The moon gave us a show we won’t again see for another three years. Plus, the U.K. is set for its first satellite launch, and NASA’s Artemis program is poised for another try. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Day: November 10, 2022
People who have had COVID-19 more than once are two or three times more likely to have a range of serious health problems than those who have only had it once, the first major study on the subject said Thursday.
Multiple infections have surged as the pandemic rumbles on and the virus mutates into new strains, but the long-term health effects of reinfection have not been clear.
The U.S. researchers said their new study published in the Nature Medicine journal was the first to look at how reinfection increases the risk of health problems from acute cases as well as long COVID.
The researchers analyzed the anonymous medical records of 5.8 million people in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ national health care database.
More than 443,000 had tested positive for COVID-19 at least once between March 1, 2020, and April this year.
Nearly 41,000 of that group had COVID more than once. More than 93% had a total of two infections, while 6% had three, and nearly 1% had four.
The other 5.3 million never contracted COVID-19.
When the researchers compared the health outcomes of the different groups, they found that “people who got reinfected have an increased risk of all sorts of adverse health problems,” Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and the study’s senior author, told AFP.
People with repeat infections were twice as likely to die prematurely and three times more likely to be hospitalized with illness than those who had not been reinfected, the study found.
Heart and lung problems were more than three times more common for people who had been reinfected.
Reinfection also contributes to brain conditions, kidney disease and diabetes, the study said.
And the risk of such problems could increase with each infection, it suggested.
Al-Aly warned that this means that continuous reinfections “would likely elevate the burden of disease in the population.”
Epidemiologist recommends masks
Ahead of a feared COVID-19 spike during the holiday season, he called on people to wear masks to protect themselves.
He also urged authorities to do more to stop the disease from circulating.
“The reason reinfection is happening is that our current vaccine strategy does not block transmission,” he said.
“I think reinfections will continue to happen until we have vaccines that block transmission, offer more durable protection, and are variant proof,” he said.
‘Worrisome’ findings
The authors said the limitations of the study included that most of the veteran participants were older white males.
When the study was released as a preprint in June, U.S. expert Eric Topol described the findings as “worrisome.”
In a Substack post, Topol pointed out that reinfections became “much more common” after April — when the study’s timeframe ended — because of new, more transmissible omicron variants.
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China Wednesday said it would not pay into a climate loss and damage fund for developing nations, after small island nations cited its responsibility as a high carbon emitter at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, COP27.
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, on behalf of the Association of Small Island States, Tuesday called for major greenhouse gas emitters China and India to chip in for a fund to compensate poor countries for the consequences of climate change.
It was the first time developing nations have included China and India among countries financially accountable for emissions.
Beijing would support such a mechanism, but would not pay cash into the loss and damage fund, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Wednesday.
Xie added that China does is not obliged to contribute but reiterated the country’s alignment with developing nations in seeking such fund from developed countries.
Despite being the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter China has long been categorized as a developing nation and is put into the same group with developing countries at COP for climate discussions.
Developing countries have long urged wealthier nations to deliver on promises of $100 billion a year for climate mitigation and adaptation, but rich nations were found to fall short on that pledge, according to an OECD report.
The pressure from developing nations for China to pay for loss and damage reflects a “diluted view” of the argument that historic emitters should pay the most, according to Scott Moore, director of China programs and strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in environmental sustainability and international relations.
“There is a lot of legitimacy to the historic emissions argument. On the other hand, China, in particular, its emissions growth really just in the last 20, 25 years has been so enormous that its emissions are kind of starting to veer into a territory where you can argue that China is actually responsible for a significant share of cumulative emissions,” Moore told VOA by video call.
Historically, China has contributed to about 13% of the world’s carbon emissions since the start of the industrial revolution, while the United States and the EU account for over 20% each. China, along with the United States, was found to release more carbon than their share of world population – China has 19% of the world’s population, but has produced over one-fourth of the world’s carbon emissions.
China’s shifting role
During COP26, last year’s U.N. climate change conference, in Glasgow, Scotland, China and other developing nations sought $1.3 trillion per year from wealthier nations starting 2030. A report from high-level experts at the United Nations, published this month, said by 2030, $2.4 trillion a year would be but only for developing countries “other than China.” The report also said China, along with Western Europe and North America, has dominated the world’s climate finance.
Beijing has been slowly shifting its role to being a donor country, according to Gørild Merethe Heggelund, research professor at Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, who focuses on China’s climate change policies.
“China was a recipient of climate finance for years, but China has now become a donor country. Their role as an aid country is becoming stronger and becoming clearer as it goes on and getting more experience,” Heggelund told VOA via a video call.
At COP21 in 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping established the $3.1 billion South-South Climate Cooperation Fund in a move scientists called “significant,” as it was one of the largest single pledges from developing countries to support climate action. In June this year, Xi injected another $1 billion in the fund that is now named “he Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund.
The addition is part of Xi’s new 2021 Global Development Initiative, which aims to fund projects in the Global South to boost sustainable development and capacity building. In September, officials said over 1,000 programs are planned under the GDI.
Piqued by internal challenges and geopolitics
China is likely to focus more on domestic mitigation efforts than international contributions, Heggelund said.
“China is highly vulnerable to climate change and we’ve seen some of the droughts this summer. They have some challenges at home that they need to address and that they are addressing. I think we can see a little bit of a difference between what China is doing on the global scene and the negotiations, and what they are doing domestically,” he said.
Despite a 3.9% economic growth in this year’s third quarter, China is expected to have a bumpy road to recovery over its continued COVID-19 lockdown curbs, a global recession and a sluggish property market.
Geopolitics will also inevitably play a role in climate negotiations for China, Moore said. “I think for a long time we had sort of hoped and thought that climate change could be kind of special.”
The United States and China joined hands at COP26 for climate cooperation talks amid political tensions. Part of that agreement included discussions about “scaling up of financial and capacity-building support for adaptation in developing countries.”
However, China suspended the bilateral cooperation in August, following U.S. House or Represenatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Beijing said such climate talks “cannot be separated from the broad climate of bilateral ties.” The two sides held unofficial talks at COP27, but have not confirmed whether they would resume climate cooperation.
“We will see climate change and climate action defined by as much by these geopolitical tensions and issues as anything else,” said Moore.
Published with support of Climate Tracker’s Climate Justice Fellowship
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The widespread retrenchment in the U.S. technology industry has thrown thousands of workers in Silicon Valley out of work, a trend greatly amplified on Wednesday by Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, which announced it would eliminate 13% of its workforce, amounting to more than 11,000 jobs.
The announcement followed on the heels of major layoffs at other tech firms, most recently Twitter, which is restructuring in the aftermath of its takeover by Tesla founder Elon Musk, and also business software firm Salesforce and social media giant Snap, Inc.
Other major tech firms, including Apple, Amazon and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, have said that they will slow or curtail new hiring.
Announcing the job cuts, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted he had made an error in judgment by assuming the sharp growth in online commerce that coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic signaled a permanent change in consumer habits.
“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg said in a statement released Wednesday. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”
Market reacts
The move by Meta to cut costs was applauded by many investors, some of whom have been calling on the company to pay more attention to its bottom line.
Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital and a vocal proponent of change at Meta, used Twitter to voice his approval of Zuckerberg’s announcement on Wednesday morning.
Calling the move an “important first step,” he wrote, “Innovation wins when companies are healthy and fit. The cultural mindset shift from the dangerous era of excess/free money will define the next [generation] of winners.”
Meta’s share price, which had plunged from more than $345 last November to below $89 last week, got a boost from the news. After closing at $96.48 on Tuesday, Meta shares opened the day above $100, and closed up 5% at $101.47.
Other layoffs
Employees leaving Meta and seeking other employment in the tech sector will enter a challenging environment, given the sudden layoffs of thousands of their fellow workers across the sector.
Last week, Twitter announced it would lay off about 3,700 people, or approximately half of its workforce. The layoffs occurred in Twitter offices around the world but were concentrated in the United States. The company has reportedly asked some of the workers originally let go to return, but the overwhelming majority are expected to remain separated from the company.
San Francisco-based Salesforce announced Monday it would lay off approximately 2,500 people. That revelation came just weeks after the company’s largest competitor, software giant Microsoft, eliminated nearly 1,000 jobs in October.
This continues a trend that has been accelerating since early this year as a parade of other tech firms, including Seagate, Snap, Intel, Netflix, Shopify, Lyft and others have either cut jobs or restricted hiring.
Some perspective
Representative Ro Khanna, the Democratic member of Congress who represents a district including large segments of Silicon Valley, was asked during an interview with Bloomberg Television on Monday whether he thought the region would be able to “survive” the economic shock of the thousands of layoffs.
Khanna said some perspective was in order, noting that his district alone is home to companies with $10 trillion in market value and would be able to bounce back, though perhaps not without a broader economic recovery.
“I think we’re a leading indicator of some of the slowing in the economy,” Khanna said. “But I have no doubt that these companies are very resilient and we’ll come back.”
Visa holders
The impact of the layoffs will be particularly harsh on immigrants working at U.S. tech firms. Many hold H-1B visas, which means their ability to remain in the U.S. is dependent on continued employment by a company willing to sponsor their visa applications.
H-1B visa holders, in general, face a 60-day deadline to find a new job. If they fail to do so, they are required to leave the country.
According to data compiled by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the overwhelming majority of H-1B visa holders work in the technology field. In 2019, the agency reported that of the 387,492 H-1B visa holders in the country whose occupations were known, 256,226, or 66%, worked in “computer-related fields.”
H-1B visas are disproportionately issued to citizens of India, who held 71.7% of outstanding visas in 2019. The next largest recipient are citizens of China, who held 13% of H-1B visas in 2019. Canada came in third at 1.2% and no other country’s citizens held more than 1% of the total.
In his public statement, Zuckerberg acknowledged that “this [workforce reduction] is especially difficult if you’re here on a visa.” He said Meta would have dedicated immigration specialists available “to help guide you based on what you and your family need.”
Global impact
The layoffs in Silicon Valley-based tech firms have also echoed around the world, particularly at Twitter, where staff at several international offices were let go en masse.
Bloomberg News reported that Twitter laid off some 90% of its employees in India, the majority in the company’s product and engineering teams. In Ghana, the site of the company’s only office on the African continent, nearly all of the company’s 20 employees received termination notices.
Meta has several hundred employees in India, spread across Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, two other social media companies it owns. It was unclear Wednesday how the layoffs would affect staff there.
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