the coronavirus, is making urban living obsolete