Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times:
As the coronavirus spreads, it is exposing the fraying seams of our overextended world. In societies as different as China and the United States, those seams are starting to look similar. The failures to contain the outbreak and to understand the scale and scope of its threat stem from an underinvestment in and an under-appreciation of basic science.
Sure, this is not exactly breaking news; decades of global environmental heedlessness paint a grim picture of modernity’s responsiveness to scientific foreboding.
But this novel coronavirus illustrates the problem more acutely. If it doesn’t kill us it should at least shake us out of the delusion that we can keep ignoring the science and scientists who are warning about the long-term dangers to our way of life.
More here.