Good morning! Today: Joe Biden promises to spend $2 trillion to combat climate change, and is there a link between blood type and covid-19 infection? Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.
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Joe Biden has pledged to spend $2 trillion to fight climate change
The news: In a speech yesterday, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, announced proposals to spend $2 trillion on clean-energy projects and eliminate carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 2035. He also trumpeted plans to retrofit millions of homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient, and schemes to promote electric vehicles and rail.
Ambitious: The new plan is far more aggressive than Biden’s earlier campaign proposal. It calls for “net zero” emissions across the economy by 2050 and follows a set of climate policy recommendations issued earlier this month by a “unity task force,” created this spring with Biden’s primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders.
A tough balance: However, even Biden’s new targets fall short of the demands of many climate activists: all-renewable electricity generation by 2030, and an immediate ban on fracking. Read the full story.
—James Temple
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Is there a relationship between blood type and covid-19 infection?
The plot thickens: None of these studies were peer reviewed. But one that was, a genome study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that patients with type A blood had a 45% higher risk of experiencing respiratory failure after contracting covid-19, while those with type O had a 35% reduction in risk.
Reasons unknown: Scientists don’t know yet what would cause this, and there are methodological flaws to the studies that have been run so far. In any case, blood type doesn’t seem to be among any of the more significant risk factors that distinguish mild cases from severe ones. The biggest factors are still age and underlying health issues. And type O individuals are not immune to severe infection. Read the full story.
—Neel V. Patel
Listen to the latest episode of our podcast, Deep Tech: “Lassoing the venture capital cowboys.” It’s about how venture firms fuel untold innovation in the US, but still exclude women and people of color, and fail to fund many of the technologies we need now.
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We can still have nice things
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The top ten must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The US is a covid-19 dumpster fire—here’s how to fix it
Local lockdowns, mass testing, contact tracing, better data, and targeted assistance for those who need it most. ( STAT)
+ The Trump administration has stripped the CDC of control over coronavirus data. ( NYT $)
+ Hospitals in Texas are running out of drugs, beds, ventilators, and staff. ( Texas Tribune)
+ What’s a safe distance to avoid catching covid-19? ( Reuters)
+ Talk of “waves” of coronavirus is meaningless. ( Wired UK)
+ What to make of research that suggests immunity to covid-19 is short-lived. ( Elemental)
2 A pregnant woman passed on coronavirus to her baby in her womb
It’s believed to be the first confirmed case of this happening (both mother and baby have since recovered.) ( The Guardian)
3 Apple has won its appeal against the EU’s $14.9 billion tax bill
The company was ordered to pay back billions in back taxes to Ireland in 2016. Now it won’t have to. ( The Verge)
4 A teenager didn’t do her online home work, so a judge sent her to jail
Unspeakably cruel. ( ProPublica)
+ Schools reopened in Israel, and a spike of coronavirus infections followed. ( The Daily Beast)
5 Foreign students now can stay in the US for online-only courses
The Trump administration abandoned its stance after the damage it would inflict became apparent. ( CNN)
6 The UK is going to ban Huawei from its 5G networks
It will delay the arrival of 5G for the country for two or three years and cost £7 billion. ( BBC)
+ Announcing the ban was the easy part. What comes next will be hugely complex and challenging. ( Wired UK)
+ Tech bans (is TikTok next?) are a microcosm of America’s wider fears over China’s rise. ( Wired $)
7 Drug overdoses are probably increasing due to the pandemic
And things are likely to get worse before they get better. ( Buzzfeed)
8 Karen parodies are popping on TikTok
But sometimes, it’s hard to distinguish the spoofs from the real thing. ( WP $)
+ Competitors are ready to pounce if TikTok is banned in the US. ( Axios)
9 Our response to covid-19 is becoming yet another culture war
With Facebook groups helping to deepen the polarization even further. ( The Atlantic)
10 Everything is a cake now 🍰
This is an unsettling, hilarious meme that has frankly got completely out of hand. ( NYT $)
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“If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”
—Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spells out his view in the light of the evidence that mask-wearing helps to reduce transmission of covid-19.
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