Anatomy

Russias covid-19 outbreak is far worse than the Kremlin admits – The Economist

May 21st 2020

Editors note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

RUSSIA IS MORE successful in fighting covid-19 than the West, thanks to its superior health-care system and excellent leadership. Though faced with one of the highest rates of infection, its fatality rate is a seventh of that in most countries. That is, if you believe Russian statistics.

Few independent experts do. Russia has officially recorded just over 300,000 cases of covid-19 and 2,900 deaths, which makes its fatality rate less than 1%, compared with 4.5% in Germany and 14% in Britain. Yet the fatality rate among Russias front-line health professionals, who keep their own records, is about 16 times as high as in comparable countries, which suggests that the official figures are much too rosy.

Nonetheless, these were the figures that on May 11th led Vladimir Putin, Russias president, to order an end to a period of non-working days, a euphemism for a national lockdown that he never officially declared. Although he transferred responsibility for retaining restrictions to regional authorities, he signalled that Russia was through the worst. We must give thanks to our doctors and our president, who works day and night to save lives, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, declared.

The Russian government was upset when, on the same day, the Financial Times reported that the real death toll could be 70% higher; the New York Times quoted an expert as saying it could be nearly three times the official tally. These estimates were derived by calculating excess deaths. One member of the Duma demanded that the journalists accreditation be revoked. Kremlin mouthpieces denounced what they called an orchestrated attack on Russia by the West.

Meanwhile, some Russian doctors on social media say they were told to keep numbers low by including in the covid statistics only those who died directly of the disease, not those who had underlying conditions that might have contributed to their demise. Victims relatives are furious.

Adding weight to the suspicion are the improbable figures posted by some regions. For example, in Krasnodar, a region with 5.2m people, the number of reported infections has fluctuated only minutely, between 96 cases and 99 cases a day for the past two weeks. Statistically speaking, that is extremely unlikely.

Several other regions have produced odd statistics. They show the number of infections recorded in regional centres and those recorded in adjacent territories fluctuating in opposite directions, thus balancing each other out and producing a straight line of cases across the region.

The official numbers reveal less about covid-19 than they do about Russias political system, which, like its Soviet predecessor, is saturated with lies. Russian elections throw up similarly strange graphics. Many Russian athletes during the Sochi winter Olympics in 2014 took performance-enhancing drugs, and their cheating was covered up by secretly swapping urine samples with official connivance.

Konstantin Sonin of the University of Chicago says the problem is not that the Kremlin hides or distorts figures, but that it often does not have them in the first place. Most regional bigwigs are not accountable to voters but are entirely dependent on the Kremlin for status and money. They file rosy reports so as to appear to be meeting official targets. The aim is to please the president, not the people. The Kremlin does not even need to tell them what figures to report; they know to report what the Kremlin likes to hear, he says.

Over the past few weeks Russian state television has provided a perfect illustration of this system. In the West officials have at least tried to communicate with their electorates and the media. On Russian television people see their officials reporting to the self-isolated Mr Putin via a videoconference screen. The screen resembles a Russian Orthodox icon: Mr Putin is displayed in a large central box, surrounded by 12 apostles in smaller boxes.

Yet this manufactured image is starting to crack. Mr Putins ratings have dropped to historic lows in recent weeks. On May 17th the health minister in Dagestan, a Russian territory of 3m people in the North Caucasus, told a local blogger that the true number of infections on his patch was four times that reported, and that outbreaks of pneumonia had killed 657 people, not the officially recorded 27. Fully 40 medics had died of it. Mr Putin blamed citizens for trying to treat themselves at home.

Some big cities have been more open than the Kremlin. Moscow admitted that the real number of cases could be significantly higher than officially reported, and retained a lockdown.

The Kremlins handling of the crisis reminds some of the cover-up of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which prompted Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to launch glasnost, a campaign for more openness. The whole system is penetrated by the spirit of bootlicking, persecution of dissidents, clannishness, window-dressing. We will put an end to all this, Mr Gorbachev told his politburo at the time. Mr Putin, who began his presidency 20 years ago by covering up the sinking of the Kursk submarine, is determined not to repeat the glasnost experiment, which helped to bring the whole system crashing down.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "The anatomy of lies"

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Russias covid-19 outbreak is far worse than the Kremlin admits - The Economist

Anatomy

Grey’s anatomy hanged the audience on the point where they don’t have information about their loved show – News Lagoon

The head-shaving scene from Unorthodox. Everyone involved was very nervous because you just have this one take, said director Maria Schrader.By Anika Molnar/Netflix.

The beauty of the scene, to me, is the contradiction of feelings, said director Maria Schrader, calling from Berlin. Haas, in her translucent performance, is a prism of emotion: tears careening down her cheeks as she lets out proud, anguished smiles. The stakes were high. Hair off is hair off, Schrader said of the nail-biter take, which happened on a loaded first day of shooting. Haas began the morning filming the one glimpse of her own honey-colored hair, as she floats nude in the cleansing mikvah bath. A different kind of vulnerability followed, with the buzz cut staged inside Estys pink childhood bedrooma warm, sunlit moment witnessed by the households wide-eyed young girls. It was a deliberately bright counterpoint to a prevailing association with the Holocaust, when the heads of Jews were shaved, Schrader told me. In a similarly upbeat way, she sent Haas a flurry of images of Jean Seberg via WhatsApp. Its that same short pixie that Esty embraces when she ultimately sheds the wig in Berlin.

The experience of a cloistered Hasidic woman is arguably far from those binge-watching her story on the couch, a forkful of Alison Roman pasta in hand. Still, feeling trapped and isolated, balancing communal duty with personal will, it all seems to net out at the buzz cutif youre lucky enough to have the tools at hand.

I dont know if youve ever seen sheep shearing, but thats actually what it used to be before 1919, said Steven Yde, vice president of marketing at the grooming company Wahl. He was describing the old-fashioned monstrosities, with a hulking engine and long attachment, that barbers used during World War I to buzz soldiers heads. An enterprising Leo Wahl returned from duty in France and patented the first handheld clipper, which hit the market in the waning days of a global pandemic. His great-grandson, Brian Wahl, now oversees the business, with a handful of global manufacturing sites and a 1,300-employee factory in small-town Sterling, Illinois.

Were literally out of stock everywhere across the United States, Yde said, still incredulous as he recounts the sudden boom in demand. To get a Wahl clipper right now is like trying to find a nugget of gold. (In an origin-story twist, the closure of off-base barbershops and the need for social distancing has spurred several branches of the military, including the Navy and the Air Force, to temporarily ease grooming standards; a recent video showing a crowd of Marines lined up for regulation haircuts sparked concern that bubbled up to the Secretary of Defense.)

Yde last witnessed a spike in sales during the Great Recession, in the late 2000s. When times are tough, people cut hair at home, he said. (I asked about his own. Yde answered brightly that hes been doing his own fades since college, having learned from his hairdresser mother; he has been cutting his sons hair too, until one of them unveiled a buzzed head last month.) But this is unprecedented territory. Since the Illinois factory halted production on March 21, letters have poured in from major retailers, supporting Wahls designation as an essential business. Desperate emails from would-be customers pour in by the thousands. With the governors green light, Wahl has been readying its facility for a cautious, volunteer-based reopening this week. Along with supplying protective gear and restricting common areas, the company has incorporated practices learned from its Chinese site, which is nearly back to full capacity; one example is creating discrete zones of fewer than 50 people, to minimize possible spread.

Originally posted 2020-04-24 00:27:16.

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Grey's anatomy hanged the audience on the point where they don't have information about their loved show - News Lagoon

Anatomy

A new series of psychological thrillers is coming to Netflix titled ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL by David E. Kelley – Newsdio – NewsDio

David E. Kelley, the creator of shows Big Little Lies and Mr. Mercedes is partnering with Melissa James Gibson, who was showrunner in House of cards, to develop a psychological suspense series for Netflix titled Anatomy of a scandal.

They will write, produce and show the six-part miniseries, which is based on Sarah VaughanThe best-selling novel. It is described as a "insightful and suspenseful series about a sexual consent scandal between the British elite and the women caught in its wake."

S.J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones, The Defenders) will direct all episodes and also receive executive producer credit. The show will be filmed in the UK. Here is the description of the book's story:

You want to believe your husband. She wants to destroy him.

An astonishingly incisive and suspenseful novel about a scandal between Britain's elite elite and women caught in its wake.

Sophie's husband James is a loving father, a handsome man, a charismatic and successful public figure. And yet he is accused of a terrible crime. Sophie is convinced that she is innocent and desperate to protect her precious family from the lies that threaten to tear them apart.

Kate is the attorney hired to process the case an experienced professional who knows the law is about winning the argument. And yet Kate searches for the truth at all times. She is certain that James is guilty and is determined that he will pay for his crimes.

Who is right about James? Sophie or Kate? And are any of them informed by more than instinct and personal experience? Despite her privileged upbringing, Sophie is well aware that her beautiful life is not inviolable. She has known this since she and James were the first lovers, at Oxford, and witnessed the ease with which pleasure can turn into tragedy.

Most people would rather not try to understand what goes on between a man and a woman when they are alone: alone in bed, alone in a hug, alone in an elevator or alone in the moonlit courtyard of an Oxford university, where a girl once stood in front of a boy, her heart pounding with emotion and then fear. Sophie never understood why her tutoring partner Holly left Oxford so abruptly. What would she think if she knew the truth?

Does it sound like it's a series you'd be interested in watching?

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Physiology

Pandemic isolation takes its toll both mentally and physically – ABC10.com KXTV

The psychological effects of isolation "seeps down through our nervous system and gets down into the rest of our body," explained Dr. Steve Cole.

SACRAMENTO, Calif People feeling irritable or out of sorts during the pandemic can often tell that something is wrong, but they are unable to put their finger on the problem. They use words like isolated or lonely to describe their experience but also tend to lash out and those they care about most.

Understandably, most cannot compare these experiences to any other time, because few alive have experienced anything similar.

Yet, there are people who have studied humans living in near total isolation. Dr. Larry Palinkas is one of them.

Dr. Palinkas, a professor of health and social policy at the University of Southern California, has been studying isolation confinement in extreme environments since the 1980s. His subjects have included both polar explorers and astronauts.

Dr. Palinkas said he sees many similarities between his subjects and people living under quarantine stay at home orders.

Certainly, were seeing many of the same kinds of reactions of people to the isolation confinement that has been imposed on them by virtue of the stay-at-home order, Dr. Palinkas said. Whats different about a period of isolation confinement in a polar environment is you know when the end point of that isolation is likely to be And as a result, their ability to mobilize their energy, their cognitive, emotional, material resources are likely to become exhausted over time.

He says different types of people fare better.

Those who are driven and rigid tend to have a hard time in isolation, whereas those who are more introverted tend to do well.

Creative people also tend to fare better during isolation because they can find ways to avoid boredom.

Dr. Palinkas said no matter how short or long someones isolation confinement, they all tend to go through a similar pattern.

No matter whether youre isolated for a week or for a year, you manage to do quite well during the first half of that period of isolation, explained Dr. Palinkas. When you get to the midpoint, you feel a sense of accomplishment but you also feel a sense of dread because youve got an equal amount of time to spend under those conditions.

He also said regardless of length of time, being deprived of familiarity causes predictable responses.

Even if you are isolated for as little as a week, the fact that there is limited environmental stimulation, the fact that you are not able to rely on the kinds of social cues that typically we use to regulate our body rhythmscan also regulate the level of energy that we may have and over time produce a sense of fatigue, said Dr. Palinkas.

He said thats what many people are going through right now.

Many people have been forced to be isolated, confined without knowing how long that period would last, said Dr. Palinkas. And as a result, their ability to mobilize their energy, their cognitive, emotional, material resources are likely to become exhausted over time.

Many people wonder why they snap at those around them during the pandemic. Dr. Palinkas said he might have an explanation.

Many times people will cope with the tension that they experience through the isolation confinement by displacing it on other people," he said.

He said it also gets funneled toward things like governments or politicians.

Many times they will find themselves the brunt of anger and criticism simply because they are a safe outlet for the expression of those feelings of anger and frustration, said Dr. Palinkas.

But the effects are not just mental.

Dr. Steve Cole studies is a genomics researcher who studies the physiological effects of loneliness at UCLA. He explained that the psychological effects of isolation don't just stay in your head.

It seeps down through our nervous system and gets down into the rest of our body," Dr. Cole said.

He said humans have been successful as a species because weve learned to work and live together, so the need to be connected is built into our physiology.

People tend to miss being checked up on people who care about us, he explained.

The major pathway by which we are safe and not stressed is by feeling connected to other members of humanity, said Dr. Cole. So when were lonely and we feel disconnected from them, basically all of our stress circuits flip back on and our physiology goes into this fight or flight mode.

He said this causes an inflammation response, which can be incredibly harmful if not checked. It's something that can develop overtime and won't instantly kill you, but Dr. Cole said "it does work like fertilizer for the development of heart attacks, degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, metastatic cancers, just about everything we worry about in epidemiology."

Psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall echoed Dr. Cole's statements.

But she said whats happening now isnt entirely new to humans, because masses of people already feel isolated and alone without the pandemic. The current state of isolation just exacerbates those feeling for many.

Fortunately, she said, there are many things people can do about it.

Act more extraverted and open than you really are, explained Dr. Marshall. Not so much that youre inauthentic but this is not a time to withdraw. Join an online community. This is so core to our mental health. Whether its a Zoom meeting for your neighborhood or your church service that streams online.

"Write a poem. Teach a class online. Post whatever youve learned. Facetime with your grandchildren and teach them about your life. Because living for others and with others, having gratitude and teaching, can override all kinds of negative emotions.

And, as Dr. Palinkas added, dealing with this isolation now can pay off in the long run.

Weve seen that it can actually produce long term benefits in terms of a sense of accomplishment, a greater sense of ones abilities and the ability to handle any kind of situation if they can handle this particular situation, said Dr. Palinkas.

Follow the conversation onFacebook with Mike Duffy.

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Physiology

The Limits of Science – Varsity Online

The conjunction of DNA and technology raises the question: what can't science do? Alexander Popov

Courtesy of innovations in science and technology, famines, plagues, wars, and infant mortality are now so low that most people living in economically developed countries expect to survive to old age, something which is unprecedented in the history of our species. Our modern society is able to avoid or survive diseases and wars far better than previous civilisations, but one of the final problems facing any civilisation is overextending the bounds of its resources - that is, running out of food.

Some farming practices, such as zero-till farming and applying fertiliser, are able to reduce nutrient losses, or spread them out over a larger area. However, in order to entirely eliminate nutrient losses from the food system, we would need to fertilise crops with our own faeces and dead bodies. Applying artificial fertilisers mined from rocks can help, but these will inevitably run out.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible.

Yet now, it seems as if even food production, the ultimate constraint on our survival, could be solved by technology. Bacterial cultures could produce food from thin air (or, rather, water), and be processed into substitutes for much of what we eat. We would still need to grow fruit and vegetables, but the amount of land required for this is tiny compared to what is required to produce animal products.

Is there any limit to what technology can solve? Thinking about the evolution of technology throughout history helps us address this question. Technology is a part of our cumulative culture, and there is a compelling argument that culture evolves by natural selection acting on memes, analogous to how organisms physiology evolves by natural selection acting on genes. In this sense, technological advances and scientific breakthroughs have little to do with individual people, but are to a large extent a product of the culture which these individuals experience. In support of this idea, there are many examples of convergent evolution. Agriculture arose at least 10 times independently. Calculus was formulated by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz around the same time. Big religions with just one or a few gods tend to evolve from animism and the worship of various spirits, wherever agricultural societies emerged from hunter gathering.

The various developments which eventually led to the iPhone may have been reliant on chance events. But if one of the inventors of Morse code, circuit boards, or miniature batteries had been run over by a bus before their big breakthrough, it seems highly likely that someone else would have made it in their stead, and the iPhone would still ultimately result. If Charles Darwin had never gone on the voyage of the Beagle, it is highly likely that someone else would have discovered evolution by natural selection. In fact, Alfred Russell Wallace did.

We are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible. Some trees have reached their maximum possible size. Our eyes can detect single photons. Dogs noses can detect single molecules. Similarly, there surely must be limits to technology and scientific discoveries. There is surely a finite amount which can be known about the world, and, like distantly related groups of animals under similar environmental conditions converge on the same ecotypes, we will eventually arrive at a given set of explanations for how things work. Evolution, or the laws of physics, exist, and were just waiting to be discovered. To a certain extent, the way in which we think about things is influenced by our language and our culture, but the principles of formal logic and mathematics upon which science is ultimately based are the same regardless of the language which we use to express our internal thoughts and the cultural biases which impact hypotheses.

If evolution, culture and even ideas always converge to common ground, we might reasonably ask: do our individual choices matter, or is everything predetermined? Arguably, our actions are strongly influenced by our values and general worldview, which is shaped by the culture in which we live, which is to some extent a product of biogeography. The general direction of society is modelled by the struggle for survival between different memes which infect our minds and propagate themselves as we transmit ideas to others. In this sense, perhaps we are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

However, what sets us apart from other evolved species is our ability to predict and manipulate the world. For example, physicists could predict that if you dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, they would hit the ground at the same time, and when people went to the moon, they showed that this was indeed true. Hypotheses in complicated systems like ecology can never be proved definitively, but we can use statistics to discriminate the better theories from worse.

So, whilst our beliefs and values are just human constructs, humans have the remarkable ability of predicting phenomena which occur regardless of the cultural frames through which we perceive them. To quote the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, The good thing about science is that its true, whether or not you believe in it. And, although recognising that our actions are to some extent predetermined can make life feel meaningless, I think its impossible to imagine a better existence than to be a conscious being in a world full of fascinating things.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we have a tough few weeks and months ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content for the time being.

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as 1, to help with our running cost at least until we hopefully return to print on 2nd October 2020.

Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe and healthy few months ahead.

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Physiology

PHS’ Kyle Moore headed to West Liberty | News, Sports, Jobs – Parkersburg News

Parkersburgs Kyle Moore prepares to deliver a pitch during a 2019 regular-season game. Moores days on the diamond are just beginning as he signed with West Liberty. Photo provided

PARKERSBURG Kyle Moore would rather be playing baseball.

The Parkersburg High School senior, who is set to attend West Liberty University and continue his career on the diamond for skipper Eric Burkle, has been through plenty the past two months.

With four years of football in the books and one spring left of baseball, Moore was looking ahead to college, but was ready for whatever his final prep season was about to thrust upon him.

Aside from finishing with a 4.25 GPA as a senior, the pitcher/outfielder said hes basically heading to WLU as a sophomore thanks to earning college credits at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

Im going into athletic training as my major, said Moore, who was looking forward to playing summer ball with American Legion Post 15. After that go to PA school. What they have is this three and two.

Ill get my undergraduate in exercise physiology and then Ill get my masters in athletic training. Then go another two and a half years to PA school and become a physician assistant. Its all a matter of getting into the PA program.

Even though the Big Reds werent expected to challenge for a Class AAA state championship, Moore wishes he had his final spring with his teammates and coach Alan Burns.

We were pretty excited, he said. We had a really young team this year. It was going to be interesting to see how all the pieces were going to piece together. We were putting up good numbers in the weight room all winter and we were excited to see how that translated on the field.

We had about 10 practices when everything hit. The following week we were supposed to have three games, including a game against South.

We were excited and then all of this hit. I mean I hate losing your senior year. Couple of the guys Ive played with since 7 years old. You dont get that last final game to play with them.

Moore was the Big Reds top returning pitcher after working 22-plus frames as a junior. He recorded three decisions, which included a pair of victories, to go along with a 2.51 earned run average and one save.

Ive kind of accepted it, Moore expressed of the whole COVID-19 situation. It is very hard not being able to have that senior season. I was going to be one of our main pitchers and play a lot in left field.

Last year I pitched a lot of games out of the bullpen. I was mainly a relief pitcher. Going into my senior year, I was making the transition to a starting pitcher and I played a lot in the outfield last year.

Things are kind of looking up it appears for the Big Red, depending on how things unfold with the ongoing pandemic.

Its been pushed back to June 26, Moore said of his delayed graduation. Right now I think its supposed to be regular, but they havent told us much detail. I think they are waiting to get closer and see how open the state is.

I mean the main thing (with COVID-19) is just losing the senior baseball season, not getting to play your final season. Youve played with them the last four years and probably more and just not getting that experience.

It took just a single trip for Moore to realize where his home for the next few years was going to be.

I got into contact with graduate assistant coach Joel Jarrett, he explained. I went up on a couple visits and I really liked the campus and the coaching staff. I went on another visit and worked out with some of the guys and they were awesome up there.

I fell in love with the campus and the atmosphere of the school. There were a couple of schools who talked to coach Burns about me, but I just love West Liberty and the program, but I didnt go on any other visits anywhere.

If Moore can catch a break this spring, it will come from playing baseball this summer in some way, shape or form.

Hes thankful for the opportunities and experiences he had while a member of the red and white.

You look back at all the people who have played through the program at PHS of baseball, Moore added. You got Nick Swisher and those guys. Its fun to make your own memories with the same program he went through.

When asked whether he felt prepared for the rigors of being a Division II student-athlete, Moore didnt hesitate.

Youre always a little bit worried, he said. Division II, going to the next level, its going to be a different pace of play and people as good or better than you.

You have to work hard for it, but I think Ill do OK. I think Ill have to do a little more studying when I go to college, but I think Ill be OK.

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com

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Human Behavior

Have Pollution Levels Decreased Amid the Coronavirus Lockdown? – Earth911.com

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Does it take a pandemic to reduce pollution? The Earth is vibrating lessbecause of lockdowns, according to geoscientists, andIndias falling levelsof harmful microscopic particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide have given those citizens glimpses of blue skies.

Even though were all running from an infectious disease, the reality seems to be that we might be living on a healthier planet. So, what can a global shutdown teach us about how to change our lifestyle?

It feels like the whole world is in limbo. Everything we used to do is not happening the same way anymore, if its happening at all our commutes, shopping, eating out, traveling. Heavy industries and factories have shut down or significantly decreased their output. Traffic jams have all but disappeared.

Even though our normal behavior is stunted, weve found new ways to live, work, and play. And we still impact the environment, but now were impacting it differently. Are we making good decisions? Is COVID-19 our opportunity to reset? Maybe.

We are in the middle of an unintended experiment when it comes to the environmental impact of air pollution emissions, according to NASA. With so much of the world shut down because of coronavirus restrictions, we have been given an opportunity to really see how air quality is affected when communities and countries are not operating normally.

The air quality footprint around airports, for example, has lightened up less nitrogen dioxide and formaldehyde. There is, quite simply, better air quality with less air traffic in the time of COVID-19. Though electric airplanes are still a long time in the future, these details are evidence that can help policymakers improve their understanding of the air we breathe and the necessity for greater intervention when it comes to making changes.

With fewer planes flying through the sky, there are certainly fewer exhaust trails behind them. However, the sharp decline in air travel has impacted meteorologists abilities to accurately forecast the weather.

Commercial aircraft take about 900,000 measurements of air temperature, wind speed, humidity, and direction per day. In the age of coronavirus, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the reports are only around 300,000 measurements a day. NOAA has announced it will conduct a systematic study of the impact of the coronavirus on the climate.

Climate and weather systems are very complex significant changes in these systems are undeniably valuable to researchers. Without the extensive daily reporting, its more difficult to see where the weather may be headed, make predictions, and allow people in danger zones to prepare.

There have been major drops in air pollution in areas hit hardest by COVID-19, according to worldwide satellite images. Millions of people are working from home instead of commuting every day. Millions of people are out of work and no longer have a commute. School buses are off the streets. Work trucks are parked. Roadways are hardly crowded anymore.

Whilelower emissions are real, experts say theyre temporary. This decrease in pollution is amazing, but life will eventually return to normal, and the pollution and greenhouse gases will return too. NASA studies and the like have made it clear humans are a major contributor to the incredible blights on Earth. When our behavior changes, so does our affect on the Earth.

Coronavirus has demanded a new normal, and we can learn from the environmental shifts that are happening around us. Changes in human behavior caused by the pandemic have given scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study how coronavirus and humans impact the environment.

We are trusting that we will one day rebound to our usual way of life, so the question is: What changes have you made to accommodate the coronavirus that helped the planet? What are you doing now that you can continue to do, pandemic or not?

Maybe you can:

Human behavior is a powerful thing. Wearing masks and staying home has saved millions of lives over the past few months and given Earth a reprieve in the process. If we can come together to do that, we can come together to save our planet too.

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Have Pollution Levels Decreased Amid the Coronavirus Lockdown? - Earth911.com

Human Behavior

COVID-19 recovery can benefit biodiversity – Science Magazine

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global crisis. Severe interruptions to international trade and travel are crippling economies and forcing reevaluation of economic, health, and environmental trajectories. Given that COVID-19 has triggered widespread changes in human behavior and reductions in pollution (1, 2), it presents opportunities for further positive change. Lockdowns have spurred households to rethink consumer needs, making now an opportune time to promote sustainable consumer choices that will become more engrained with prolonged exposure (1). How we emerge from the state of lockdowns will drive a new world economy with lasting effects on global biodiversity and supply chains (3, 4).

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to trigger enormous effects on biodiversity and conservation outcomes. This virus emerged due to wildlife exploitation (5), and the risk of new diseases increases with environmental degradation (6). Past events such as pandemics, wars, and financial crises have also triggered quantifiable environmental changes (7, 8). We can learn from such events to guide effective conservation strategy. National governments and intergovernmental organizations should adopt clear strategies to safeguard both biodiversity and human health throughout the COVID-19 recovery.

Active promotion and implementation of certain strategies could tip the balance in favor of positive biodiversity outcomes. We can reboot economies while protecting humans and nature by redesigning trade networks and supply chains to localize and better support sustainable consumer options. We can also strengthen environmental protections, improve environmental monitoring through better use of automation, and ensure that conservation funding schemes remain active.

Environmental policy has already moved in both directions. Although in some places, environmental protections have weakened (9), in others, governments have banned animal trade (3, 10) and aim to localize supply chains to increase resource security (11). Blanket wildlife trade bans are not the answer (3), but appropriately nuanced strategies that incorporate such measures should be encouraged. As we progress into a postCOVID-19 world, recovery strategies can be optimized to benefit biodiversity conservation and protect human health.

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COVID-19 recovery can benefit biodiversity - Science Magazine

Human Behavior

Appinium Announces Major Update to the Most Effective Way for Salesforce Users to Leverage Video, Multimedia, and Learning – WFMZ Allentown

SAN FRANCISCO, May 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- While there are currently multiple sales-enablement and video marketing options on the Salesforce platform, Appinium is the only one that offers comprehensive marketing, sales enablement, customer-success, and learning data build natively on Salesforce.

Their ViewTrac app allows Salesforce users to view a wide range of data for video, podcasts, interactive video, and multimedia assets, including; who is watching those videos, who is interacting with the video, who is listening, how much of those videos they watched, where they watched them and at what point they engaged with them. With ViewTrac, Salesforce users can ensure that their multimedia assets are always being viewed by the right people at the right time to drive behavior.

With Appinium's LearnTrac app, Salesforce users can engage customers, employees and partners like never before. Now, users can deliver contextual, targeted eLearning as part of a larger Salesforce strategy, seamlessly and effortlessly. LearnTrac also allows Salesforce users to obtain relevant and unique data regarding the efficacy of sales-training efforts, customer-support costs, employee performance and much more.

"No one brings together data on human behavior as it relates to business the way we do."- says Appinium CEO and Founder, Steven Jacobson, "Think of Appinium as a river that picks up vital information regarding marketing, sales-enablement, learning and customer-service along the way. That data ensures connectivity, and it's connectivity that drives behavior."

Appinium recognizes that the future is driven by data. Which is why their team of engineers, sales professionals and entrepreneurs have gone to great lengths to build a product that acquires, compiles and delivers an unprecedented level of marketing, sales learning and customer-success data on the platform where it can be used most effectively Salesforce.

User acceptance testing of the updated app (version 4.1) is scheduled to begin May 30, 2020, with an official release planned for June 23, 2020.

http://www.appinium.com

Media Inquiries:Jody Green917 292 7070240327@email4pr.com

Excerpt from:
Appinium Announces Major Update to the Most Effective Way for Salesforce Users to Leverage Video, Multimedia, and Learning - WFMZ Allentown