Ageing, Paris Agreement, Bill Gates and Drones

This one includes a baffling case about age, Paris climate agreement, Bill Gates, protests in the US and drones in Rwanda.

Ageing, Paris Agreement, Bill Gates and Drones

Ageing

Medicine is trying hard to extend people’s lifetime. We have all kinds of nutritions, all kinds of workouts, etc. But during the week I came across a man called Richard Overton. He’s smoking cigars daily, he drinks way too much coffee, sometimes with whiskey in it and (characteristically so) sleeps too little. Oh, and I thought I might mention he was 109 years old when National Geographic shot this video.

It’s a great short film that shows how functional he was in his later life. He still drove a car, walked, cooked and went to the store. All while having incredible energy and mindset about life. He passed away in 2018 when he was 112.

It seems almost as if he found a “loophole” in science with how long he lived. To me, this indicates we know way too little about ageing.

Environment

Beautiful News is saving the day once again. I’m sure you remember how the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2017. I thought it was stupid. As it turns out, some American cities, states and organisations decided that they won’t bother and formed a coalition called “We Are Still In” Declaration. They disregarded the president and decided to stay on course with the Paris agreement. In total, this today equals almost 159 million Americans or almost half of the US population. I think this is great news!

Partis Agreement

COVID-19

I hate including what is already so saturated, but I can’t help but share some useful resources about the current situation.

Bill Gates published a great and straight-forward analysis of every aspect of the situation on his blog. He outlines what happened, is happening and needs to happen to successfully beat the pandemic. Specifically, he stresses the fact that we need innovation such as treatment, vaccines, testing and tracing.

On the other side, there are, as you may know, protests in the US. I won’t spend your time explaining how foolish that is. In particular, I want to share a tweet by a doctor and researcher from Colorado.

Tech

I already shared some amazing data about Babylon Health and Rwanda in the first issue, but there’s more. I stumbled upon the fact that they even use drones for delivering essential medical goods such as blood. They may have poor transportation infrastructure, but they make it all up with this. Plus, they have lower wastage because of that. Read this article for more.