How tough should we be on vaccine deniers?
Your recent leader contemplates and quite reasonably rejects the idea of leaving those who refuse the offer of a hoped-for covid-19 vaccine to “their fate” (Leader, 15 August). An even harsher idea can be envisaged, although I don’t for a moment advocate it. That would be to refuse healthcare to those who declined a vaccination without good cause and then contracted the disease.
However, some people might think a strictly utilitarian approach is appropriate. This would require the far from easy task of estimating the balance of two things. The first would be the lottery of punishment for many whose only offences were the inability to assess the evidence, gullibility in the face of foolish social media posts and the following of questionably motivated influencers.
On the other hand, the deterrent effect of such a draconian policy would need to be estimated, and thus its effect on increasing herd immunity and on the reduction of illness and deaths for those that the vaccine can’t, for medical reasons, protect. Not easy. Not easy at all. But should someone attempt these sums?
This may mean life arose twice on Earth
I have often mused on the origins of viruses and their mention in “Life’s big bang” has simply added to my confusion (8 August, p 34). The article says that viruses “can’t have come first”. So when did they arise, simultaneously or later?
If the latter, does this support the idea of some sort of second wave event in which a form of life separately emerged? And are such processes still occurring?
Let's scale up the plastic-eating beetle scenario
It is very exciting to hear that there are beetle larvae that can, with the help of their gut bacteria, digest polystyrene waste (25 July, p 14). Wei-Min Wu at Stanford University in California notes that they probably couldn’t chew through the whole lot, since each larva only consumes a few milligrams per day. Well, surely that depends on just how many beetles we bring to bear on the problem. Given that it might be good to start eating insect protein, there is an obvious synergy here.
However, an even better idea might be to cut out the middleman (middlebug?). If it is the bacteria that are doing the digesting, perhaps we could dispense with the beetles and let the bacteria loose on the polystyrene instead.
Sometimes weight gain is nothing to do with diet
Not all of us start equal in the “lose weight, get fit” stakes, as has been recommended to make us more resilient to the coronavirus (25 July, p 16). In my early 30s, with two young children, I regularly ran and competed in orienteering most weekends.
Then I had a medical emergency: a ruptured ovarian cyst. When I woke in hospital, the surgeon gently told me that as well as being unable to have any more children, I would also rapidly put on a lot of weight because of what they had needed to remove.
He was correct, despite me going on a strict diet as soon as I was released from hospital. Now, 40 years on, I remain pretty much at the weight at which I stabilised a year after surgery. It doesn’t seem to matter what I eat (of a sensible diet) or how much I exercise.
So you can’t assume being overweight is due to junk food, sugar, alcohol, fat or anything else.
Exactly who to label a troll may be tricky
Annalee Newitz mentions that Meysam Alizadeh is working on a system that identifies social media trolls and forecasts what they will say next (1 August, p 21). It is an attractive concept and something that I would find useful, but I was puzzled by the focus on “foreign” trolls and influence campaigns. Surely there are plenty of trolls in the US itself, with one of the most prolific arguably being President Trump?
Nuclear critics must not be silenced
Environmental groups can’t be sued by those who claim that they worsened climate change because they opposed nuclear plants, despite what Geoff Russell suggests (Letters, 15 August). They don’t decide to close plants or not to build them, governments do. The opponents of nuclear power must not be suppressed by legal fiat.
In around 70 years, nuclear power has grown so that it accounts for about 4 per cent of world energy use. To make a big impact on carbon emissions, perhaps 10 times as many reactors would be needed. Rapid building might see corners cut, so accidents must be expected, probably at no less a rate than has occurred so far.
There have been at least . With 10 times as many reactors, we could perhaps expect 10 times as many accidents 鈥� and 10 times the nuclear waste disposal problem that we already face.
A welcome bit of realism in the AI debate
Toby Walsh’s rebuttal to those who say AIs will usurp us, as seen in the extract taken from Essential Guide: Artificial Intelligence, is refreshing in both its objectivity and its specificity (). As he notes: “Even if I can make my dog think faster, it is still unlikely to play chess.”
Too many in the AI community seem to confuse their machines’ speed for real thought. The fastest computation machinery possible doesn’t incorporate intent or will, and probably never shall. Humans still have to determine what the machine will focus its abilities on and what “issue” requires attention and resolution. Walsh’s arguments against fast AI equalling intelligence are spot on and it is time we stopped being misled by the speed-is-everything nostrum.
Testing will allow us to keep the world moving
The obvious solution to Linda Phillips’s worries about the impact of extended border closures to combat the coronavirus is to test for it instead (Letters, 8 August). Once we have a functional testing infrastructure in place, it should be possible to test everyone entering a country.
This will mean establishing facilities at every airport, seaport and the like. It should be possible to get results within hours, ideally minutes. Given the risk is highest when people are sharing the same aircraft, ship or whatever, it follows that there ought to be tests at the point of departure.