While the world’s attention is focused on controlling COVID-19, evidence points at the biodiversity crisis as a leading factor in its emergence. At first glance, the two issues might seem unrelated, but disease outbreaks and degraded ecosystems are deeply connected. Continue reading
The current focus on exotic food consumption in China often relies on Orientalisation, and is in some cases tinged with anti-Chinese sentiment. Continue reading
On a recent World Bank ‘Voices’ blog, German agricultural economist Juergen Voegele, World Bank vice president for sustainable development, said that with the emptying of supermarket shelves and the sweeping travel bans being put in place to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, one might deduce that global food supplies were low. That’s not the case, he says. Continue reading
Scientists say a moonshot effort is needed to end social distancing and this pandemic. Continue reading
While some COVID-19 surges are now ‘baked-in’, the viral curves should flatten with appropriate measures now being introduced in many countries, and several different vaccines are being developed and already being tested, says Nobel Laureate Peter Doherty. Australian veterinary and medical immunology researcher Peter Doherty won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Now based in Melbourne, Doherty is patron of the the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Doherty is also a former board member and current patron of ILRI. Continue reading
Gates’s model showed that a Spanish flu–like disease unleashed on the modern world would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days. “We’ve created, in terms of spread, the most dangerous environment that we’ve ever had in the history of mankind,” Gates says. Continue reading
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