NZ s potentially catastrophic near-miss from outer space: We re not learning
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Experts including a former chief science advisor say New Zealand s risk-management systems are flawed and we can no longer rely on our she ll be right mantra. By Donna Chisholm. The email giving New Zealand 24 hours warning of a potentially catastrophic solar flare landed in chief science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman s inbox in late July 2012. It was an alert from his UK counterpart, Sir John Beddington, advising of a severe space weather event known as a mass coronal ejection. A huge amount of matter had been released from the sun that, if directed at the Earth, would cause a geomagnetic storm with the potential to destroy critical infrastructure including satellites, GPS systems and electricity grids.
GDP Didn t Save Countries From COVID-19
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Africa, the Cutting Edge for Health Care: Lessons from The Continent for the U S during COVID-19
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Everyone thought the U.S. was well prepared to battle a pandemic. The country ranked first worldwide on the 2019 Global Health Security Index, an effort explicitly created to track abilities to address infectious disease outbreaks that was widely touted by the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic. It was near the top of the World Health Organization’s Joint External Evaluation Exercise, designed to do the same thing. And yet, America ended 2020 the world leader in reported COVID-19 deaths.
It would be tempting to place the entire blame on the incompetent response of the Trump administration, but that would obscure important lessons that we need absorb if we are going to reduce the death toll from the next pandemic. The capacities required to respond to an outbreak vary considerably depending on the nature of the microbe involved, and existing indicators of preparedness missed some key capacities required to respond to COVID-19. For next time