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NYT looks at the new Director for Centers for Disease Control or CDC in the US, Dr. Walensky. The CDC is seen as a wobbly bureaucracy during the pandemic.

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Gavaskar names Garfield Sobers of West Indies cricket from the time of Richie Benaud in Australia, as the greatest all rounder. Sobers could change the game with the bat or the ball, or with a catch, says Gavaskar, in a way no one else could.

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Expert views that the G-7 meetings in Cornwall and the Carbis Bay pledges were not adequate in providing financing for climate change goals. Climate finance falls far short of the $100 billion planned by 2020.

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The loss of 75 million J&J vaccine doses with failure at a manufacturing plant in Baltimore. The FDA is looking at what to do with 170 million doses produced by Emergent Biosolutions, a contractor, that made vaccines for J&J and Astra Zeneca. Contamination at the Baltimore plant makes the vaccines made there unusable.

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The ICC inducts Vinoo Mankad, one of India's most famous batsmen into its Hall of Fame. Mankad scored 72 and 184 at Lord's and bowled 97 overs in 1952. Vinoo Mankad was mentor for another cricketer Sunil Gavaskar.

Gavaskar says one of the lessons he got from Vinoo Mankad was that technique alone was not enough, "you have to be hanging in there and have that self-belief."

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A Land Rover takes president Biden and Jill Biden into Windsor Castle where he has tea with Queen Elizabeth. Even at 95 years Biden says the Queen was as keen as ever to know what is happening in the world. Biden tells reporters "She was very gracious. She reminded me of my mother." The couple met the Queen earlier at a reception for G-7 leaders at the Eden Project, an ecocenter with tropical rainforest and Mediterranean environments.

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People value their independence more and value their personal time more as a result of working from home during the pandemic in 2020 and in 2021. People have learned to manage their time without oversight. Family time and personal priorities are now more important. Greater autonomy from organizational structures and managers is the new way of life.

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National parks in the US are overcrowded as people rush to parks as an escape from the pandemic lockdowns and isolation. There are lines for cars in national parks. Some parks close their gates.

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The letter of December 2017 from Director NIH that announced the lifting of the ban on "gain of function" research. The lifting of the ban led to research at labs that is seen as a possible scenario of what happened to cause an accidental pandemic. 

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Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health says in Jan 2018 issue of Harvard Chan Institute of Public Health journal that an "accidental pandemic" could result from the lifting of the ban on a risky kind of research favored by some virologist professionals.  In "Three Questions, Three Answers" Lipsitch tells why. Most members of the broader scientific and medical community had serious questions and were fiercely against such research which had questionable value and great risk. At the beginning the interviewer Karen Feldscher writes:  "January 8, 2018- Last month the US government lifted a three year moratorium on funding risky research to genetically alter deadly viruses in ways that could make them even more lethal. Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard Chan School thinks the move could create an accidental pandemic." Lipsitch says rejecting the virologists who supported this dangerous research: "Others, like myself, worry that the human error could lead to the accidental release of a virus that has been enhanced in the lab so that it is more deadly and contagious than it already is." He cites an accident in 2014 at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Lab where workers were exposed to anthrax that was improperly handled. "Another accident like that- if it involved a virus that was both newly created and highly contagious- has the potential to jeopardize millions of people."  Lipsitch points out that this kind of research has given us modest scientific knowledge, was not essential to tackling the virus epidemics, was only one type of many types of research, and a type of research whose aims could be achieved in other ways that were not deadly to humans. Lipsitch pointed this out in The Journal of Medical Ethics stating the ethical considerations at stake. The lifting of the ban led to research at labs that is seen as a possible scenario of what happened to cause an accidental pandemic. The people of the world, and not just in America but the people of the whole world, and the poorest countries with little resources- Asia, Africa, Latin America bearing the consequences of this decision that violated medical ethical considerations of setting up a potential accidental pandemic.   ...

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The steady calming effect of trees and gardens during the pandemic. Trees have a lot to teach us, their resiliency in winter and blooming again in spring, writes Elizabeth Bernstein in WSJ. They offer a pathway to healing and renewal during the pandemic. Quieting mental chatter, friendship with trees and plants- it is real.