The Weekly Distillation No. 29
Coronavirus; Chatbots; Aliens; Fake Tuna; Insurrection; Chess; Predictions; Whisky
Photo by Maria Oswalt on Unsplash
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help map current events to longer term themes of our context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating these times.
“People who stand outside hospitals and say Covid-19 is a hoax and this kind of thing - I really do think they need to grow up.” - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on coronavirus deniers
“It is alleged that Chansley was identified as the man seen in media coverage who entered the Capitol building dressed in horns, a bearskin headdress, red, white and blue face paint, shirtless, and tan pants. This individual carried a spear, approximately 6 feet in length, with an American flag tied just below the blade.” - US Federal Attorney
“BREAKING: I have declared a major incident in London because the threat this virus poses to our city is at crisis point. One in 30 Londoners now has COVID-19.” - Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” = Matthew 5:9, NIV
“The most exciting aspect of the possibility that Oumuamua is weird and unlike any asteroid or comet that we had seen before is that it might be a product of an alien technology” - Dr Avi Loeb, Head of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy
Coronavirus
Goodbye 2020. Hello 2021. We thought it was going to be better - but in so many ways, it’s already worse.
This chart screams that we have lost control. If it was the case that 1) we had spare capacity (ICU beds, oxygen, skilled staff) in the NHS and 2) this was all cases for the under 40’s, we might be more relaxed. But we never have enough capacity in the winter and this spike has broken the system. (There’s a debate for another day to be be had on why this happened ). Also, the cases are increasing in all age groups and so death rates are spiking too. England was running at 20% higher deaths than it would expect - or 70,000 people. And that’s not even accounting for the recent moonshot.
How far are we from Vaccine safety? At the current rate of 200,000 people a day, and each person needing two jags, with 2.4m vaccinated so far, we’d need c.496 days of vaccination to get to everyone over 18. Not everyone will take a vaccine, and we will accelerate the roll out - but it’s not 3 weeks and we’re done. What will obviously change is the seasonal peak of hospital demand will pass. So in some ways it’s less about vaccines and more about how quickly it warms up. Even if we get to 2m vaccine doses a week it will take all year to get through the 96m doses. Our hope seems to be that we vaccinate enough with one dose, and that reduces the transmission rates. As a good friend pointed out though, it’s not like these 80 year olds or the people in care homes are the main cause of transmission are they?
How Technology is Shaping our Future
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
The US military is developing mind-reading technology for use on the battefield. But what thought has been given to the ethical issues opened up by connecting our brains to our computers?
In a week that Space Force became the 18th (eighteenth!!!) member of the US Intelligence Community, the story of how the head of the Harvard Astronomy Department thinks that alien life tried to contact us in 2017 caught my eye.
I’ve had a Fitbit tracker for 10 years now. Like you, I have wondered for a long time if it has actually made me live a healthier life. A study published in the British Medical Journal shows that on average, they actually do! So buy the gadgets, it might just save your life.
Anyone who has watched the Social Dilemma realises that what big tech is after now is your attention, so that they can monetise your eyeball time in the form of advertising. Want to learn to concentrate rather than get distracted? Play chess.
Tell me you read the chess article, right?
Will we have enough food & water?
Photo by Photos By Beks on Unsplash
Food security is both an immediate and a longer term question for many nations. Even today we had one of the supermarkets announce that they would not be able to supply some products - partly demand from lockdowns, partly food producers not having enough staff and presumably partly also a function of the new customs rules associated with the new trade deal with Europe.
In the longer term the growing global population, and the rising GDP/Capita in the developing world, is leading to a need for more meat and fish production. Artificial, or lab grown “meat” is a big new trend - after Singapore approving lab-grown “chicken” in December (“l-icken” anyone?), we now have GMO salmon and imitation tuna, crab and shrimp. Can this be any worse than vegetarian haggis? I’m intrigued by this trend and looking forward to learning more.
Our health and wellbeing - beyond Covid
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
I’ve spent a week largely confined to bed, having stupidly pulled a muscle in my back whilst lifting one of my children. I didn’t think you could get more locked down than your house but it turns out you can.
Following on from stories late last year of scientists in Israel having reversed ageing in the blood cells of mice, this link on ageing caught my eye. The great white hope of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is to solve the great puzzle - death. Whether that is cryogenic freezing until we have a solution, or tackling mental health and ageing of the brain, there are multiple approaches going on. I don’t think it’s a solveable problem - but I can see massive pros (and massive cons) of extending life expectancy materially. The article is a good overview of the field and what might happen.
Did you see that Microsoft wants to be able to create chatbots based on datasets, which potentially opens the door to them creating a chatbot based on people who have died?
The Long Read
This isn’t a long read for the weekend, as it usually is. I wrote this newsletter on Saturday night but managed to lose 80% of what I wrote in the process. #2021. So this long read you can savour over the week. I promise not to do this often - but here’s a post I drafted on Saturday, on what are the bigger themes that might shape our world for the next 30 years. I look forward to your thoughts - my own thinking is still evolving here and I put this together in an hour so it needs improving (ok, caveats over).
The Other Weekly Distillation
It’s dry January - so rather than knock you off the wagon already, here’s the trailer from The Angel’s Share.