“quarantine for anything returning from the moon was both necessary and futile: Humans would probably fail to contain a microscopic threat”

Link. Despite avowed “existential threat” NASA knew quarantine was mostly for show.

“This tendency to downplay existential risk — instead prioritizing likelier threats with lower consequences — shows up in fields like climate change, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence”

“Evidence from card swipes suggests that only about half the office space in major U.S. cities is currently in use, with little indication of a return to prepandemic norms”

Link. St Paul (MN) downtown need more foot traffic in 2019. It’s an echo chamber now.

“rising use of telephones went hand-in-hand with rising business travel: Workers began interacting more with people in other cities, but solidifying these contacts required occasionally meeting them in person.”

We suffered a lot during COVID from lack of true in person interaction. We are primates still.