One year ago, the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. (I, personally, declared it a pandemic on February 27th, 2020, and started writing daily about the same last March 7th in an effort to document/make sense of what was happening to New York City.) Hilariously, even a year later, autocorrect on WordPress is still giving me “The Who” for WHO.
There’s not a lot new to say at the moment. The early days of the Biden Administration have been encouraging, if modestly so, and the passage of the ARP is a significant victory for the US Left. I remain optimistic about our national path out of the pandemic, but pandemic are not national affairs, and the greatest threat to our progress remains the global state of vaccine apartheid that is currently prevailing, setting aside the damning neglect for the lives of others encoded in it.
In the News
There continue to be lots of interesting novel applications of satellite imaging, this one in urban planning; Inside Climate News reports that “Big Banks Make a Dangerous Bet on the World’s Growing Demand for Food“; and Zeynep Tufecki has another good [paywalled] piece on vaccines.
Closer to home, Benjamin Kabak has an article worth reading on how “A better transit route for LaGuardia remains a long shot, but thanks to an FAA policy shift, it now could happen“; and Pete Sikora of New York Communities for Change did an interview about the fight against Part R in New York State with The Indy (if you live in NYC or NYS, it’s a must-listen in my view).
Finally, for my fellow UNC alums, this piece – “What if UNC’s $6.5 Billion Endowment Actually Worked for All of Us?” – by Julio Gutierrez is an excellent primer on the mis/management of UNC’s endowment.
Here’s to spring.
Climate / Change 