The corona virus crisis is creating lots of opportunities for all kinds of good things. Let’s grab those opportunities. (See also the links below.)

• We could create an automated pathogen detection network and start providing point-of-interest diagnostics. Whether you have systems that monitor the air and for example examine what’s on the filters (so that you can also detect anything that is new), have systems for passengers at airports and cruise ship terminals or systems at entrances to supermarkets or at train stations where people can get themselves tested, why not work toward this?

I hope that it does not upset anyone when I say that it appears that it might bring us much more benefit than taking off our shoes because ONE Brit was once caught with explosives in his shoes and tackled by his fellow passengers on board of an airplane (Richard Reid in 2001). I mean, we’ve already had over 28,000 extra deaths in the UK alone now and the number may rise to over 60,000.

No, the point is not at all whether people would be able to swab their own mouths and noses or whether they would be able to cough into a machine or insert swabs into a machine.

• Instead of leaving millions and millions of people in disadvantaged situations of poverty and neglect, not to mention ridicule and abuse, we could embrace them and for example lift the UK’s poor out of poverty.
• We could stick with the current more sustainable way of living, work more from home instead of drive our traffic back up to the old noise and pollution levels, the same pollution levels that have made people more vulnerable to COVID-19.
• Yes, we should curb our ridiculous consumerism. It causes too much noise pollution, light pollution, chemical pollution, plastics pollution, atmospheric pollution (greenhouse gases up high, ozone and fine dust and other noxious gases in the air that we breathe, habitat destruction, harm to non-human animals… and everything that results in means that we are killing ourselves as a species.
• So maybe you too could think about not seeing this crisis as something to get through – something bad and stressful that we want to leave behind us as soon as possible – but as something to be experienced as part of a rich life and to do lots of good with, fix problems. That is WEALTH.

LINKS

(These links may give you a warning about leaving YouTube, which is fine; that’s because I copied this from the description under the video.)

Biosensors for COVID-19:
https://www.ibj.com/blogs/the-dose/pu…
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/sflf-anb042120.php

Pollen counts:
https://www.worc.ac.uk/about/academic-schools/school-of-science-and-the-environment/science-and-the-environment-research/national-pollen-and-aerobiology-research-unit/home.aspx

About the spread of COVID-19:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52526554

Air pollution and COVID-19:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202… https://www.theguardian.com/environme…

About the manifesto drawn up and signed by 170 researchers working at Dutch universities:
https://www.staff.universiteitleiden….

Bioethicist Françoise Baylis is interested in doing something like this manifesto in Canada. Other people have been saying similar things, namely that we have the chance to do something really good now and that it is up to us what we do with this opportunity.

The manifesto (PDF):
https://www.staff.universiteitleiden….]

How to avoid falling into traps now and do better:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52547885

Ageism in the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2… (2020) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2… (2011)

Poverty in the UK:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics… https://www.theguardian.com/society/2… https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1

Poverty and COVID-19:
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/re… https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/30/op…

What can we do in the UK?

https://www.businessgreen.com/news-analysis/4014922/seven-steps-green-resilient-recovery
https://angelinasouren.com/mastermind…

For the record. I am 60ish and I said so in the uncut recording. In Britain that would be something to be ashamed of. Nowhere else, as far as I know. Many Brits literally have a problem with anyone who’s over 35 and many other things. I moved to Britain when I was 44, got treated as if I was a senile 93-year-old. Ha ha! It almost feels like I lose 50 years every time I leave the UK, in terms of how I am treated. (I’m changing that. Plus powerrrr is super powerrrr.)