The world is waking up to India's plight—too late

Lessons from the pandemic's superstar data scientist

Sponsored by Darktrace The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology India's covid catastrophe 04.27.21 Good morning! Today: the world has started waking up to the covid crisis in India, but is it too little, too late? Also: what we can learn from the pandemic's superstar data scientist, and how we cope with the climate impact of rising meat consumption. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. The world is waking up to India's plight—too late  The news: Vital medical supplies have started arriving in India as it battles one of the most acute covid-19 crises of any country yet. The country set a global record for new cases for the fifth day in a row yesterday, reporting 352,991 and 2,812 deaths. The true figure for daily cases is almost certainly far higher, and may now number in the millions.  The outlook: The situation is dire. The healthcare system in much of India has collapsed, with no intensive care unit beds available for new patients. Hospitals have run out of oxygen, meaning patients are suffocating. Parking lots have been turned into mass cremation sites.  Help on its way: Aid has started pouring into India from around the world. The WHO is sending oxygen, laboratory supplies, and field hospitals to India, along with 2,600 experts to work alongside local health officials. The UK, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are sending oxygen and ventilators, while the US has promised to send the raw materials to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine, plus ventilators, protective equipment, and test kits.  What will the impact be? While helpful, scientists say that aid will only make a "dent" in the crisis India is experiencing. The situation may be worsened by the emergence of a new virus variant dubbed B.1.617. But experts say the fact the government relaxed restrictions too quickly also contributed to the catastrophe, along with prioritizing vaccine exports. Even now, India has still not gone back into a national lockdown. Lessons from the pandemic’s superstar data scientist, Youyang Gu Last spring, the data scientist Youyang Gu looked at the scattershot covid-19 projections—one model projected 2 million US deaths by the summer, another predicted 60,000—and decided he’d take a shot at doing a better job. Within a week, he’d built a machine-learning model and launched his COVID-19 Projections website. He ran the model every day and posted covid-19 death projections for 50 US states, 34 counties, and 71 countries. He started getting attention, acclaim, and eventually, millions were checking his website every day. His forecasts proved remarkably accurate. An MIT grad with a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, Gu, 27, had been working on a sports analytics startup when the pandemic hit. But he put that venture on pause. Then, by simply googling “epidemiology,” he began his foray into covid-19 modeling. He’s now a member of the World Health Organization’s technical advisory group on covid-19 mortality assessment. Read how Gu did it—and the lessons for science more generally. —Siobhan Roberts We’re on track to set a new record for global meat consumption A bold call: Bill Gates made headlines earlier this year for saying that “all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef” in an interview with MIT Technology Review. But despite the growth of plant-based alternatives, the world is expected to eat more meat in 2021 than ever before, pushing up greenhouse gas emissions. What’s the answer? Trying to steer people’s tastes away from meat is unlikely to reverse this trend. Instead, policymakers and environmental groups should support efforts to develop alternative protein sources and low-impact methods of livestock production. Meat replacements can only take us so far, as there simply aren’t any yet that replicate the taste, look, and feel of whole cuts like pork chops or sirloin. So figuring out how to raise livestock without generating as many emissions is another critical piece of the puzzle. Some companies are already working on this. Bigger picture: Drive less, fly less, eat less meat: environmentalists have long proposed behavioral changes to address the challenges of the day. While many of these changes would do plenty of good, they are just as often green fantasies that ignore global trends largely out of our control. Read the full story. By Dan Blaustein-Rejto and Alex Smith, who both work at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center in Oakland, California. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Oh look, it's Kevin Bacon singing to some goats and llamas.    + It's spring! Time to eat fresh, crispy, crunchy things.    + These domino videos are amazing.    + We got a glimpse of the first supermoon of 2021 yesterday.   + A town in Sicily is selling houses for just one euro.    + The new craze among 20-somethings? Dressing like their grandparents. (WSJ $)   + Something deeply hilarious about this piggybacking bird (thanks Michael.) Sponsor Message Defend against cyber-threats with AI Darktrace AI identifies malicious activity hiding in your digital ecosystem and acts autonomously to neutralize the threat. Find out why McLaren relies on self-learning AI to detect and disrupt cyber-attacks at machine-speed. Learn more > The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Nearly 1 billion covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered globally But the overwhelming majority are in rich countries. (Axios)   + Millions of Americans are skipping their second doses. (NYT $)   + States with springtime covid-19 surges seem to be turning a corner. (Stat)  2 How Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook fell out They disagree about how to best make money out of us. (NYT $)   + Why Apple's latest iOS update is such a huge deal. (NYT $)   + How to opt out of tracking on iOS. (Recode)   + Apple is going to build a new campus in North Carolina. (WSJ $)  3 What if free will… doesn't exist? 🤯 Read this and try not to go into an existential crisis. I dare you. (The Guardian)   4 TikTok is all about the vibes Increasingly, we're not seeking personalities or narratives but indefinable, hard-to-pin-down feelings. (New Yorker $)   5 How YouTube disinformation tears families apart No other platform contributes as much as it does to the problem. (NPR)    6 Blue Origin is challenging a NASA contract awarded to rival SpaceX 🚀 It says NASA “moved the goalposts at the last minute.” (CNBC)   7 What the pandemic has done to our mental health Estimates say at least a third of the global population is suffering—especially women, the poor, and young people. (CNET)   + The pandemic has forced us to be alone when we're grieving. (The Verge)  8 Zoom is trying to make video calls feel a bit more "in-person" But I'm not sure its new Immersive View feature isn't even weirder than the current set-up. (The Verge)   9 Could the world run entirely on renewable energy? In short, yes. But there are a lot of caveats. (Earther)   10 AI is getting really good at identifying birdsong And that's going to make conservationists' work much easier. (Scientific American $)   + AI could help us understand animal languages. (New Yorker $) Not an expert? Not a problem. Our team is full of those. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today for an insightful look into technology for the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Quote of the Day “Being a scientist in Brazil is so sad and frustrating. Half of our deaths were preventable. It’s a total disaster.” —Jesem Orellana, an epidemiologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation's centre in Manaus, tells Nature that the Brazilian government’s failure to follow science-based guidance in responding to the pandemic has made the crisis much worse. Top image credit: Associated Press Please send chill vibes to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Leading a forever-changed workforce Join us virtually | June 8-10, 2021 Register now   Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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