National Geographic Magazine - UK November 2020

SINCE THE BEGINNING of the year, this novel coronavirus has altered life as we know it. Worldwide a staggering number of people have contracted COVID-19, and a still growing number have died. No part of life is untouched: Work. School. Family life. Traditions such as graduations and, sadly, funerals, are changed nearly beyond recognition. This special issue focuses on how the pandemic has remade our world—and how it might change our thinking and our actions even more in the future. I think a lot about how this will affect kids. During video meetings we’ve held since we began working from home in March, I see colleagues’ young children in the background (and occasionally in the foreground). I worry about how being thrust into remote learning will affect them academically. But…

The Nespresso-pioneered capsule system could be one of the most sustainable ways of making coffee, and the company is still committed to making it better. We’re a society of coffee connoisseurs, but the more than 400 billion cups brewed each day worldwide have raised concerns about the toll it’s taking on the planet. As it turns out, the environmental impact of our morning pick-me-up partially depends on the brewing method we choose, and studies suggest that capsules come just behind instant coffee in terms of sustainability. By design, the coffee capsule system makes it more environmentally friendly, and the potential is there for companies to develop it further through improvements such as making the production process more circular. says Tima Bansal, an Ivey Business School professor who specializes in sustainability.…

DURING THIS YEAR—“this devastating year,” as Robin Marantz Henig writes in the pages that follow—a man in Central Java assembled a barrier from bamboo poles, painted LOCKDOWN onto a piece of vinyl, and blocked the entrance to a village road. A Belgian undertaker began dressing for work in a hazmat suit. A child in Detroit complained of headache; a month later, during the memorial service that only 12 people were permitted to attend, her parents grieved behind face masks. Here’s what the year has demanded we understand: that a single phenomenon connects these people, these places, this sorrow, this fear. Most of us are neither epidemiologists nor Spanish flu survivors; for most of us, before 2020 the word “pandemic” belonged to history, dystopian fiction, or books of warning from science…

Leaked reports cite what health officials describe as cases of viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Not even three weeks later, similar cases are confirmed in Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. The U.S. and Europe follow soon after. 1,420,000+ GLOBAL CASES CONFIRMED IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS. CONFIRMED CASES ARE ONLY A PORTION OF THE TRUE NUMBER OF CASES. THE WORLD’S RESPONSE Many countries issued health and containment policies to curb the spread of COVID-19. Ninety-two percent of countries had implemented significant lockdown measures by April 8.…

LOCKDOWN LEVELS This index assesses the intensity of a government’s response across 11 containment and health measures, including school and work closures, stay-at-home orders, and travel restrictions. No clear method for success Policy strictness and deaths in the 100 days after a country’s first confirmed case *IN MARCH, THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST REPORTED THAT CHINA’S FIRST CASE MAY HAVE BEEN ON NOVEMBER 17, 2019.…

WHO KNEW THAT stay-at-home orders could bring so much displacement? That’s how the spring of 2020 felt for many in our generation—we who were just starting to get a glimpse of independence and adulthood before the pandemic came crashing down. Maybe we need a name, those of us who are currently 18 to 25 years old, instead of remaining just a purgatorial generation: feeling like we’re too young to be millennials but not young enough for Gen Z. I’m not sold on any of the names I’ve heard us called—Rainbow Generation, zillennials, Generation Screwed. Yet the unavoidable fact is that we’re at a critical turning point in our personal lives at a time when the world seems to be imploding in so many ways. As lockdowns were spreading earlier this…