Reflecting on the state of the world always leaves me thinking of this[0]:
30 March 1973
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
I haven't worked on this problem, but others in my graduate lab did. If you're interested in a tool that automates some of this process (takes VCF as input; filters variants based on frequency; you'll need to map disease symptoms/phenotypes to Human Phenotype Ontology [1] identifiers), some of my former lab mates developed a web tool [2]: https://amelie.stanford.edu/submit
If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend Tomorrow's Table [1], a book by Pamela Ronald, a plant pathologist and geneticist, and Raoul Adamchak, her husband and an organic farmer (disclaimer: my fiancé works in Pam's lab).
The subject of the book isn't pesticides or biodiversity per se, but rather how to produce food sustainably in the face of population growth and climate change.
An anecdote from the book: what happens when artificial pesticides aren't used (setting aside the meaning of artificial/natural)? Corn can be sprayed with crystal toxins derived from proteins in the soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), engineered to produce these proteins, or exhibit damage from insects (it looks pretty gross [2]).
If you're going to ban pesticides, you need an alternative or will face lower yields.
It appears that Russia has a different distribution of coronavirus strains than the rest of Europe [0], but the strains in Russia are certainly found elsewhere. If hundreds of thousands of Russians were re-infected this would be observed elsewhere and documented.
The closest thing I can find to reporting on this matter is here [1]. The Siberian Times does not appear to be a reputable news source [2], and its claims do not match the magnitude of those above. It reports that Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Anna Popova said, "in Russia there was not a single confirmed case of coronavirus reinfection." Furthermore, the doctor on the other side of this disagreement has "heard about other cases [of re-infection] elsewhere in Russia from colleagues" (and claims to have been re-infected).
This is not "lots and lots (hundreds of thousands)"...
There is evidence of re-infections in the scientific literature, but they are exceedingly rare (tens of people worldwide). Long-term immunity will have to be measured, especially in light of new variants, but current evidence points in that direction.
30 March 1973
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely, E. B. White
[0] https://lettersofnote.com/2012/01/06/wind-the-clock-for-tomo...