Here's hoping for some silver linings to covid-19
I have spent many years watching politicians bring ignorance, stupidity and self-interest to issues (Letters, 11 April. That said, I have to agree with Bryn Glover that some of them deserve applause for their efforts in dealing with the coronavirus. I won’t be criticising their shortcomings on this given they’ve inherited a nightmare and they’re stepping away from their old ways to deal with it.
I will, however, be speaking out for full advantage to be taken of the good things that can come out of the crisis: more rational governance, accelerated medical research, cooperation between multinational drug companies, procedures for dealing with such events should they happen again and, not least, open minds to listen to whatever comes out of us all reviewing our lives.
How to escape from the lockdown
Graham Lawton outlines three distinct options for navigating our聽way to a safer future: hold the聽lockdown restrictions for an聽extended period to see off the聽virus; build medical capacity to cope with a second wave and then ease the lockdown; or end the聽lockdown more rapidly but shield the vulnerable.
Surely a better strategy would be to integrate all three. This could聽allow the best options to be聽taken as and when they are most appropriate.
The UK must also include more stringent travel restrictions, like those in Australia. It is clear that the regions with the biggest airports and passenger numbers (US and Europe) have the most covid-19 cases, whereas Africa and South America, which have no airports among the world鈥檚 50聽busiest, have the fewest.
Is air con a risk in the spread of the virus?
You reported on the question of whether warmer spring conditions could slow the virus’s rate of spread 4 April, p 8. Have any of the studies into the effects of temperature and humidity on the transmission of covid-19 taken air conditioning into account?
The use of air conditioning is widespread in most wealthy countries that experience very hot summers, such as Singapore and Australia. Hence many people in such nations spend a significant amount of their time indoors in an artificially cool and dry environment, conditions in which the virus might be most stable.
Could this, in part, explain why the incidence of covid-19 appears to be lower in African countries, where large parts of the population cannot afford air conditioning? In northern Europe, and the UK in particular, domestic air conditioning is also comparatively rare. Should the advice be to turn down or turn off air conditioning as the weather warms up in Europe?
Deliberate infection to test possible vaccines
Carrie Arnold explains the long road to an effective and safe coronavirus vaccine 21 March, p 44. The creator of the rubella vaccine, Stanley Plotkin, has : we should bypass ordinary testing protocol and expose volunteers in vaccine trials to the coronavirus after they are given test inoculations in order to check the efficacy of potential vaccines.
This idea was met with mixed responses. But with so many lives at stake, surely such a moonshot effort is worth it.
If we set aside ventilators and other critical care equipment for such volunteers, we may be able to reduce the risk to an acceptable level and find an effective vaccine more rapidly.
Australia's success seems to suggest sun is a help
You investigate why Australia has relatively few serious cases of covid-19 18 April, p 10. One factor could be that, at the end of summer in an outdoor living nation, few people will be deficient in vitamin D.
By contrast, in the northern hemisphere, other than in the tropics, people’s vitamin D levels are now likely to be low.
Deficiency is known to raise the risk of respiratory tract infections. If this is a significant factor in covid-19, then discouraging people from being outdoors at a time when the sun is strong enough to generate vitamin D is one of the worst things you can do.
Big pharma's taxes do fund public research
Sam Edge is certainly right when he says that pharmaceutical firms only bear a small part of the costs of vaccine development, as “most of their work is founded on existing research…” (Letters, 4 April). That is the way science works. Even Isaac Newton noted that he had seen further only because he could stand on the shoulders of others.
Edge suggests that drugs companies “pay little or nothing” to support that research. But they are, in fact, very significant taxpayers and so help support government finance of independent research in academic and healthcare organisations.
Parakeets may have invaded with Romans (1)
Thanks for an interesting article on the green parakeets that have invaded London 11 April, p 42.
Ring-necked parakeets have been brought to the West for a long time, no doubt along the Silk Road that has been in existence for thousands of years.
The Pergamon Museum in Berlin has a mosaic of one dating from the 2nd century BC. It has been misidentified as an Alexandrine parakeet and heavily and inaccurately restored, with an all-red bill (the bird has a black lower mandible) and red feet (the bird has beige feet), but the narrow red and black ring around its neck is from the original mosaic and clearly identify it as a male ring-necked parakeet.
They have probably been in Britain for more than 1900 years, brought by the Romans. In 2016, excavations in London found a wall painting dating from the 1st century AD, part of which shows an unmistakable pair of green parakeets.
Parakeets may have invaded with Romans (2)
Perhaps one of the reasons we are so loath to take vigorous lethal action against invasive parakeets is that they remind us of ourselves.
Are we not the ultimate invasive species? Modern humanity likes to live in crowds, is very noisy, wastes a huge amount of food and displaces or renders extinct quite a lot of other species. The only thing going for the parakeets is that they are good-looking.
On what we want from the rise of the machines
Regarding your review of sci-fi novel Providence, which is centred on the rise of powerful artificial intelligence: isn’t what we are striving for in our AI omniscience rather than omnipotence?
Only if said entity were to have agency might it be omnipotent as a result, but this is by no means logically inevitable 4 April, p 32.
Perhaps we conquered the world just like monkeys
You reported on research suggesting that monkeys travelled on driftwood rafts from Africa to South America 35 to 32 million years ago 18 April, p 19. The east Atlantic Benguela current would have helped take them to the Amazon when sea level was lower because water was locked up in Antarctic ice.
Perhaps people accomplished a similar feat from Polynesia to South America about 20,000 years ago when ice began to melt at the end of the last glacial maximum, causing sea level to rise rapidly and inundate low-lying islands.
Inhabitants would have been left with little alternative but to cast their fate to the ocean currents and travel on them to New Zealand and then on the eastward-flowing Antarctic current to Chile.
Conventional wisdom has it that people reached the Americas from north-east Asia via a land bridge to Alaska and then spread southwards.
Surely the incentive for Polynesian islanders to avoid drowning would have been greater than that for Asian people to hike across barren, frozen wastes. The chronological order of archaeological sites throughout the Americas also suggests that people spread from the south.
Walking wins, as you can multitask while strolling
Steve Haake looked at the merits of running over walking 14 March, p 34. One factor wasn’t considered: you can save time by reading while walking. Thus walking can’t be accused of wasting your time, the way running can.
Variety may be the secret to successful dieting
You report on a study testing various popular diets, which found that they all led to weight loss and improvements in cholesterol in the first six months, although the effects disappeared later on 11 April, p 18.
Perhaps the explanation is that the gut biome isn’t used to the new diet and somehow this causes weight loss and so on. But then, after six months, the biome adapts, and things go back to the way they were. So the solution is to change diets every six months. There’s plenty of choice!
Are we really off the hook over bear's extinction?
You report on a new study suggesting that cave bears died out at the height of the last glacial maximum 24,000 years ago because their skulls were shaped in a way that prevented them from switching to a diet of meat 11 April, p 18.
Like many similar ideas, this doesn’t explain why the bears were able to survive the equally severe glacial maximum about 140,000 years ago.
The difference is that modern humans hadn’t reached Europe at the time of the earlier glaciation. Is this another case of special pleading to let humans off the hook for causing extinctions of large mammals?
A classic take on life in the deep blue sea
Alert readers of “Creatures of the abyss” may have wondered about the names Osedax (said to mean “bone-eating” in Latin) and Xylophaga (said to mean “wood-eaters” in Latin) 18 April, p 40.
They seem to have nothing in common, so which bit means “eat”? The explanation for the conundrum is simple: Osedax is based on Latin and Xylophaga on Greek.
For the record 鈥� (2 May, 2020)
Exoplanet TOI-849b has a surface area that is about 12 times that of Earth (18 April, p 14).