That would be a bad idea, says the informal group of 15 to 20 top public health experts, who have met virtually on Sundays since last year to discuss the pandemic. But they worry their warning will fall on deaf ears. Most of the group members likely favor canceling the games, says one member who did not want to be identified. But given the current stance of Japan’s government and IOC, “the discussion has shifted as to whether we should welcome a domestic audience or not,” this scientist says. But it may be too late “to consider any drastic changes in the way that the Tokyo Olympic Games are organized,” says another member, Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at Kyoto University. He says the governmental coronavirus control headquarters, which is under the Cabinet Office, has never publicly discussed the risks of holding the games.
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Passengers at Hankou railway station in Wuhan, China, on 22 January 2020, the day before the government locked down the city. Xiao Yijiu/Xinhua/Eyevine/Redux
China overhauls its public health bureaucracy
May. 18, 2021 , 3:35 PM
The Chinese government, roundly criticized at home and abroad for its initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, appears to have taken some lessons from that crisis. On 13 May, it announced an overhaul of its public health bureaucracy, centered on the creation of a new national agency that will report directly to China’s State Council. On paper, at least, the new structure should help bypass the layers of bureaucracy that stymied the timely flow of information from local authorities in Wuhan and Hebei province to top national officials in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.
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Medical staff check on a newborn baby at a hospital in Handan, China. The country s fertility rate has been dropping for decades. Hu Gaolei/VCG via Getty Images
China’s population still growing, census shows but barely
May. 11, 2021 , 5:15 PM
Ending months of speculation about what its 2020 census would find, China reported today that preliminary data show its population is still growing. But major demographic challenges loom. China’s population will start to shrink in the next few years, the trends suggest, meaning fewer and fewer people in their working prime will have to support a rapidly growing cadre of elderly. That has triggered discussions about how to increase the country’s birth rate, which is far below the replacement level.
The journal
Ecosystem Health and Sustainability (
EHS) has an enviable roster of high-profile scientists on its editorial board, including noted biologist Paul Ehrlich, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, and Jerry Franklin, an ecosystem analyst at University of Washington, Seattle.
There’s only one problem: Many board members are no longer involved with
EHS if they ever were. “I can remember no contact with the journal for years, if ever,” Ehrlich says. “I should not be appearing as associated with the journal,” Franklin adds.
Their names ended up on the journal’s masthead, along with many others, when the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and the Ecological Society of China (ESC) jointly launched