When COVID-19 and Militaries Collide, Air Pollution's Staggering Toll, Online Shopping Disparities
When COVID-19 and Militaries Collide, Air Pollution's Staggering Toll, Online Shopping Disparities
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January 16, 2025 
Better health begins with ideas
Editors' Note Human life hinges on our ability to breathe clean air, but research shows air pollution—including soot, smoke, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone—is a staggering problem linked to an estimated four million deaths annually. Our first set of authors writes about air pollution's effect on the health of people across the globe. A physician in Senegal fighting cancer asks why the cost of chemo and cancer care, already not cheap in high-income countries, is even more prohibitive and inaccessible in Africa.
Online grocery shopping has seemed ubiquitous since the start of the pandemic, but Duke University researchers point to a large swath of the population left out of this food-buying option and propose solutions addressing the disparity. A cycle of panic and neglect has characterized investments in public health and biosecurity for decades, but revolutions in biotechnology and the bioeconomy are enabling some of the most effective responses to the COVID-19 crisis, says one of this week's writers. A striking new slideshow depicts how COVID-19 has reshaped militaries around the world, changing the face of war—and peace.
As always, thank you for reading. —Thomas J. Bollyky and Mary Brophy Marcus, Editors
This Week's Highlights 
by Michael Brauer and Susan Anenberg 
by Naïmatou Moussa A physician in Senegal shares her cancer story from "the land of universal health coverage"
by Kirsten Arm, Lindsey Miller, and Anna Claire Tucker
Stat of the Week Seven Million During the H1N1 pandemic, the United States sequenced less than 10,000 influenza samples. Today, over 7 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences have been shared with the GISAID Initiative
Recommended Feature
by Ryan Morhard
More of the Latest
by Lillian Posner
What We're Reading A Russia-Ukraine War Could Ripple Across Africa and Asia (Foreign Policy)
Rich Countries Lure Health Workers From Low-Income Nations to Fight Shortages (New York Times)
Omicron's Radical Evolution (New York Times)
The New Normal: New Zealand Braces for Shift from COVID-19 Zero to COVID-19 Acceptance (Guardian) 
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