WHILE ENGAGING in discussions on covid-19— vaccines, therapeutics, second or third waves, re-infection or re-opening the economy—we tend to overlook critical aspects, including where we went wrong, and what can be learnt from our mistakes to prepare for future pandemics. Debora Mackenzie, a journalist working in the area of infectious diseases with New Scientist for 36 years, chronicles the world’s response to covid-19. And as experts worldwide have been warning, she too forecasts an impending flu pandemic in her new book, covid-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One.
Mackenzie has to cut short her holiday when she got her first alert on December 31, 2019 on ProMed—an online volunteer forum to monitoring reports of new infectious outbreaks. It was an alert hard to ignore. She then describes her travails in sourcing information from China, a country notorious for concealing information. Even during the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (stars), China took two months to disclose it to the world by which time the infection had spread to other countries.
Continue reading your story on the app
Continue reading your story in the magazine
Sting operation
One of India’s worst malaria-affected districts, Malkangiri in Odisha, is on its way to win the fight against this scourge
The great discontent
Farmers delivered the country’s historic harvest bucking the pandemic in 2020. But the year also broke all records of their protests as they demand fair price and access to markets
Fungal attack in apple orchards across the valley
WIDESPREAD FUNGAL infection is set to hit apple production in Kashmir this season.
SHRINKING WORLD OF CHANGPAS
The Changpas are trans-Himalayan nomads. For ages, they have roamed the Changthang region of southeastern Ladakh, cut off from the world. Some accounts say they travelled across the Himalayas to arrive here around the 8th century. Located at an altitude of 4,500 metres, life in this arid, vast and rugged plateau is hard. Winters are very long, summers short and vegetation scarce. As a result, the Changpas have led a pastoral life. They rear Changthangi goat, from whose under coat comes the famous pashmina wool. The goats graze on the mountainsides, feeding on seasonal grasses. The weather, however, has changed in the past few decades. The winters and summers are warmer, and there is a perceptive decline in precipitation and snowfall between November and March. This has drastically reduced the size of the grazing grounds and the Changpas now have to shift locations more frequently. RITAYAN MUKHERJEE captures the changing lifestyle of the Changpas
Collateral damage
India’s latest plan to save its vultures from dying due to drugs used on cattle offers little hope
PURE TRASH
THE GOVERNMENT’S NEW PROPOSAL ON EXTENDED PRODUCER’S RESPONSIBILITY ON PLASTIC WASTE IS A MOCKERY OF THE COVID-19 REALITY WE FACE TODAY
Gated farming societies
An agritech startup in Bengaluru is helping city dwellers own and manage farms for long-term wealth benefits
2020 Endless Fallouts
COVID-19 has turned the clock back in terms of global health and development indices. The recovery will be long and arduous for a world facing climate change on an unprecedented scale. Indicators are already there that the year ahead will be turbulent
Question Of Ecological Identity
ISHAN KUKRETI speaks to a legislator, an anthropologist and legal experts to make sense of this simmering debate
We need pure honey
It is time we outwitted the business of adulteration. This requires government to act decisively. It needs industry to be made responsible. It needs consumers to be made aware of the purity of the honey they consume. This demands change
CHINA'S GEELY, BAIDU ANNOUNCE ELECTRIC CAR VENTURES
Chinese automaker Geely says it will form an electric car venture with tech giant Baidu, adding to a flurry of corporate tie-ups in the industry to share soaring technology development costs.
Where Is Jack Ma, China's E-commerce Pioneer?
China’s best-known entrepreneur, e-commerce billionaire Jack Ma, made his fortune by taking big risks.
A NOSE FOR COVID-19
Central Florida Company Trains Canines to Detect Virus
Gain Of Function
How much risk of an accidental pandemic is too much?
Yin Lu CHINESE HERITAGE AND SYMBOLISM
Yin Lu CHINESE HERITAGE AND SYMBOLISM
HUAWEI: A GENUINE COMPETITOR TO APPLE AND GOOGLE
Now considered the poster child of China’s technology sector, Huawei has defied the odds in recent years amidst growing pressure from political leaders in the US and Europe. But just how did the company climb to the top, and overtake Samsung to become the world’s biggest smartphone brand? Let’s pull back the curtain and reveal the secrets behind its success.
THE COVID-19 MANHATTAN PROJECT
NEVER HAVE SO MANY RESEARCHERS TRAINED THEIR MINDS ON A SINGLE PROBLEM IN SO BRIEF A TIME. SCIENCE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.
China's Rebel Historians
Defiant researchers chronicle a past that the Communist Party grows ever more intent on erasing.
A Silicon Curtain Descends
TRUMP ESCALATED AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST HUAWEI AND CHINA. BIDEN SHOULD BEWARE BURGEONING TECHNONATIONALISM.
Home is Where the Heart Is
Arinze Stanley is Staying in Nigeria