New story in Science and Health from Time: A/C Feels Great, But It’s Terrible for the Planet. Here’s How to Fix That A/C Feels Great, But It’s Terrible for the Planet. Here’s How to Fix That

For the past few days, a heatwave has glowered over the Pacific Northwest, forcing temperatures in the region to a record-breaking 118ºF. Few people in the region—neither Americans nor Canadians—have air-conditioning. Stores sold out of new AC units in hours as a panicked public sought a reasonable solution to the emergency. Unfortunately, air-conditioning is part of what’s causing the unusual heatwave in the first place.

We came close to destroying all life on Earth during the Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation. But we may have come even closer during the cooling war, when the rising number of Americans with air conditioners—and a refrigerant industry that fought regulation—nearly obliterated the ozone layer. We avoided that environmental catastrophe, but the fundamental problem of air conditioning has never really been resolved.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Mechanical cooling appeared in the early 1900s not for comfort but for business. In manufacturing, the regulation of temperature—“process cooling”—controlled the quality of commodities like cotton, tobacco, and chewing gum. In 1903, Alfred Wolff installed the first cooling system for people at the New York Stock Exchange because comfortable traders yielded considerably higher stock returns. Only in the ’20s did “commercial cooling” appear. On Memorial Day weekend 1925, Willis Carrier debuted the first centrifugal air-conditioning system at the Rivoli Theater in Midtown Manhattan. Previously, theaters had shut down in the summer. With air-conditioning, the Rivoli became “the talk of Broadway” and inaugurated the summer blockbuster.

Harry Harris—APWhile other subway passengers perspire in the warm and humid underground station, Paul Forman appears cool and comfortable in the experimental air conditioned train, which made its first run in New York City, in July 1956. The test run included six air conditioned cars and two old cars. When the train left Grand Central Station, the temperature was 89 degrees in the old cars, while the new cars registered a temperature of 76.5 degrees.

Before World War II, almost no one had air-conditioning at home. Besides being financially impractical and culturally odd, it was also dangerous. Chemical refrigerants like sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride filled most fridges and coolers, and leaks could kill a child, poison a hospital floor, even blow up a basement. Everything changed with the invention of Freon in 1928. Non-toxic and non-explosive, Freon was hailed as a “miracle.” It made the modernist skyscraper—with its sealed windows and heat-absorbing materials—possible. It made living in the desert possible. The small, winter resort of Phoenix, Arizona, became a year-round attraction. Architecture could now ignore the local climate. Anywhere could be 65ºF with 55% humidity. Cheap materials made boxy, suburban tract housing affordable to most Americans, but the sealed-up, stifling design of these homes required air-conditioning to keep the heat at bay. Quickly, air-conditioning transitioned from a luxury to a necessity. By 1980, more than half of all U.S. homes were air-conditioned. And despite millions of Black Americans fleeing the violence of Jim Crow, the South saw greater in-migration than out-migration for the first time—a direct result of AC. The American car was similarly transformed. In 1955, only 10 percent of American cars had air-conditioning. Thirty years later, it came standard.

The cooling boom also altered the way we work. Now, Americans could work anywhere at any hour of the day. Early ads for air-conditioning promised not health or comfort but productivity. The workday could proceed no matter the season or the climate. Even in the home, A/C brought comfort as a means to rest up before the next work day.

The use of air-conditioning was as symbolic as it was material. It conveyed class status. Who did and didn’t have air-conditioning often fell starkly along the color line, too, especially in the South. It conquered the weather and, with it, the need to sweat or squirm or lie down in the summer swelter. In that sense, air-conditioning allowed Americans to transcend their physical bodies, that long-sought fantasy of the Puritan settlers: to be in the world but not of it. Miracle, indeed.

LMPC/Getty ImagesA theater’s lobby advertises air conditioning to prospective movie-goers.

But it came with a price. As it turned out, Freon isn’t exactly non-toxic. Freon is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which depletes the ozone layer and also acts as a global warming gas. By 1974, the industrialized world was churning out CFCs, chemicals that had never appeared on the planet in any significant quantities, at a rate of one million metric tons a year—the equivalent mass of more than 500,000 cars. That was the year atmospheric chemists Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina first hypothesized that the chlorine molecules in CFCs might be destroying ozone in the stratosphere by bonding to free oxygen atoms and disrupting the atmosphere’s delicate chemistry. By then, CFCs were used not only as refrigerants but also as spray can propellants, manufacturing degreasers, and foam-blowing agents.

The ozone layer absorbs the worst of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Without stratospheric ozone, life as we know it is impossible. A 1 percent decline in the ozone layer’s thickness results in thousands of new cases of skin cancer. Greater depletion would lead to crop failures, the collapse of oceanic food systems, and, eventually, the destruction of all life on Earth.

In the 1980s, geophysicist Joseph Farman confirmed the Rowland-Molina hypothesis when he detected a near-absence of ozone over Antarctica—the “Ozone Hole.” A fierce battle ensued among industry, scientists, environmentalists, and politicians, but in 1987 the U.S signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which ended Freon production.

The Montreal Protocol remains the world’s only successful international environmental treaty with legally binding emissions targets. Annual conferences to re-assess the goals of the treaty make it a living document, which is revised in light of up-to-date scientific data. For instance, the Montreal Protocol set out only to slow production of CFCs, but, by 1997, industrialized countries had stopped production entirely, far sooner than was thought possible. The world was saved through global cooperation.

The trouble is that the refrigerants replacing CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), turned out to be terrible for the planet, too. While they have an ozone-depleting potential of zero, they are potent greenhouse gases. They absorb infrared radiation from the sun and Earth and block heat that normally escapes into outer space. Carbon dioxide and methane do this too, but HFCs trap heat at rates thousands of times higher. Although the number of refrigerant molecules in the atmosphere is far fewer than those of other greenhouse gases, their destructive force, molecule for molecule, is far greater.

Ed Maker—The Denver Post/Getty ImagesAngela Eaton grooms “Dutchess” inside “House Calls” trailer in 1982. The unit is equipped with a bath, heater, air conditioner and dryer.

In three decades, the production of HFCs grew exponentially. Today, HFCs provide the cooling power to almost any air conditioner in the home, in the office, in the supermarket, or in the car. They cool vaccines, blood for transfusions, and temperature-sensitive medications, as well as the data processors and computer servers that make up the internet—everything from the cloud to blockchains. In 2019, annual global warming emissions from HFCs were the equivalent of 175 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

In May, the EPA signaled it will begin phasing down HFCs and replacing them with more climate-friendly alternatives. Experts agree that a swift end to HFCs could prevent as much as 0.5ºC of warming over the next century—a third of the way to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Yet regardless of the refrigerant used, cooling still requires energy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, air-conditioning accounts for nearly a fifth of annual U.S. residential electricity use. This is more energy for cooling overall and per capita than in any other nation. Most Americans consider the cost of energy only in terms of their electricity bills. But it’s also costing us the planet. Joe Biden’s announcement to shift toward a renewable energy infrastructure obscures the uncertainty of whether that infrastructure could meet Americans’ outrageously high energy demand—much of it for cooling that doesn’t save lives. Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far. The rest of the work is cultural. From Freon to HFCs, we keep replacing chemical refrigerants without taking a hard look at why we’re cooling in the first place.

Comfort cooling began not as a survival strategy but as a business venture. It still carries all those symbolic meanings, though its currency now works globally, cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat. Despite what we assume, as a means of weathering a heat wave, individual air-conditioning is terribly ineffective. It works only for those who can afford it. But even then, their use in urban areas only makes the surrounding micro-climate hotter, sometimes by a factor of 10ºF, actively threatening the lives of those who don’t have access to cooling. (The sociologist Eric Klinenberg has brilliantly studied how, in a 1995 Chicago heat wave, about twice as many people died than in a comparable heat wave forty years earlier due to the city’s neglect of certain neighborhoods and social infrastructure.) Ironically, research suggests that exposure to constant air-conditioning can prevent our bodies from acclimatizing to hot weather, so those who subject themselves to “thermal monotony” are, in the end, making themselves more vulnerable to heat-related illness.

Ruth Fremson—The New York Times/ReduxLuke Peters, left, and Elliott Thomas install a mini-split heating and air conditioning system at a home in Seattle on June 23, 2021. A heat wave soon set records across the region.

And, of course, air-conditioning only works when you have the electricity to power it. During heatwaves, when air-conditioning is needed most, blackouts are frequent. On Sunday, with afternoon temperatures reaching 112ºF around Portland, the power grid failed for more than 6,300 residences under control by Portland General Electrics.

The troubled history of air-conditioning suggests not that we chuck it entirely but that we focus on public cooling, on public comfort, rather than individual cooling, on individual comfort. Ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design will not only enrich our cities overall, it will lower the temperature for everyone. It’s far more efficient this way.

To do so, we’ll have to re-orient ourselves to the meaning of air-conditioning. And to comfort. Privatized air-conditioning survived the ozone crisis, but its power to separate—by class, by race, by nation, by ability—has survived, too. Comfort for some comes at the expense of the life on this planet.

It’s time we become more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it.

New story in Science and Health from Time: How The Extreme Heat in the Pacific Northwest Is Taxing Electric Grids (and People’s Air Conditioners) How The Extreme Heat in the Pacific Northwest Is Taxing Electric Grids (and People’s Air Conditioners)

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here.

---

Portland General Electric (PGE) Vice President Larry Bekkedahl seemed remarkably cool considering the 110°F temperatures outside the window of his Portland office—and the unprecedented energy demand his system is facing. “We were at over 4,225 megawatts yesterday,” said the three-decade utility veteran, speaking on Monday afternoon. “As we speak right now we’re over 4,445 megawatts.” The Oregon-area utility’s previous electricity demand record came in 1998, when 4,078 megawatts of power coursed through its more than 27,000 miles of distribution wire.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

That unprecedented demand came as a result of unusual record-breaking heat, which baked the Pacific Northwest over the weekend and has continued into this week. As millions of residents blasted air conditioners in an effort to stay cool, local utilities have had to pull out all the stops to keep power flowing. PGE, which serves about 2 million people throughout the state, says it is able to bring in clean power across state lines through energy imbalance markets. It has also used other methods to prevent a shortfall, like bringing local generators online, texting customers with requests to reduce their power usage at critical times, and automatically raising temperatures on smart thermostats whose owners have opted into an energy-use management program. But as more energy spikes occur nationwide through the summer, utilities’ efforts to keep up are expected to bring serious climate consequences—some power companies burn their dirtiest fuel sources in dormant “peaker plants” that come online only during times of ultra-high demand, for instance.

All things being equal, Portland’s heat surge came at a good time, Bekkedahl says. Water levels tend to be high in June thanks to snow runoff, which means plenty of hydroelectric capacity at regional dams. If the same heat came in August, the utility might have to find its power somewhere else. But even though this surge hasn’t disabled local generation capacity like the devastating winter storms that hit Texas in February, it’s another worrying example in a trend of utilities being forced to deal with more frequent and severe extreme weather events that push systems to their limits.

“In the past 12 months, we’ve seen a one-in-50-year firestorm over Labor Day weekend last spring, and in February we had a one-in-40-year ice storm,” says Bekkedahl. “I don’t know that I trust one-in-40 anymore.”

Some utilities are working on solutions, attempting to wean themselves off fossil fuels and harden their grids against demand spikes caused by extreme weather. Tech companies in California announced a project late last year to connect home smart appliances into the U.S.’s largest “virtual power plant,” allowing utilities to reduce the devices’ power demand at critical times to minimize overloading risk. (Such systems have the same net effect on the grid of booting up a physical power plant, hence the term “virtual power plant.”) Another project undertaken last year by solar installer Sunrun in partnership with Southern California Edison will tie home storage batteries into a virtual power plant that can pump energy directly into the grid when necessary, one of many such projects around the country, including one being deployed by PGE.

Still, the current extreme heat and massive energy demand in the Pacific Northwest may be proving out dire predictions about an especially hot summer pushing utilities to the edge—and of worsening problems as the climate warms. In the long term, Bekkedahl says power companies will have to start using hydrogen plants in order to provide extra power during critical times without resorting to fossil fuels, though most of those projects are still in the pilot stage. In the near term, PGE is bringing on a new, sophisticated distribution management system in September, which it says will help it manage demand spikes.

“That [network] will see farther into the distribution system,” says Bekkedahl. “It can’t come soon enough.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: Virgin Galactic Just Got FAA Approval to Launch Customers Into Space—for $250,000 a Seat Virgin Galactic Just Got FAA Approval to Launch Customers Into Space—for $250,000 a Seat

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — Virgin Galactic finally has the federal government’s approval to start launching customers into space from New Mexico.

Richard Branson’s rocketship company announced the Federal Aviation Administration’s updated license on Friday.

It’s the final hurdle in Virgin Galactic’s yearslong effort to send paying passengers on short space hops.

The company is working toward three more space test flights this summer and early fall, before opening the rocketship’s doors to paying customers. The original plans called for company engineers to launch next to evaluate equipment, followed by a flight with Branson and then a science mission by Italian Air Force officers.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

In the meantime, Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos earlier this month announced plans to ride his own rocket into space July 20 from Texas.

Virgin Galactic officials acknowledged the growing chatter over whether Branson will try to beat Bezos into space.

“Clearly, Sir Richard Branson’s flight date has been subject to speculation for some time. At this time we do not have any further details on the upcoming flight dates,” company spokeswoman Aleanna Crane wrote in an email.

Unlike Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s fully automated capsules launched from the ground by reusable rockets, Virgin Galactic uses a winged spacecraft that launches from the belly of an airplane and requires a pair of pilots. It’s reached space three times since 2018. The second trip carried a third company employee.

A review of the company’s third flight to space in May — which reached an altitude of 55 miles (89 kilometers) — showed everything went well and paved the way for the necessary FAA permission.

“Today’s approval by the FAA of our full commercial launch license, in conjunction with the success of our May 22 test flight, give us confidence as we proceed toward our first fully crewed test flight this summer,” chief executive officer Michael Colglazier said in a statement.

More than 600 people already have reserved a ride to space. Tickets initially cost $250,000, but the price is expected to go up once Virgin Galactic starts accepting reservations again.

Blue Origin has yet to sell tickets to the public or say what it will cost. Bezos is taking his brother and two others along for the ride on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the first human moon landing.

New story in Science and Health from Time: NASA’s Next Big Challenge? Space Laundry NASA’s Next Big Challenge? Space Laundry

(CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.) — How do astronauts do laundry in space? They don’t.

They wear their underwear, gym clothes and everything else until they can’t take the filth and stink anymore, then junk them.

NASA wants to change that — if not at the International Space Station, then the moon and Mars — and stop throwing away tons of dirty clothes every year, stuffing them in the trash to burn up in the atmosphere aboard discarded cargo ships. So it’s teamed up with Procter & Gamble Co. to figure out how best to clean astronauts’ clothes in space so they can be reused for months or even years, just like on Earth.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Cincinnati company announced Tuesday that it will send a pair of Tide detergent and stain removal experiments to the space station later this year and next, all part of the galactic battle against soiled and sweaty clothes.

It’s no small problem, especially as the U.S. and other countries look to establish bases on the moon and Mars.

Rocket cargo space is tight and expensive, according to NASA, so why waste it on new outfits if their clothes could be kept looking and smelling fresh? When you figure an astronaut needs 150 pounds (68 kilograms) of clothes in space per year, that quickly adds up, especially on a three-year Mars mission, said Mark Sivik, a chemist specializing in fabric and home care technology for P&G.

There’s also the health — and ick — factors.

Space station astronauts exercise two hours every day to counter the muscle- and bone-withering effects of weightlessness, quickly leaving their workout clothes sweaty, smelly and stiff. Their T-shirts, shorts and socks end up so foul that they run through a pair every week, according to Leland Melvin, a former NASA astronaut and NFL player.

“After that, they’re deemed toxic,” said Melvin, who’s serving as a spokesman for the project. “They like have a life of their own. They’re so stiff from all that sweat.”

While NASA and the other space station partners have looked into special antimicrobial clothes to prolong wear, it’s not a long-term solution.

In its initial experiment, P&G will send up detergent custom-made for space in December so scientists can see how the enzymes and other ingredients react to six months of weightlessness. Then next May, stain-removal pens and wipes will be delivered for testing by astronauts.

At the same time, P&G is developing a washer-dryer combo that could operate on the moon or even Mars, using minimal amounts of water and detergent. Such a machine could also prove useful in arid regions here on Earth.

One of the many design challenges: The laundry water would need to be reclaimed for drinking and cooking, just like urine and sweat are currently recycled aboard the space station.

“The best solutions come from the most diverse teams,” Melvin said, “and how more diverse can you be than Tide and NASA?”

New story in Science and Health from Time: ‘Not Equitable and Not Fair.’ How the WHO Plans to Solve Africa’s Desperate Shortage of COVID-19 Vaccines ‘Not Equitable and Not Fair.’ How the WHO Plans to Solve Africa’s Desperate Shortage of COVID-19 Vaccines

(JOHANNESBURG) — The World Health Organization is in talks to create the first-ever technology transfer hub for coronavirus vaccines in South Africa, a move to boost supply to the continent that’s desperately in need of COVID-19 shots, the head of the U.N. agency announced.

The new consortium will include drug makers Biovac and Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, a network of universities and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. They will develop training facilities for other vaccine makers to make shots that use a genetic code of the spike protein, known as mRNA vaccines.

“We are now in discussions with several companies that have indicated interest in providing their mRNA technology,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus at a virtual press briefing on Monday. That technology is used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Africa will soon be able to “take responsibility for the health of our people,” as a result of the new WHO-backed technology transfer hub, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in the press briefing.

It is “just not equitable and not fair” that some people are denied access to COVID-19 vaccines because of where they live, Ramaphosa said.

Poor countries in Africa and elsewhere are facing dire shortages of COVID-19 jabs despite some countries having the ability to produce vaccines, lamented Lara Dovifat, a campaign and advocacy adviser for Doctors Without Borders.

“The faster companies share the know-how, the faster we can put an end to this pandemic,” she said in a statement.

Numerous factories in Canada, Bangladesh, Denmark and elsewhere have previously called for companies to immediately share their technology, saying their idle production lines could be churning out millions of doses if they weren’t hampered by intellectual property and other restrictions.

More than 1 billion coronavirus vaccines have been administered globally, but fewer than 1% have been in poor countries.

South Africa accounts for nearly 40% of Africa’s total recorded COVID-19 infections and is currently suffering a rapid surge, but vaccine rollout has been slow, marked by delayed deliveries among other factors.

South Africa currently does not manufacture any COVID-19 vaccines from scratch, but its Aspen Pharmacare assembles the Johnson & Johnson shot by blending large batches of the ingredients sent by J&J and then putting the product in vials and packaging them, a process known as fill and finish. Earlier this month the company had to discard 2 million doses because they had ingredients produced in the U.S. in a factory under suspect conditions.

South Africa’s current wave of infections threatens to overwhelm the country’s hospitals.

“The climb in new cases has been extraordinarily rapid and steep over the past few weeks,” Ramaphosa said Monday in his weekly letter to the nation. “The number of daily new cases jumped from below 800 in early April to more than 13,000 in the past week. In other words, it increased more than 15-fold from the last low point.”

Gauteng province, the country’s most populous with the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria, is the worst-affected by the current surge with 60% of the new cases. All public and private hospitals are full, yet the numbers of new confirmed cases continue to rise, the province’s deputy premier, David Makhura, said Monday.

“I don’t want to send a message saying everything is okay,” said Makhura. “I want to say to the people of the province: The house is on fire.”

WHO officials said that while their new vaccine transfer technology will hopefully increase future supplies, it won’t address the immediate crisis, since it will take months for any new factories to start producing shots.

With dozens of countries desperately waiting for more doses after the COVAX initiative, a U.N.-backed plan to distribute vaccines to poor countries faltered in recent months, the WHO has been trying to persuade rich countries to donate vaccines once their most vulnerable populations are immunized.

But Dr. Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, acknowledged that countries have mostly declined to share vaccines immediately.

“When you ask countries (to donate), they say, ‘Well, we’re going to vaccinate according to our priorities and our priorities are our own citizens,’” Ryan said.

He added that while transferring vaccine technology will help in the medium to long term, it won’t help stem the current spike in infections.

“We have not used the vaccines available globally to provide protection to the most vulnerable,” he said. ”And the fact that we haven’t … is a catastrophic moral failure.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: Crew Starts Making China’s New Space Station Their Home Crew Starts Making China’s New Space Station Their Home

JIUQUAN, China — Three Chinese astronauts have begun making China’s new space station their home for the next three months, after their launch and arrival at the station Thursday marked further advances in the country’s ambitious space program.

Their Shenzhou-12 craft connected with the station about six hours after taking off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert.

About three hours later, commander Nie Haisheng, followed by Liu Boming and space rookie Tang Hongbo, opened the hatches and floated into the Tianhe-1, the core living segment of the station. Pictures showed them busy at work unpacking equipment and at one point turning to the camera to greet and salute audiences back on Earth.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“This represents the first time Chinese have entered their own space station,” state broadcaster CCTV said on its nightly news.

China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since 2003, when it became only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own. China’s leaders hope the mission will be a complete success as the ruling Communist Party prepares to celebrate its centennial next month.

Although contact between the Chinese space program and NASA is restricted by U.S. law, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson issued a statement Thursday expressing, “Congratulations to China on the successful launch of crew to their space station! I look forward to the scientific discoveries to come.”

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to connect the Tianhe-1 to two laboratory modules and send up crews and supplies. The current crew will carry out experiments, test equipment and prepare for the future missions.

A fresh crew and supplies will be sent in three months. Each crew will have three members, with the station’s capacity at six, when crews are being exchanged. Two of China’s past astronauts were women, and future crews on the station will include women.

Uniformed military personnel and children waving flowers and flags and singing patriotic songs saw off the astronauts before they entered the Shenzhou-12 to be blasted into space atop a Long March-2F Y12 rocket at at 9:22 a.m (0122 GMT) Thursday Beijing time.

The rocket dropped its boosters about two minutes into the flight followed by the cowling surrounding the crew’s craft. After about 10 minutes it separated from the rocket’s upper section, extended its solar panels and shortly afterward entered orbit.

About a half-dozen adjustments helped line up the craft for docking with the Tianhe-1, or Heavenly Harmony, module at about 4 p.m. (0800 GMT).

The travel time is down from the two days it took to reach China’s earlier experimental space stations, a result of a “great many breakthroughs and innovations,” the mission’s deputy chief designer, Gao Xu, told state broadcaster CCTV.

“So the astronauts can have a good rest in space which should make them less tired,” Gao said.

Other improvements include an increase in the number of automated and remote-controlled systems that should “significantly lessen the pressure on the astronauts,” Gao said.

China is not a participant in the International Space Station, largely as a result of U.S. objections to the Chinese programs secrecy and close military ties. However, China has been stepping up cooperation with Russia and a host of other countries, and its station may continue operating beyond the International Space Station, which is reaching the end of its functional life.

Chinese space officials have also said foreigners may be part of future crews on the station after it is fully built next year.

China landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

China and Russia this week also unveiled an ambitious plan for a joint International Lunar Research Station running through 2036. That could compete and possibly conflict with the multinational Artemis Accords, a blueprint for space cooperation that supports NASA’s plans to return humans to the moon by 2024 and to launch an historic human mission to Mars.

After the Tianhe-1 was launched in April, the rocket that carried it into space made an uncontrolled reentry to Earth. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

China dismissed criticism of the potential safety hazard at the time, and officials said the rocket used Thursday was of a different type and reentering components were expected to burn up before they could be a danger.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The U.S. Government Placed a Big Bet on an Antiviral Pill to Fight COVID-19 The U.S. Government Placed a Big Bet on an Antiviral Pill to Fight COVID-19

We’re not going to vaccinate our way completely out of this pandemic. With epidemiologists around the world increasingly accepting the reality that SARS-CoV-2 and its variants will become endemic viruses—like the seasonal flu—the push is on to develop antiviral medications that can be taken at home to prevent infections from leading to hospitalization and death. Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Biden Administration has authorized $3.2 billion to accelerate the development of antivirals already in the R&D pipeline, with the hope that at least one will be ready for release before the end of the year.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“The remarkable and rapid development of vaccines and testing technology has shown how agile scientific discovery can be,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in an HHS statement. “We will leverage these same strengths as we construct a platform for the discovery and development of effective antivirals.”

The plan will focus on 19 drugs currently being investigated for their antiviral potential, with a goal of accelerating their development to Phase 2 clinical trials. Last week, the Administration already placed a major bet on one of the 19, announcing that it will purchase up to 1.7 million doses of an antiviral being produced by Merck, pending emergency use authorization or full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Of the $3.2 billion being allocated, $1.2 billion is going to fund the creation of what the HHS calls “collaborative drug discovery groups,” hoping that the push to create a COVID-19 treatment will also create a developmental infrastructure for other antivirals to treat other diseases.

The new drugs could not only fill the breach left by the vaccine-hesitant who are slowing the push in the U.S. and around the world to reach herd immunity, they could also serve as a backstop against breakthrough infections—cases of COVID-19 that occur even among the vaccinated. Late last month, for example, the CDC reported more than 10,000 breakthrough vaccinations in 46 states as of the end of April, at a time when just over 100 million vaccines had been administered in the U.S. In Massachusetts alone, there have currently been a total of 4,000 breakthrough infections recorded, reported the Boston Herald today. That’s still a relatively small number—representing just 0.1% of vaccinated people—but does make the new drugs attractive.

“New antivirals that prevent serious COVID-19 illness and death, especially oral drugs that could be taken at home early in the course of disease, would be powerful tools for battling the pandemic and saving lives,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in the HHS announcement.

New story in Science and Health from Time: How COVID-19 Vaccination Became a Climate Metaphor How COVID-19 Vaccination Became a Climate Metaphor

A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here.

---

For years, climate policy experts have watched as the issue has been pushed off the stage at global summits to make way for the geopolitical conflict dujour. That trend has long frustrated climate advocates who sought to make leaders understand that the scientific reality of climate change is just as urgent—if not more so—than other flavor-of-the-month topics.

With this in mind, it was notable when many of these same climate advocates sharply criticized last week’s G7 leaders summit hosted by the United Kingdom for failing to adequately address another issue: the COVID-19 pandemic. In statement after statement, climate watchers homed in on what they often characterized as inadequate support from the world’s wealthy nations to address the pandemic in their poorer counterparts. Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, described the pandemic and climate change as “twin crises” and said the summit did “not measure up” to them. Nick Mabey, head of the E3G climate group, called out the G7 for failing to offer “enough financial firepower to tackle the global COVID, economic and climate crises.” And Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, called for a vaccine patent waiver.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It’s a remarkable turnaround. When COVID-19 first emerged, many in the climate world feared efforts to address the pandemic would distract from efforts to address climate change. Today, climate advocates are arguing that the two need to be addressed hand in hand. This change is in part practical: leaders in many developing countries will understandably remain focused on the pandemic rather than climate change if their on-the-ground situation doesn’t improve. And, with the November UN climate summit in Glasgow fast approaching, the situation on the ground may need to change quickly to give officials adequate time to prepare.

But, in some sense, the rhetorical shift among climate activists may be just as symbolic as it is practical: climate advocates fear that failure to muster a strong response to COVID-19 will send a signal to developing countries that wealthy nations will leave them high and dry as the impacts of climate change start to mount. That, many believe, would hamper the motivation to take on mitigation efforts in the developing world—just as the needs grow more urgent. “In some ways, the vaccine issue is a metaphor for the larger climate issue,” says Alden Meyer, a longtime international climate policy expert who serves as senior associate at E3G.

When you look closely, there are a number of issues related to fighting COVID-19 that map directly onto fighting climate change. Patent waivers have become a point of contention, as some argue that freeing the intellectual property surrounding vaccines would enable poorer countries to manufacture vaccines locally. In the climate fight, developing countries have for years called for their wealthier counterparts to share the technological know-how to allow them to reduce emissions—even if that meant companies losing out on potential revenue.

Ponying up the money has also been a key point of contention in both COVID-19 and climate conversations. Ahead of the Paris Agreement, a group of rich countries committed to sending some $100 billion annually to the developing world to help finance climate efforts. Wealthy countries have repeatedly reaffirmed that promise—including at the G7 last week—but the money has yet to materialize at that scale. (You can read my colleague Ciara Nugent’s piece on climate finance and the G7 here). The fact that many poor countries facing pandemic-related budget crunches haven’t gotten much assistance from their wealthier counterparts doesn’t inspire much confidence in how things will play out when it comes to climate change.

Events like the upcoming UN climate conference in Glasgow typically draw tens of thousands of participants from all across the globe. And, unlike many geopolitical settings, delegates from poorer countries, particularly those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, often hold significant sway. What happens if those countries don’t have adequate access to vaccines by then? The U.K. has promised vaccines to “accredited delegations who would be unable to get them otherwise,” but the optics aren’t great. Will climate negotiators from developing countries get vaccinated while the elderly at vulnerable at home remain at risk? Even if they do show up, will those government leaders fear making aggressive climate commitments as their people suffer from a pandemic?

Time will tell. Ultimately, though, there is one inescapable conclusion: tackling the pandemic will help the world tackle climate change.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China Launches Its First Crewed Space Mission in Five Years China Launches Its First Crewed Space Mission in Five Years

JIUQUAN, China — Under bright-blue morning skies, China launched its first crewed space mission in five years Thursday, sending three science-minded military pilots rocketing to a new orbiting station they’re expected to reach around midafternoon.

The astronauts, already wearing their spacesuits, were seen off by space officials, other uniformed military personnel and a crowd of children waving flowers and flags and singing patriotic songs. The three gave final waves to a crowd of people waving flags, then entered the elevator to take them to the spaceship at the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China.

The astronauts are traveling in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship launched by a Long March-2F Y12 rocket that blasted off shortly after the target time of 9:22 a.m. (0122 GMT) with near-perfect visibility at the launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The two veteran astronauts and a newcomer making his first space flight are scheduled to stay three months in the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, conducting experiments, testing equipment and preparing the station for expansion before two laboratory modules are launched next year.

The rocket dropped its boosters about two minutes into the flight followed by the coiling surrounding Shenzhou-12 at the top of the rocket. After about 10 minutes it separated from the rocket’s upper section, extended its solar panels and shortly afterward entered orbit.

About a half-dozen adjustments will take place over the next four to six hours to line up the spaceship for docking with the Tianhe at about 4 p.m. (0800 GMT), the mission’s deputy chief designer, Gao Xu, told state broadcaster CCTV.

The travel time is down from the two days it took to reach China’s earlier experimental space stations, a result of a “great many breakthroughs and innovations” Gao said.

“So the astronauts can a have a good rest in the space which should make them less tired,” Gao said.

Other improvements include an increase in the number of automated and remote-controlled systems that should “significantly lessen the pressure on the astronauts,” Gao said.

The mission brings to 14 the number of astronauts China has launched into space since its first crewed mission in 2003, becoming only the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to do so on its own. Two astronauts on those past missions were women, and while this first station crew is all male, women are expected to be part of future station crews.

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to add the additional sections to the station and send up crews and supplies. A fresh three-member crew and a cargo ship with supplies will be sent in three months.

China is not a participant in the International Space Station, largely as a result of U.S. objections to the Chinese programs secrecy and close military ties. However, China has been stepping up cooperation with Russia and a host of other countries, and its station may continue operating beyond the International Space Station, which is reaching the end of its functional life.

China landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon’s less explored far side and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

After the Tianhe was launched in April, the rocket that carried it into space made an uncontrolled reentry to Earth, though China dismissed criticism of the potential safety hazard. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

The rocket used Thursday is of a different type and the components that will reenter are expected to burn up long before they could be a danger, said Ji Qiming, assistant director of the China Manned Space Agency.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Do Mindfulness and Health Trackers Mix? Deepak Chopra and Fitbit CEO James Park on Managing Stress With Data Do Mindfulness and Health Trackers Mix? Deepak Chopra and Fitbit CEO James Park on Managing Stress With Data

A version of this article also appeared in the It’s Not Just You newsletter.Sign up here to receive a new edition every Sunday.

I’m a tech believer. My first job with TIME was to set up new communications systems and convince cranky foreign correspondents to trust them. Alexa and Google Home have colonized my apartment. And not only did I give my DNA to 23andMe, but I even answer their follow-up questions about whether I like olives or get carsick so they can map those genes. (Naturally, I also want to donate my body to research after I’m done with it–and if there were a way to send me a report in the afterlife about what they find, I’d request it.)
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

So you can imagine how very excited I was when Fitbit and other wearable health trackers, including Amazon’s Halo and the Apple Watch, started coming up with ways to show us data on our stress levels. There’s a bevy of new devices that monitor not just our heart rate, daily steps, and the quantity of our sleep, but the quality of our sleep by hour, skin temperature, and fluctuations in our blood oxygen saturation. Many of these biomarkers relate to our mental wellness and physical health, and there’s new wearable technology that picks up on our emotions.

But even data geeks like me realize there are crucial questions about whether technology is a solution or part of the problem when it comes to stress management. It’s fair to ask whether the very act of constantly checking personal health stats on our phones is antithetical to the kind of mindfulness and meditation practices that alleviate stress. And then there are all the sticky issues around data privacy.

So as annual global spending on wearable tech rises to more than $80 billion a year and rates of stress and anxiety skyrocket simultaneously, we wonder: Is a quantified self a happier self?

I spoke to mindfulness expert Deepak Chopra, M.D., and Fitbit CEO James Park about some of these questions. They’ve recently partnered on a series called “Mindful Method,” an expansion of Fitbit Premium‘s health tracking and content offerings. It includes short video meditations led by Dr. Chopra on cultivating the mind-body connection, getting better sleep, mental wellness, and my favorite, “resetting your bad mood.” This collection is paired with new Fitbit technology that detects electrodermal activity (EDA) responses–tiny electrical changes on your skin that can indicate a stress response.

Both Park and Chopra will tell you they see tech as a neutral actor, one that can be used to better lives or exploit societal weaknesses. Park uses the example of controversial algorithms that favored the sharing of extreme content on Facebook and other social platforms, which can lead to negative behavior. But Park sees positive opportunities in applications that provide ever-more customized health offerings: “What’s fascinating to me is that you can use these same tools to look at populations and try to nudge them in ways that actually result in really positive behavior.”

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here to get a fresh edition every Sunday

And on the fundamental question of whether health tracking devices are an impediment to mindfulness or an facilitator, Chopra is unequivocally in the latter camp.

<strong>I think of technology as the evolution of human consciousness. Who created technology? We created technology, right? And technology is unstoppable. So how do we use it to our benefit?</strong> says Chopra.

To that end, more wearable health trackers like Fitbit are adding mental wellness features and content. For example, these devices can help you become more aware of your emotional fluctuations by asking you to log your moods and showing you data about related wellbeing biometrics (like the quality of your sleep, your physical activity, heart rate, or some of the newer wearable capabilities that can recognize stress reactions in your voice or skin).

There isn’t much independent research on whether digitally logging your moods is effective in managing your mental health. Still, the concept is similar to longstanding suggestions that it can be beneficial to keep a mood journal manually to identify your emotional patterns and triggers.

However, according to some studies, monitoring one’s biometrics can leave some users feeling both empowered and anxious. You could say our smartwatch relationships are complicated. Not only do we share intimate information with them, our weight, what we eat, how we feel, but they now give us biometrics that only elite athletes once had. These are things we didn’t know we had to worry about like whether we’ve enough REM sleep or our heart rate variability. That amount of information can be overwhelming, and dispiriting if you’re not meeting your goals. And on the flip side, some people become anxious when they don’t have access to their health trackers.

In a lot of ways, our gamified brains are primed to respond to trackers’ immediate feedback. Follow a guided breathing exercise and see your heart rate drop–it’s satisfying.

“Today, we are not even talking about bio-feedback; we’re talking about bio-regulation, which means real-time data, real-time feedback, and real-time intervention,” says Chopra. “But,” he adds, “it’s a mistake to think that the quantified self is not the qualitative self as well. The quantitative self is data that makes you feel better about yourself without feeling guilty.”

Brian Ach—Getty Images for TIME Fitbit CEO, President and Co-Founder James Park (L), speaks with MSNBC Live Anchor, Stephanie Ruhle, at the TIME 100 Health Summit on October 17, 2019 in New York City.

If you’re like me, this kind of data revolution isn’t so alarming, but there are obvious sensitivities about all the personal health information in the hands of private companies. This issue particularly current for Fitbit, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Park assures us that Fitbit’s data will not be used by Google for ad targeting, explaining the terms of the deal this way: “The regulators have said, ‘Hey look, you can’t just make a verbal commitment, it actually has to be enshrined and encoded in the technology itself, and in the systems that enforce the separation.'”

How data is gathered and used is undoubtedly one of the most vexing questions of our time. But Chopra believes it is medicine’s most valuable tool in managing chronic health conditions. He is working on a separate project for which a thousand people have agreed to share their biometric and other personal data from cradle to grave. “Data can give you instant knowledge of how to manage somebody’s concerns, whether they’re mental, emotional, physical, or even spiritual,” he says.

Read more: My Fitbit Is More Interested In Me Than I Am

Even those who have avoided the quantified-self movement would likely agree that we need more and better mental wellness interventions. There’s evidence the pandemic worsened what was already a stress epidemic. The American Psychological Association recently reported that 84% of U.S. adults reported feeling at least one emotion associated with prolonged stress in the prior two weeks. And, as Chopra and other health experts point out, long-term stress has all kinds of cascading physical health consequences, which can include high blood pressure, obesity, depression, and more.

At the very least, the debate over whether tech helps with mental wellness is bringing more awareness of the tremendous toll of rampant stress and burnout. And this conversation goes beyond changing our individual lifestyles and behaviors. It’s also about transforming institutions and workplace culture to get at some of the systemic causes of stress. And in that fight, data is an ally.

 

 

Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here to get a fresh edition every Sunday.

As always, you can send comments to me at: Susanna@Time.com.

New story in Science and Health from Time: China’s New Space Station Is Set to Welcome Its First Crew China’s New Space Station Is Set to Welcome Its First Crew

JIUQUAN, China — The three members of the first crew to be sent to China’s space station say they’re eager to get to work making their home for the next three months habitable, setting up testing and experiments and preparing for a series of spacewalks.

The three met with reporters Wednesday from inside a germ-free glassed-in room, hours before they are due to blast off on Thursday morning.

“First of all, we need to arrange our home in the core module, then get started on a whole range of diagnostic tests on crucial technology and experiments,” said mission commander Nie Haisheng, the most senior of the three who is making his third trip to space.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“The task is very arduous and there are many challenges. My colleagues and I will cooperate closely, operate carefully and overcome all difficulties,” Nie said.

Unsurprisingly, all said they had complete confidence in the mission, which carries special political meaning for the ruling Communist Party as it prepares to celebrate its centenary next month.

Liu Boming, whose one previous flight in 2011 included China’s first spacewalk, said there would be multiple such activities during the mission as the astronauts carry out their science experiments, conduct maintenance and prepare the Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, core module to receive two other modules to be sent up next year.

Tang Hongbo, who is making his first flight since being selected among the second batch of astronauts in 2010, said he had been training virtually non-stop for years. “There is pressure,” Tang said. “But where there is pressure there is motivation and … I have confidence in myself and have confidence in our team.”

Thursday’s launch begins the first crewed space mission in five years for an increasingly ambitious space program. China has sent 11 astronauts into space since becoming the third country to so so on its own in 2003, and has sent orbiters and rovers to the moon and Mars.

The astronauts will be traveling in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship launched by a Long March-2F Y12 rocket set to blast off at 9:22 a.m. (0122 GMT) from the Jiuquan launch center in northwestern China.

While the first Tianhe crew are men, women will be part of future crews, officials have said.

Beijing doesn’t participate in the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns over the Chinese program’s secrecy and its military connections. Despite that, foreign science missions and possibly foreign astronauts are expected to visit the Chinese station in future, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at Jiuquan.

“Outer space is the common wealth of people all over the world, and exploring the universe is the shared cause of all mankind,” Ji said.

“We are willing to carry out international cooperation and exchanges with all countries and regions worldwide that are committed to the peaceful use of outer space,” Ji said, adding that existing cooperation with countries including Russia, Italy and Germany along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs was being expanded.

“I believe that in the near future, when the Chinese space station is complete, we will see Chinese and foreign astronauts taking on joint missions to the Chinese space station,” Ji said.

Ji conceded the construction of the Chinese station had come “relatively late,” but said that was also an advantage in that it allowed China to use the latest technologies and concepts, particularly in the areas of reliability and safety.

“Exploring the vast universe, developing space activities building a powerful space nation is our unremitting space dream,” Ji said.

“The construction and operation of China’s space station will raise our technologies and accumulate experience for all the people. It is a positive contribution by China for human exploration of the universe, peaceful utilization of outer space and push forward the building of a community of shared future for mankind,” he said.

The mission is the third of 11 planned through next year to add the additional sections to the station and send up crews and supplies. The main living section of the station was launched in April while the other two modules will be primarily for scientific work.

The mission builds on experience China gained from operating two experimental space stations earlier. It also landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, and earlier landed a probe and rover on the moon and brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s.

Once completed, the station will allow for stays of up to six months, similar to the much larger International Space Station.

Each astronaut will have their own living area and a stationary bike and other exercise equipment will allow them to counter some of the effects of weightlessness. They’ll also be able to bring personal items to remind them of home and stave off boredom while not working, Nie said.

The Chinese station reportedly is intended to be used for 15 years and may outlast ISS, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.

The launch of Tianhe was considered a success although China was criticized for allowing the uncontrolled reentry to Earth of part of the rocket that carried it into space. Usually, discarded rocket stages reenter the atmosphere soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit.

The rocket blasting off Thursday is of a different type, and Ji dismissed concerns about it or the models used for cargo missions posing a threat when they reenter. China published their trajectories and they are expected to burn up long before they could be a danger, he said.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Delta Variant Could Soon Become the Dominant COVID-19 Strain. Here’s What You Need to Know The Delta Variant Could Soon Become the Dominant COVID-19 Strain. Here’s What You Need to Know

The COVID-19 pandemic is increasingly becoming an arms race among the emerging variants of the virus, and at the moment, there’s no question which one is winning: the Delta variant—formally known as B.1.617.2—one of four strains to have emerged originally in India. It was just last month that the World Health Organization labeled Delta a “variant of concern”—joining with the Alpha strain, which emerged in the U.K.; the Beta strain, from South Africa; and the Gamma strain, first seen in Brazil. But Delta is fast becoming the most worrisome of the bunch.

Health officials are sounding the alarm that Delta threatens to reverse the progress made in countries, like the U.S. and U.K., that have lately been beating the pandemic into retreat and worsen conditions in countries, like India, that are still deep in crisis. Researchers have found that Delta is at least 60% more transmissible within households than the Alpha strain, the dominant variant in the U.S., according to the Public Health of England.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

According to accounts from doctors on state-run television in China—which were first reported in English media by the New York Times—Delta-variant patients there have seen symptoms develop more quickly and grow more severe than those in people infected with other variants. Viral loads also climb faster and decline more slowly. Still, epidemiologists say it may be too soon to know for certain if Delta causes more severe illness, and it’s important to recognize that other factors, like lockdown restrictions and vaccination rates, may be affecting disease spread as well. “I’m pretty wary of putting too many eggs in the basket of ‘the variants are making things worse’” says Dr. Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s very convenient for some political leaders to blame variants like an act of God for policy decisions that have led to the situation that we find ourselves in.”

In the U.S., the Delta variant now represents roughly 6% of all cases, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Those numbers are likely to climb. “I think that with the data we have, there’s a good chance that it could take over the 117 [Alpha strain] as the primary variant just because it’s more infectious,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It’s going to create a real additional challenge.”

At a White House briefing last week, Fauci noted that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 88% effective in preventing disease caused by the Delta variant. “The good news is that the Delta variants, just like the other variants, do not appear to escape the protection afforded by the vaccines available in the U.S.,” says Dr. Gronvall. In addition, the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is authorized for use in the E.U. but not in the U.S., has been shown to be 60% effective against the Delta variant, according to a study published in Nature, though scientists expect even greater protection against hospitalization and death caused by the strain.

But in the interim, as populations remain significantly unvaccinated, the Delta variant’s infectiousness is cause for concern. The U.K. government had set June 21 as the target date for reopening the country, but earlier today, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced it will be postponed at least a month. The extra time will allow at least 10 million more doses of vaccine to be administered, according to U.K. Health Minister Edward Argar. So far, 62% of the U.K. population has received at least one vaccine dose and 44% are fully vaccinated.

But even if 10 million doses are indeed successfully administered over the next month, there’s no guarantee breakthrough infections won’t occur.

In response to the spread of the Delta variant in the U.K., other European nations have imposed additional travel restrictions on visitors from the country.

In China, the Delta crisis is centered around the city of Guangzhou in the southeastern part of the country, where the government has imposed restrictions not seen since the earliest days of the pandemic. The government has administered an estimated 32 million COVID-19 tests in the southeast, including to the entire 18.7-million-person population of Guangzhou (the region’s largest city) in an effort to get the outbreak under control. The tests in Guangzhou were conducted over just three-days from June 5 to 7.

So far, 800 million doses of vaccine have been administered across all of China, according to the Chinese news outlet XINHUANET. But that is total doses—not necessarily including second doses, which the widely used Sinovac vaccine requires—and in any event represents just 57% of the population.

And vaccination numbers are much lower in much of the rest of the world, exposing millions to highly transmissible and potentially more dangerous variants, and creating fresh opportunities for the SARS-CoV-2 to shape-shift yet again. “Every time you’re giving the virus a chance to replicate, you’re giving a chance for another variant to take hold, which may have different properties that are not to our advantage,” says Dr. Gronvall. “That is why it is in our self interest to help vaccinate the world.”

In the U.S., cases of the Delta variant are doubling every two weeks, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former director of the Food and Drug Administration, who spoke to CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “It’s essentially taking over,” warned Fauci flatly at a June 8 White House briefing. The answer, he reiterated, is to get people vaccinated—at least up to the 70% level needed to achieve herd immunity.

Osterholm is not optimistic that can happen, given the low rate of vaccination to date, especially in southern and Appalachian states like Georgia, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Some of those states—Alabama, Arkansas and Missouri, for instance—have seen cases rise in recent weeks, and Osterholm says the situation is particularly worrying in so-called “vaccine deserts” within those states where vaccination rates are even lower. There, it’s possible that Delta transmission could fuel local COVID-19 case spikes that overwhelm the regional medical system.

“We have to be careful not to automatically just assume what’s happened in England will happen here,” he says. Nonetheless, he adds, “The risk is surely greater when you have more unvaccinated people together. I think that as we open up everything we’re kind of back in many ways to where we were back in pre-March 2020.”