scientificamerican--2020-09-15--The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Changing Our Dreams

For many of us , living in a COVID-19 world feels as if we have been thrown into an alternative reality .
We live day and night inside the same walls .
We fear touching groceries that arrive at our doorstep .
If we venture into town we wear masks , and we get anxious if we pass someone who is not .
We have trouble discerning faces .
It 's like living in a dream .
COVID-19 has altered our dream worlds , too : how much we dream , how many of our dreams we remember and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year , when stay-at-home directives were put in place widely , society quite unexpectedly experienced what I am calling a dream surge : a global increase in the reporting of vivid , bizarre dreams , many of which are concerned with coronavirus and social distancing .
Terms such as coronavirus dreams , lockdown dreams and COVID nightmares emerged on social media .
By early April , social and mainstream media outlets had begun broadcasting the message : the world is dreaming about COVID-19 .
Although widespread changes in dreaming had been reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake , a surge of this magnitude had never been documented .
This upwelling of dreams is the first to occur globally and the first to happen in the era of social media , which makes dreams readily accessible for immediate study .
As a dream “ event , ” the pandemic is unprecedented .
But what kind of phenomenon is this , exactly ?
Why was it happening with such vigor ?
To find out , Deirdre Barrett , an assistant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chief of the journal Dreaming , initiated a COVID-19 dreams survey online in the week of March 22 .
Erin and Grace Gravley , San Francisco Bay Area artists , launched IDreamofCovid.com , a site archiving and illustrating pandemic dreams .
The Twitter account @ CovidDreams began operation .
Kelly Bulkeley , a psychologist of religion and director of the Sleep and Dream Database , followed with a YouGov survey of 2,477 American adults .
And my former doctoral student Elizaveta Solomonova , now a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University , along with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Mental Health Research in Ottawa and others , launched a survey to which 968 people aged 12 and older responded , almost all in North America .
Results of these inquiries , not yet published in journals but available in preliminary form online , document the precipitous surge , the striking variety of dreams and many related mental health effects .
Bulkeley 's three-day poll revealed that in March , 29 percent of Americans recalled more dreams than usual .
Solomonova and Robillard found that 37 percent of people had pandemic dreams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ completing tasks ( such as losing control of a vehicle ) and being threatened by others .
Many online posts reflect these findings .
One person , whose Twitter handle is @ monicaluhar , reported , “ Had a dream about returning as a sub teacher in the fall , unprepared .
Students were having a difficult time practicing social distancing , and teachers could n't stagger classes or have one-on-one meetings.
” And @ therealbeecarey said , “ My phone had a virus and was posting so many random pictures from my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was at an all time high.
” More recent studies found qualitative changes in dream emotions and concerns about health .
Dream reports from Brazilian adults in social isolation had high proportions of words related to anger , sadness , contamination and cleanliness .
Text mining of accounts of 810 Finnish dreams showed that most word clusters were laden with anxiousness ; 55 percent were about the pandemic directly ( lack of regard for social distancing , elderly people in trouble ) , and these emotions were more prevalent among people who felt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ study of 100 nurses conscripted to treat COVID-19 patients in Wuhan , China , revealed that 45 percent experienced nightmares—twice the lifetime rate among Chinese psychiatric outpatients and many times higher than that among the 5 percent of the general population who have nightmare disorder .
It seems clear that some basic biological and social dynamics may have played a role in this unprecedented opening of the oneiric floodgates .
At least three factors may have triggered or sustained the dream surge : disrupted sleep schedules augmenting the amount of REM sleep and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social distancing taxing dreaming 's capacity to regulate emotions ; and social and mainstream media amplifying the public 's reaction to the surge .
One obvious explanation for the surge is that sleep patterns changed abruptly when lockdowns took effect .
Early publications demonstrate elevated levels of insomnia in the Chinese population , especially among front-line workers .
In contrast , stay-at-home orders , which removed long commutes to work , improved sleep for many people .
Chinese respondents reported an average increase of 46 minutes in bed and an extra 34 minutes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of people in Finland said they slept more after lockdown .
Overall , from March 13 to 27 , time asleep in the U.S. increased almost 20 percent nationwide , and states with the longest commute times , such as Maryland and New Jersey , showed the largest increases .
Longer slumber leads to more dreams ; people in sleep laboratories who are allowed to snooze more than 9.5 hours recall more dreams than when sleeping a typical eight hours .
Sleeping longer also proportionally increases rapid eye movement ( REM ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vivid and emotional dreams occur .
Relaxed schedules may also have caused dreaming to occur later than usual in the morning , when REM sleep is more prevalent and intense and , thus , dreams are more bizarre .
Dream-tweets reflect these qualities : “ I was taking care of a newborn girl that had COVID ... it was so vivid and real.
” Increased dreaming during late-morning REM intervals results from the convergence of several processes .
Sleep itself cycles through deep and light stages about every 90 minutes , but pressure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need for deep , recuperative sleep is progressively satisfied .
Meanwhile a circadian process that is tightly linked to our 24-hour core body temperature rhythm gives an abrupt boost to REM sleep propensity late in the sleep period and stays elevated through the morning .
After the pandemic began , many people did sleep longer and later .
In China , average weekly bedtime was delayed by 26 minutes but wake-up time by 72 minutes .
These values were 41 and 73 minutes in Italy and 30 and 42 minutes among U.S. university @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people were freer to linger in bed , remembering their dreams .
Some early birds may have turned into night owls , who typically have more REM sleep and more frequent nightmares .
And as people eliminated whatever sleep debts they may have accrued over days or even weeks of insufficient rest , they were more likely to wake up at night and remember more dreams .
The subject matter of many COVID-19 dreams directly or metaphorically reflects fears about contagion and the challenges of social distancing .
Even in normal times , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For example , people enrolled in programs to rapidly learn French dream more about French .
Replaying fragments of experiences is one example of a functional role that researchers widely ascribe to REM sleep and dreaming : it helps us solve problems .
Other roles include consolidating the prior day 's events into longer-lasting memories , fitting those events into an ongoing narrative of our lives and helping us regulate emotions .
Researchers have documented countless cases of dreams assisting in creative achievement .
Empirical studies also show that REM sleep aids in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associations , which may explain why so many dreams in the 2020 surge involve creative or strange attempts to deal with a COVID-19 problem .
One survey respondent said , “ I was looking for a kind of cream that would either prevent or cure Covid-19 .
I got my hands on the last bottle.
” Two other widely claimed dream functions are extinguishing fearful memories and simulating social situations .
They are related to emotion regulation and help to explain why pandemic threats and social distancing challenges appear so often in surge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media include fearful reactions to infection , finances and social distancing .
“ I tested positive for pregnancy and covid ... now I 'm stressed.
” Threats may take the form of metaphoric imagery such as tsunamis or aliens ; zombies are common .
Images of insects , spiders and other small creatures are also widely represented : “ My foot was covered in ants and 5-6 black widows were imbedded in the bottom of my foot.
” One way to understand direct and metaphoric imagery is to consider that dreams express an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ memories that are similar in emotional tone but different in subject matter .
This contextualization is clear in post-traumatic nightmares , in which a person 's reaction to a trauma , such as terror during an assault , is depicted as terror in the face of a natural disaster such as a tsunami .
The late Ernest Hartmann , a Boston-area dream and nightmare research pioneer who studied dreams after the 9/11 attacks , stipulated that such contextualization best helps people adapt when it weaves together old and new experiences .
Successful integration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is resilient to future traumas .
Metaphoric images can be part of a constructive effort to make sense of disruptive events .
A related process is the extinguishing of fear by the creation of new “ safety memories.
” These possibilities , which I and others have investigated , reflect the fact that memories of fearful events are almost never replayed in their entirety during dreaming .
Instead elements of a memory appear piecemeal , as if the original memory has been reduced to basic units .
These elements recombine with newer memories @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metaphors and other unusual juxtapositions of imagery seem incongruous or incompatible with waking life—and , more important , are incompatible with feelings of fear .
This creative dreaming produces safety imagery that supersedes and inhibits the original fear memory , helping to assuage distress over time .
This mechanism can break down after severe trauma , however .
When this happens , nightmares arise in which the fearful memory is replayed realistically ; the creative recombining of memory elements is thwarted .
The pandemic 's ultimate impact on a person 's dreams will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are traumatized and how resilient they are .
A second class of theories—also still speculative—may explain social distancing themes , which permeated IDreamofCovid.com reports .
Emotions in these dreams range from surprise to discomfort to stress to nightmarish horror .
Tweets located by the @ CovidDreams account illustrate how incompatible dream scenarios are with social distancing—so incompatible that they often trigger a rare moment of self-awareness and awakening : “ We were celebrating something by having a party .
And I woke myself up because something was n't right because we 're social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ parties.
” These theories focus on dreaming 's social simulation function .
The view that dreaming is a neural simulation of reality , analogous to virtual reality , is now widely accepted , and the notion that the simulation of social life is an essential biological function is emerging .
In 2000 Anne Germain , now CEO of sleep medicine start-up Noctem , and I proposed that images of characters interacting with the self in dreams could be basic to how dreaming evolved , reflecting attachment relationships essential to the survival of prehistoric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during dreaming contribute to stronger group structures that help to organize defenses against predators and cooperation in problem-solving .
Such dreams would still have adaptive value today because family and group cohesion remain essential to health and survival .
It may be the case that an individual 's concerns about other people are fine-tuned while they are in the simulated presence of those people .
Important social relationships and conflicts are portrayed realistically during dreaming .
Other investigators , such as cognitive neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo of the University of Turku in Finland , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dreaming : facilitating social perception ( who is around me ? )
, social mind reading ( what are they thinking ? )
and the practice of social bonding skills .
Another theory advanced by psychology professor Mark Blagrove of Swansea University in Wales further postulates that by sharing dreams , people enhance empathy toward others .
The range of dream functions is likely to keep expanding as we learn more about the brain circuits underlying social cognition and the roles REM sleep plays in memory for emotional stimuli , human faces and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distancing is , in effect , an experiment in social isolation at a level never before seen—and is likely antagonistic to human evolution—a clash with deep-rooted dream mechanisms should be evident on a massive scale .
And because social distancing disrupts normal relationships so profoundly—causing many of us to spend excessive time with some people and no time with others—social simulations in dreams may play a crucial role in helping families , groups , even societies deal with sudden , widespread social adaptation .
There is one basic question about pandemic dreams that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether the dream surge was amplified by the media .
It is quite possible that early posts of a few dreams were circulated widely online , feeding a pandemic-dreams narrative that went viral , influencing people to recall their dreams , notice COVID themes and share them .
This narrative may have even induced people to dream more about the pandemic .
Evidence suggests that mainstream media reporting probably did not trigger the surge but may have amplified its scope , at least temporarily .
The Bulkeley and Solomonova-Robillard polls corroborated a clear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the first media stories about such dreams appeared ; indeed , the earliest stories cited various tweet threads as sources of their reporting .
Once stories emerged , additional surges in dream reporting through early April were detected by @ CovidDreams and IDreamofCovid.com .
The format of most early stories almost guaranteed amplification : they typically described some salient dream themes observed in a survey and provided a link directing readers to participate in the same survey .
In addition , 56 percent of articles during the first week of stories featured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which may have influenced readers to dream about the themes repeated by her in various interviews .
The surge began to decline steadily in late April , as did the number of mainstream media articles , suggesting that any echo-chamber effect had run its course .
The final nature of the surge remains to be seen .
Until COVID-19 vaccines or treatments are distributed and with waves of future infections possible , threats of disease and social distancing are likely to persist .
Might the pandemic have produced a lasting increase in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic concerns become permanently woven into dream content ?
And if so , will such alterations help or hinder people 's long-term adjustments to our postpandemic futures ?
Therapists may need to step in to help certain people .
The survey information considered in this article does not delve into nightmares in detail .
But some health care workers who saw relentless suffering are now themselves suffering with recurrent nightmares .
And some patients who endured the ICU for days or weeks suffered from horrific nightmares during that time , which may in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and sleep deprivation induced by around-the-clock hospital procedures and interminable monitor noises and alarms .
These survivors will need expert help to regain normal sleep .
Thankfully , specialized techniques are highly effective .
People who are not traumatized but still a little freaked out about their COVID dreams also have options .
New technologies such as targeted memory reactivation are providing individuals with more control over their dream narratives .
For example , learning how to practice lucid dreaming—becoming aware that you are now dreaming—aided by targeted memory reactivation or other methods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more pleasant , maybe even useful , dreams .
Simply observing and reporting pandemic dreams seems to positively impact mental health , as Natália Mota of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal , Brazil , found in her studies .
Short of therapy , we can give ourselves permission to ease up and to enjoy banking those surplus hours of sleep .
Dreams can be vexing , but they are also impressionable , malleable and at times inspirational .

For many of us, living in a COVID-19 world feels as if we have been thrown into an alternative reality. We live day and night inside the same walls. We fear touching groceries that arrive at our doorstep. If we venture into town, we wear masks, and we get anxious if we pass someone who is not wearing one. We have trouble discerning faces. It’s like living in a dream.
COVID has altered our dream worlds, too: how much we dream, how many of our dreams we remember and the nature of our dreams themselves. In early 2020, when stay-at-home directives were put in place widely, society quite unexpectedly experienced what I am calling a dream surge: a global increase in the reporting of vivid, bizarre dreams, many of which are concerned with coronavirus and social distancing. Terms such as coronavirus dreams, lockdown dreams and COVID nightmares emerged on social media. By April of that year, social and mainstream media outlets had begun broadcasting the message: the world is dreaming about COVID.
Although widespread changes in dreaming had been reported in the U.S. following extraordinary events such as the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, a surge of this magnitude had never been documented. This upwelling of dreams is the first to occur globally and the first to happen in the era of social media, which makes dreams readily accessible for immediate study. As a dream “event,” the pandemic is unprecedented.
But what kind of phenomenon is this, exactly? Why was it happening with such vigor? To find out, Deirdre Barrett, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and editor in chief of the journal Dreaming, initiated a COVID dreams survey online in the week of March 22, 2020. Erin and Grace Gravley, San Francisco Bay Area artists, launched IDreamofCovid.com, a site archiving and illustrating pandemic dreams. The Twitter account @CovidDreams began operation. Kelly Bulkeley, a psychologist of religion and director of the Sleep and Dream Database, followed with a YouGov survey of 2,477 American adults. And my former doctoral student Elizaveta Solomonova, now a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, along with Rébecca Robillard of the Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research in Ottawa and others, launched a survey to which 968 people aged 12 and older responded, almost all in North America. Results of these inquiries, published in BMJ Open in December 2020, document the precipitous surge, the striking variety of dreams and many related mental health effects.
Bulkeley’s three-day poll revealed that in March 2020, 29 percent of Americans recalled more dreams than usual. Solomonova and Robillard found that 37 percent of people had pandemic dreams, many marked by themes of insufficiently completing tasks (such as losing control of a vehicle) and being threatened by others. Many online posts from the time reflect these findings. One person, whose Twitter handle is @monicaluhar, reported, “Had a dream about returning as a sub teacher in the fall, unprepared. Students were having a difficult time practicing social distancing, and teachers couldn’t stagger classes or have one-on-one meetings.” And @therealbeecarey said, “My phone had a virus and was posting so many random pictures from my camera roll to instagram and my anxiety was at an all time high.”
More recent studies found qualitative changes in dream emotions and concerns about health. Dream reports from Brazilian adults in social isolation had high proportions of words related to anger, sadness, contamination and cleanliness. Text mining of accounts of 810 Finnish dreams showed that most word clusters were laden with anxiousness; 55 percent were about the pandemic directly (lack of regard for social distancing, elderly people in trouble), and these emotions were more prevalent among people who felt increased stress during the day. A study of 100 nurses conscripted to treat COVID patients in Wuhan, China, revealed that 45 percent experienced nightmares—twice the lifetime rate among Chinese psychiatric outpatients and many times higher than that among the 5 percent or so of the general population who have nightmare disorder.
It seems clear that some basic biological and social dynamics may have played a role in this unprecedented opening of the oneiric floodgates. At least three factors may have triggered or sustained the dream surge: disrupted sleep schedules augmenting the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and therefore dreaming; threats of contagion and social distancing taxing dreaming’s capacity to regulate emotions; and social and mainstream media amplifying the public’s reaction to the surge.
More REM Sleep, More Dreams
One obvious explanation for the surge is that sleep patterns changed abruptly when lockdowns took effect. Early publications demonstrate elevated levels of insomnia in China’s population, especially among frontline workers. In contrast, stay-at-home orders, which removed long commutes to work, improved sleep for many people. Respondents in China reported an average increase of 46 minutes in bed and an extra 34 minutes in total sleep time. Some 54 percent of people in Finland said they slept more after lockdown. Overall, from March 13 to 27, 2020, time asleep in the U.S. increased almost 20 percent nationwide, and states with the longest commute times, such as Maryland and New Jersey, showed the largest increases.
Longer slumber leads to more dreams; people in sleep laboratories who are allowed to snooze for more than 9.5 hours recall more dreams than when sleeping a typical eight hours. Sleeping longer also proportionally increases REM sleep, which is when the most vivid and emotional dreams occur.
Relaxed schedules may also have caused dreaming to occur later than usual in the morning, when REM sleep is more prevalent and intense and, thus, dreams are more bizarre. Dream tweets reflect these qualities: “I was taking care of a newborn girl that had COVID... it was so vivid and real.” Increased dreaming during late-morning REM intervals results from the convergence of several processes. Sleep itself cycles through deep and light stages about every 90 minutes, but pressure for REM sleep gradually increases as the need for deep, recuperative sleep is progressively satisfied. Meanwhile a circadian process that is tightly linked to our 24-hour core body temperature rhythm gives an abrupt boost to REM sleep propensity late in the sleep period and stays elevated through the morning.
After the pandemic began, many people did sleep longer and later. In China, average weekly bedtime was delayed by 26 minutes but wake-up time by 72 minutes. These values were 41 and 73 minutes in Italy and 30 and 42 minutes among U.S. university students. And without commutes, many people were freer to linger in bed, remembering their dreams. Some early birds may have turned into night owls, who typically have more REM sleep and more frequent nightmares. And as people eliminated whatever sleep debts they may have accrued over days or even weeks of insufficient rest, they were more likely to wake up at night and remember more dreams.
Credit: Goñi Montes
Dream Functions Overwhelmed
The subject matter of many COVID dreams directly or metaphorically reflects fears about contagion and the challenges of social distancing. Even in normal times, we dream more about novel experiences. For instance, people enrolled in programs to rapidly learn French dream more about French. Replaying fragments of experiences is one example of a functional role that researchers widely ascribe to REM sleep and dreaming: it helps us solve problems. Other roles include consolidating the prior day’s events into longer-lasting memories, fitting those events into an ongoing narrative of our lives and helping us regulate emotions.
Researchers have documented countless cases of dreams assisting in creative achievement. Empirical studies also show that REM sleep aids in problem-solving that requires access to wide-ranging memory associations, which may explain why so many dreams in the 2020 surge involve creative or strange attempts to deal with a COVID problem. One survey respondent said, “I was looking for a kind of cream that would either prevent or cure Covid-19. I got my hands on the last bottle.”
Two other widely claimed dream functions are extinguishing fearful memories and simulating social situations. They are related to emotion regulation and help to explain why pandemic threats and social distancing challenges appear so often in surge dreams. Many dreams reported in the media include fearful reactions to infection, finances and social distancing: “I tested positive for pregnancy and covid ... now I’m stressed.” Threats may take the form of metaphoric imagery such as tsunamis or aliens; zombies are common. Images of insects, spiders and other small creatures are also widely represented: “My foot was covered in ants and 5-6 black widows were imbedded in the bottom of my foot.”
One way to understand direct and metaphoric imagery is to consider that dreams express an individual’s core concerns, drawing on memories that are similar in emotional tone but different in subject matter. This contextualization is clear in post-traumatic nightmares, in which a person’s reaction to a trauma, such as terror during an assault, is depicted as terror in the face of, for example, a natural disaster such as a tsunami. The late Ernest Hartmann, a Boston-area dream and nightmare research pioneer who studied dreams after the 9/11 attacks, stipulated that such contextualization best helps people adapt when it weaves together old and new experiences. Successful integration produces a more stable memory system that is resilient to future traumas.
Metaphorical images can be part of a constructive effort to make sense of disruptive events. A related process is the extinguishing of fear by the creation of new “safety memories.” These possibilities, which I and others have investigated, reflect the fact that memories of fearful events are almost never replayed in their entirety during dreaming. Instead elements of a memory appear piecemeal, as if the original memory has been reduced to basic units. These elements recombine with newer memories and cognitions to create contexts in which metaphors and other unusual juxtapositions of imagery seem incongruous or incompatible with waking life—and, more important, are incompatible with feelings of fear. This creative dreaming produces safety imagery that supersedes and inhibits the original fear memory, helping to assuage distress over time.
This mechanism can break down after severe trauma, however. When this happens, nightmares arise in which the fearful memory is replayed realistically; the creative recombining of memory elements is thwarted. The pandemic’s ultimate impact on a person’s dreams will vary with whether or how severely they are traumatized and how resilient they are.
A second class of theories—also still speculative—may explain social distancing themes, which permeated IDreamofCovid.com reports. Emotions in these dreams range from surprise to discomfort to stress to nightmarish horror. Tweets located by the @CovidDreams account illustrate how incompatible dream scenarios are with social distancing—so incompatible that they often trigger a rare moment of self-awareness and awakening: “We were celebrating something by having a party. And I woke myself up because something wasn’t right because we’re social distancing and not supposed to be having parties.”
These theories focus on dreaming’s social simulation function. The view that dreaming is a neural simulation of reality, analogous to virtual reality, is now widely accepted, and the notion that the simulation of social life is an essential biological function is emerging. In 2000 Anne Germain, now CEO of sleep medicine start-up Noctem, and I proposed that images of characters interacting with the self in dreams could be basic to how dreaming evolved, reflecting attachment relationships essential to the survival of prehistoric groups. The strong interpersonal bonds reiterated during dreaming contribute to stronger group structures that help to organize defenses against predators and cooperation in problem-solving. Such dreams would still have adaptive value today because family and group cohesion remain essential to health and survival. It may be the case that an individual’s concerns about other people are fine-tuned while they are in the simulated presence of those people. Important social relationships and conflicts are portrayed realistically during dreaming.
Other investigators, such as cognitive neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo of the University of Turku in Finland and the University of Skövde in Sweden, have since proposed additional social functions for dreaming: facilitating social perception (Who is around me?), social mind reading (What are they thinking?) and the practice of social bonding skills. Another theory advanced by psychology professor Mark Blagrove of Swansea University in Wales further postulates that by sharing dreams, people enhance empathy toward others. The range of dream functions is likely to keep expanding as we learn more about the brain circuits underlying social cognition and the roles REM sleep plays in memory for emotional stimuli, human faces and reactions to social exclusion. Because social distancing is, in effect, an experiment in social isolation at a level never before seen—and is likely antagonistic to human evolution—a clash with deep-rooted dream mechanisms should be evident on a massive scale. And because social distancing disrupts normal relationships so profoundly—causing many of us to spend excessive time with some people and no time with others—social simulations in dreams may play a crucial role in helping families, groups, even societies deal with sudden, widespread social adaptation.
The Echo Chamber of Social Media
There is one basic question about pandemic dreams that we would like to nail down: whether the dream surge was amplified by the media. It is quite possible that early posts of a few dreams were circulated widely online, feeding a narrative of pandemic dreams that went viral, influencing people to recall their dreams, notice COVID themes and share them. This narrative may have even induced people to dream more about the pandemic.
Evidence suggests that mainstream media reporting probably did not trigger the surge but may have temporarily amplified its scope. The Bulkeley and Solomonova-Robillard polls corroborated a clear groundswell in dream tweeting during March 2020, before the first media stories about such dreams appeared; indeed, the earliest stories cited various tweet threads as their sources.
Once stories emerged, more surges in dream reporting through early April 2020 were detected by IDreamofCovid.com and @CovidDreams. The format of most early stories almost guaranteed amplification: they typically described some salient dream themes observed in a survey and provided a link directing readers to participate in the same survey. In addition, 56 percent of articles during the first week of stories featured interviews with the same Harvard dream scientist, which may have influenced readers to dream about themes repeated by her.
The surge began to decline steadily in late April 2020, as did the number of mainstream media articles, suggesting that any echo-chamber effect had run its course. The final nature of the surge remains to be seen. Until COVID vaccines or treatments are fully distributed and with waves of future infections or new viral variants possible, threats of disease and social distancing are likely to persist. Might the pandemic have produced a lasting increase in humanity’s recall of dreams? Could pandemic concerns become permanently woven into dream content? And if so, will such alterations help or hinder people’s long-term adjustments to our postpandemic futures?
Therapists may need to step in to help certain people. The survey information considered in this article does not delve into nightmares in detail. But some health-care workers who saw relentless suffering later themselves suffered with recurrent nightmares. And some patients who endured the ICU for days or weeks suffered from horrific nightmares during that time, which may in part have been the result of medications and sleep deprivation induced by around-the-clock hospital procedures and interminable monitor noises and alarms. These survivors will need expert help to regain normal sleep. Thankfully, specialized techniques are highly effective.
People who are not traumatized but still a little freaked out about their COVID dreams also have options. New technologies such as targeted memory reactivation are providing individuals with more control over their dream narratives. For example, learning how to practice lucid dreaming—becoming aware that you are dreaming—aided by targeted memory reactivation or other methods could help transform worrisome pandemic dreams into more pleasant, maybe even useful, dreams. Simply observing and reporting pandemic dreams seems to positively impact mental health, as Natália Mota of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, found in her studies.
Short of therapy, we can give ourselves permission to ease up and to enjoy banking those surplus hours of sleep. Dreams can be vexing, but they are also impressionable, malleable and at times inspirational.


scientificamerican--2020-09-15--Global Biodiversity Is in Free Fall

Global Biodiversity Is in Free Fall

Global efforts to address the steep , ongoing loss of biodiversity through a series of specified targets have failed , according to a dire assessment released by the United Nations today .
The 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets were established under the U.N. ’ s Convention on Biological Diversity at a conference in Japan in 2010 .
Their aim was to protect the world ’ s imperiled flora and fauna by 2020 .
Without such intervention , according to the U.N. , roughly one million species could disappear within several decades , widening what scientists have coined the Holocene extinction : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ event , driven by human activity .
Ultimately , 170 countries and regions agreed to the targets and to create their own national conservation strategies that mirrored or related to the Aichi goals .
But according to the just released fifth edition of the U.N. ’ s Global Biodiversity Outlook ( GBO ) , the international community as a whole has failed to meet even a single biodiversity target by the deadline , and no nation has successfully met all 20 within its own borders .
Many human activities can shrink biodiversity , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of invasive species .
The Aichi goals to counter losses were equally diverse .
But experts say the participating countries have failed , in large part , because they have struggled to address conservation while focusing on their economies and rising populations .
The failure to halt biodiversity loss draws stark parallels with nations ’ lack of political will to keep global warming below an increase of two degrees Celsius , as was pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement .
The U.S. will officially exit that agreement on November 4 , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biological Diversity .
And although China has made great strides in moving away from fossil fuels , its $ 6-trillion development project , the Belt and Road Initiative , poses serious risk to the flora and fauna inside and outside its borders .
In light of such opposing interests , David Cooper , deputy executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity and an author of the new GBO , says the outcomes of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are , unfortunately , “ in line with what we expected , ” particularly when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2014 , which warned of insufficient progress .
“ Frankly , we lost some time at the start of the decade as countries developed their own national targets , ” Cooper says .
By mid-decade , countries were finally making gains but not enough to meet the deadline .
“ We need to think about what we can do to help countries get a faster start and build on the momentum we have now , ” Cooper adds .
He also blames perverse incentives .
Although many nations successfully mobilized financial resources to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undermined by factors such as subsidies supporting fossil fuels and overfishing , Cooper says .
“ Progress has been made , but it has been insufficient to address the underlying drivers of [ biodiversity ] loss : climate change and exploitation , which are driven by broader consumption patterns , ” he adds .
For example , subsidies linked to the destruction of rain forests in Brazil and Indonesia are far greater than the amount spent on reforestation efforts .
Although countries did not meet the Aichi goals outright , many made decent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , only 11 percent of national targets saw no significant progress .
Six targets were partially achieved by the 2020 deadline .
Target 11 , which pushed countries to protect 17 percent of surface and subsurface water and inland water areas , as well as 10 percent of coastal and marine areas , received significant attention and arguably resulted in the most concrete changes .
In terms of surface area alone , Target 11 will likely be reached globally by the end of the year , with nearly 10 percent of countries surpassing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ newly established protected areas do not focus on the most species-rich regions .
Rather they were implemented wherever it was easiest for governments to cordon off land or water .
The new GBO noted other progress as well .
“ Indonesia has clamped down on illegal and unreported fishing , which has generated a lot of improvement in fish stocks in its water , ” Cooper says .
But the steps that that have been achieved are still not enough to stem the tide of biodiversity loss .
Between 1970 and 2016 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by an astounding 68 percent , according to the World Wide Fund for Nature ’ s 2020 Living Planet Report .
If the trajectory remains unchanged , biodiversity will continue to decline until 2050 and beyond because of unsustainable production and consumption of natural resources , population growth and other ongoing trends .
Scientists and policy makers are now weighing how best to move forward and slow biodiversity loss as quickly as possible .
In a study published on September 9 in Science Advances , researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing proposed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , ” which encompass high conservation value with little existing human impact .
They argued that current conservation strategies pay too much attention to areas where politicians are unlikely to favor conservation measures , such as farmland .
To identify zones suitable for protection , the researchers overlaid global biodiversity maps with those showing areas of low human impact .
As of 2020 , less than a quarter of these CEZs were protected .
“ Six countries take up over half of the global CEZs—the Russian Federation , Australia , Canada , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” notes Rui Yang , a landscape architect at Tsinghua University and lead author of the study .
Judicious land-use planning is vital , but expanding human populations and subsequent pressure on food systems will make planning an even bigger challenge , according to David Leclère , an environmental scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis .
In a Nature paper published last week , he and his colleagues found that if we made a sustainable increase in agricultural production and trade , reduced food waste and switched to plant-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two thirds of future biodiversity losses , with wildlife populations beginning to increase around 2050 .
But Leclère cautions that climate change could throw a wrench in those projections .
“ Although climate change is currently affecting two to three times fewer species than land use change , we know threats from climate change will increase in the future , ” he says .
“ If we take the most pessimistic projections on climate change and its impacts , it is possible that bending the curve [ of biodiversity loss ] will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issue with the ethos of international conservation policies entirely .
In a Conservation Letters study published in April , researchers reviewed international biodiversity and sustainability policies and found that the majority also advocated for economic growth , despite substantial evidence that such growth directly contributes to biodiversity loss .
They concluded that “ inadequate attention is paid to the question of how growth can be decoupled from biodiversity loss.
” “ We have growth for growth ’ s sake , ” says Katharine Farrell , an ecological economist at Rosario University in Colombia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ What we need is an economy not based on the accumulation of money but the living logic of well-being.
” She observes , however , that there are “ huge vested interests associated with economic productivity that is dependent on ecological destruction .
These interests are going to be losers if we shift our economic structures to something based on ecological benefits.
” Cooper acknowledges that there has not been strong evidence of absolute decoupling .
In addition to looking at ways to improve production and consumption of resources , he says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be examined as well .
“ Much of the world does not have enough , whether it is food , water or materials , ” Cooper says .
“ That means equity is going to be an important part of the equation moving forward.
” The Convention on Biological Diversity is currently ironing out its Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework , which will be adopted at its next meeting in Kunming , China , in May 2021 .
The hope is that the framework will create a new set of biodiversity targets to remedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turn things around before it is too late .
“ Action is needed now , ” Cooper says .
“ These next 10 years , just as they are vital for climate change , are also vital for the biodiversity agenda if we ’ re going to prevent the sixth mass extinction .
”

Global efforts to address the steep, ongoing loss of biodiversity through a series of specified targets have failed, according to a dire assessment released by the United Nations today.
The 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets were established under the U.N.’s Convention on Biological Diversity at a conference in Japan in 2010. Their aim was to protect the world’s imperiled flora and fauna by 2020. Without such intervention, according to the U.N., roughly one million species could disappear within several decades, widening what scientists have coined the Holocene extinction: the planet’s sixth mass extinction event, driven by human activity. Ultimately, 170 countries and regions agreed to the targets and to create their own national conservation strategies that mirrored or related to the Aichi goals. But according to the just released fifth edition of the U.N.’s Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO), the international community as a whole has failed to meet even a single biodiversity target by the deadline, and no nation has successfully met all 20 within its own borders.
Many human activities can shrink biodiversity, including deforestation, pollution and the introduction of invasive species. The Aichi goals to counter losses were equally diverse. But experts say the participating countries have failed, in large part, because they have struggled to address conservation while focusing on their economies and rising populations.
The failure to halt biodiversity loss draws stark parallels with nations’ lack of political will to keep global warming below an increase of two degrees Celsius, as was pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The U.S. will officially exit that agreement on November 4, and the country has never ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. And although China has made great strides in moving away from fossil fuels, its $6-trillion development project, the Belt and Road Initiative, poses serious risk to the flora and fauna inside and outside its borders. In light of such opposing interests, David Cooper, deputy executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity and an author of the new GBO, says the outcomes of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets are, unfortunately, “in line with what we expected,” particularly when considering the fourth GBO, released in 2014, which warned of insufficient progress.
“Frankly, we lost some time at the start of the decade as countries developed their own national targets,” Cooper says. By mid-decade, countries were finally making gains but not enough to meet the deadline. “We need to think about what we can do to help countries get a faster start and build on the momentum we have now,” Cooper adds.
He also blames perverse incentives. Although many nations successfully mobilized financial resources to aid biodiversity conservation, the funds were undermined by factors such as subsidies supporting fossil fuels and overfishing, Cooper says. “Progress has been made, but it has been insufficient to address the underlying drivers of [biodiversity] loss: climate change and exploitation, which are driven by broader consumption patterns,” he adds. For example, subsidies linked to the destruction of rain forests in Brazil and Indonesia are far greater than the amount spent on reforestation efforts.
Although countries did not meet the Aichi goals outright, many made decent headway. According to the fifth GBO, only 11 percent of national targets saw no significant progress. Six targets were partially achieved by the 2020 deadline. Target 11, which pushed countries to protect 17 percent of surface and subsurface water and inland water areas, as well as 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, received significant attention and arguably resulted in the most concrete changes. In terms of surface area alone, Target 11 will likely be reached globally by the end of the year, with nearly 10 percent of countries surpassing their goal. Yet critics say many newly established protected areas do not focus on the most species-rich regions. Rather they were implemented wherever it was easiest for governments to cordon off land or water.
The new GBO noted other progress as well. “Indonesia has clamped down on illegal and unreported fishing, which has generated a lot of improvement in fish stocks in its water,” Cooper says. But the steps that that have been achieved are still not enough to stem the tide of biodiversity loss. Between 1970 and 2016, the average size of wildlife populations declined by an astounding 68 percent, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2020 Living Planet Report. If the trajectory remains unchanged, biodiversity will continue to decline until 2050 and beyond because of unsustainable production and consumption of natural resources, population growth and other ongoing trends.
Scientists and policy makers are now weighing how best to move forward and slow biodiversity loss as quickly as possible. In a study published on September 9 in Science Advances, researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing proposed that countries target “cost-effective zones (CEZs),” which encompass high conservation value with little existing human impact. They argued that current conservation strategies pay too much attention to areas where politicians are unlikely to favor conservation measures, such as farmland. To identify zones suitable for protection, the researchers overlaid global biodiversity maps with those showing areas of low human impact. As of 2020, less than a quarter of these CEZs were protected.
“Six countries take up over half of the global CEZs—the Russian Federation, Australia, Canada, Brazil, China and the United States,” notes Rui Yang, a landscape architect at Tsinghua University and lead author of the study.
Judicious land-use planning is vital, but expanding human populations and subsequent pressure on food systems will make planning an even bigger challenge, according to David Leclère, an environmental scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. In a Nature paper published last week, he and his colleagues found that if we made a sustainable increase in agricultural production and trade, reduced food waste and switched to plant-based diets, we could avoid more than two thirds of future biodiversity losses, with wildlife populations beginning to increase around 2050. But Leclère cautions that climate change could throw a wrench in those projections.
“Although climate change is currently affecting two to three times fewer species than land use change, we know threats from climate change will increase in the future,” he says. “If we take the most pessimistic projections on climate change and its impacts, it is possible that bending the curve [of biodiversity loss] will not be feasible at all.”
Others take issue with the ethos of international conservation policies entirely. In a Conservation Letters study published in April, researchers reviewed international biodiversity and sustainability policies and found that the majority also advocated for economic growth, despite substantial evidence that such growth directly contributes to biodiversity loss. They concluded that “inadequate attention is paid to the question of how growth can be decoupled from biodiversity loss.”
“We have growth for growth’s sake,” says Katharine Farrell, an ecological economist at Rosario University in Colombia and a co-author of the study. “What we need is an economy not based on the accumulation of money but the living logic of well-being.” She observes, however, that there are “huge vested interests associated with economic productivity that is dependent on ecological destruction. These interests are going to be losers if we shift our economic structures to something based on ecological benefits.”
Cooper acknowledges that there has not been strong evidence of absolute decoupling. In addition to looking at ways to improve production and consumption of resources, he says an overall reduction in demand needs to be examined as well. “Much of the world does not have enough, whether it is food, water or materials,” Cooper says. “That means equity is going to be an important part of the equation moving forward.”
The Convention on Biological Diversity is currently ironing out its Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will be adopted at its next meeting in Kunming, China, in May 2021. The hope is that the framework will create a new set of biodiversity targets to remedy the failures of the Aichi goals and turn things around before it is too late.
“Action is needed now,” Cooper says. “These next 10 years, just as they are vital for climate change, are also vital for the biodiversity agenda if we’re going to prevent the sixth mass extinction.”


scientificamerican--2020-09-15--Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden

Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history .
This year we are compelled to do so .
We do not do this lightly .
The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science .
The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic , which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September .
He has also attacked environmental protections , medical care , and the researchers and public science agencies that help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden , who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health , our economy and the environment .
These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer , more prosperous and more equitable future .
The pandemic would strain any nation and system , but Trump 's rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S .
He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a national strategy to provide protective equipment , coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines .
Testing people for the virus , and tracing those they may have infected , is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks , saved lives , and successfully reopened businesses and schools .
But in the U.S. , Trump claimed , falsely , that “ anybody that wants a test can get a test.
” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer .
Trump opposed $ 25 billion for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a pandemic relief bill as late as July .
These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country—particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color , where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population .
It was n't just a testing problem : if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public , it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December , according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine .
Such a strategy would hurt no one .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ would cost next to nothing .
But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules , making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances .
Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus .
He encouraged governors in Florida , Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures , saying in April—again , falsely—that “ the worst days of the pandemic are behind us ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened .
And of course , the rebound came , with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June .
The states that followed Trump 's misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not .
By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients .
States had to close up again , at tremendous economic cost .
About 31 percent of workers were laid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giant wave of unemployment—more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses—that had already decimated the country .
At every stage , Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease , not downplaying it , is the path to economic reopening and recovery .
Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease , saying it was not a serious concern and “ this is like a flu ” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible , according to his taped statements to journalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to engage in risky behavior , spreading the virus further , and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump 's falsehoods .
The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation 's leading infectious disease physician , Anthony Fauci , in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust .
Trump 's reaction to America 's worst public health crisis in a century has been to say “ I do n't take responsibility at all.
” Instead he blamed other countries and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office three years before the pandemic began .
But Trump 's refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus .
He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no alternative ; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness .
Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health , the National Science Foundation , and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us for future challenges .
Congress has countermanded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , slashing programs that would ready us for future pandemics and withdrawing from the World Health Organization .
These and other actions increase the risk that new diseases will surprise and devastate us again .
Trump also keeps pushing to eliminate health rules from the Environmental Protection Agency , putting people at more risk for heart and lung disease caused by pollution .
He has replaced scientists on agency advisory boards with industry representatives .
In his ongoing denial of reality , Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change , falsely claiming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of international agreements to mitigate it .
The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms , wildfires and extreme flooding .
Joe Biden , in contrast , comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19 , improve health care , reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making .
He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals .
On COVID-19 , he states correctly that “ it is wrong to talk about ‘ choosing ' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ... .
If we do n't beat the virus , we will never get back to full economic strength.
” Biden plans to ramp up a national testing board , a body that would have the authority to command both public and private resources to supply more tests and get them to all communities .
He also wants to establish a Public Health Job Corps of 100,000 people , many of whom have been laid off during the pandemic crisis , to serve as contact tracers and in other health jobs .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Administration to enforce workplace safety standards to avoid the kind of deadly outbreaks that have occurred at meat-processing plants and nursing homes .
While Trump threatened to withhold money from school districts that did not reopen , regardless of the danger from the virus , Biden wants to spend $ 34 billion to help schools conduct safe in-person instruction as well as remote learning .
Biden is getting advice on these public health issues from a group that includes David Kessler , epidemiologist , pediatrician and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health security specialist at Georgetown University ; and Ezekiel Emanuel , bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania .
It does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies , one of whom Trump has called “ very respected ” and “ spectacular.
” Biden has a family and caregiving initiative , recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery .
His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on families .
On the environment and climate change , Biden wants to spend $ 2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035 , build energy-efficient structures and vehicles , push solar and wind power , establish research agencies to develop safe nuclear power and carbon capture technologies , and more .
The investment will produce two million jobs for U.S. workers , his campaign claims , and the climate plan will be partly paid by eliminating Trump 's corporate tax cuts .
Historically disadvantaged communities in the U.S. will receive 40 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is not certain how many of these and his other ambitions Biden will be able to accomplish ; much depends on laws to be written and passed by Congress .
But he is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges .
Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November , either by mail or in person , it is crucial that we surmount them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ move Trump out and elect Biden , who has a record of following the data and being guided by science .
Editor ’ s Note ( 9/15/20 ) : This article has been edited after its publication in the October 2020 issue of Scientific American to reflect recent reporting .

Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly.
The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.
The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump's rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S. He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing disease, yet he did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines. Testing people for the virus, and tracing those they may have infected, is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks, saved lives, and successfully reopened businesses and schools. But in the U.S., Trump claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer. Trump opposed $25 billion for increased testing and tracing that was in a pandemic relief bill as late as July. These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country—particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color, where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population.
It wasn't just a testing problem: if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances. Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus. He encouraged governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures, saying in April—again, falsely—that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” and ignoring infectious disease experts who warned at the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened.
And of course, the rebound came, with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June. The states that followed Trump's misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not. By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients. States had to close up again, at tremendous economic cost. About 31 percent of workers were laid off a second time, following the giant wave of unemployment—more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses—that had already decimated the country. At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.
Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation's leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.
Trump's reaction to America's worst public health crisis in a century has been to say “I don't take responsibility at all.” Instead he blamed other countries and his White House predecessor, who left office three years before the pandemic began.
But Trump's refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus. He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no alternative; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness. Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us for future challenges. Congress has countermanded his reductions. Yet he keeps trying, slashing programs that would ready us for future pandemics and withdrawing from the World Health Organization. These and other actions increase the risk that new diseases will surprise and devastate us again.
Trump also keeps pushing to eliminate health rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, putting people at more risk for heart and lung disease caused by pollution. He has replaced scientists on agency advisory boards with industry representatives. In his ongoing denial of reality, Trump has hobbled U.S. preparations for climate change, falsely claiming that it does not exist and pulling out of international agreements to mitigate it. The changing climate is already causing a rise in heat-related deaths and an increase in severe storms, wildfires and extreme flooding.
Joe Biden, in contrast, comes prepared with plans to control COVID-19, improve health care, reduce carbon emissions and restore the role of legitimate science in policy making. He solicits expertise and has turned that knowledge into solid policy proposals.
On COVID-19, he states correctly that “it is wrong to talk about ‘choosing' between our public health and our economy.... If we don't beat the virus, we will never get back to full economic strength.” Biden plans to ramp up a national testing board, a body that would have the authority to command both public and private resources to supply more tests and get them to all communities. He also wants to establish a Public Health Job Corps of 100,000 people, many of whom have been laid off during the pandemic crisis, to serve as contact tracers and in other health jobs. He will direct the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to enforce workplace safety standards to avoid the kind of deadly outbreaks that have occurred at meat-processing plants and nursing homes. While Trump threatened to withhold money from school districts that did not reopen, regardless of the danger from the virus, Biden wants to spend $34 billion to help schools conduct safe in-person instruction as well as remote learning.
Biden is getting advice on these public health issues from a group that includes David Kessler, epidemiologist, pediatrician and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief; Rebecca Katz, immunologist and global health security specialist at Georgetown University; and Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. It does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called “very respected” and “spectacular.”
Biden has a family and caregiving initiative, recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery. His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out of the economy and places enormous strains on families.
On the environment and climate change, Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035, build energy-efficient structures and vehicles, push solar and wind power, establish research agencies to develop safe nuclear power and carbon capture technologies, and more. The investment will produce two million jobs for U.S. workers, his campaign claims, and the climate plan will be partly paid by eliminating Trump's corporate tax cuts. Historically disadvantaged communities in the U.S. will receive 40 percent of these energy and infrastructure benefits.
It is not certain how many of these and his other ambitions Biden will be able to accomplish; much depends on laws to be written and passed by Congress. But he is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges.
Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It's time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.
Editor’s Note (9/15/20): This article has been edited after its publication in the October 2020 issue of Scientific American to reflect recent reporting.


scientificamerican--2020-09-15--How to Do Better for Your Middle School Student

The French call them “ the ugly years ” : that awkward , searing time of physical change and overwhelming emotion summed up by the phrase “ middle school.
” Judith Warner , a journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress , has set out to make sense of this time , drawing on psychology and social science , as well as the experiences of teachers , students and parents , herself included .
In her book And Then They Stopped Talking to Me , she makes a passionate argument for recognizing the fullness and richness of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in helping our middle schoolers , and our relationships with them , not just survive but thrive .
It ’ s an urgent message for a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has brought chaos to our schools and families .
Warner answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook .
[ An edited transcript of the interview follows . ]
When many of us think of middle school , we have an almost physical reaction—it ’ s so uncomfortable and so vivid .
Why is that ?
So many people remember it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives .
At base , that ’ s because the early adolescent years are when a perfect storm of new social and educational developments in kids ’ lives combine with biological changes that set them up to be supersensitive and vulnerable to their encounters with the world .
It ’ s the time when we ’ re most likely to encounter exclusion , rejection , harsh hierarchies of ranking ( in looks and popularity ) —and also the time when we care about these things the most and suffer over them the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ memories tend to be quite similar , at least in general themes : They got “ dumped ” ( or dumped others and lived to regret it ) .
Or they were ostracized suddenly and were never given a reason .
Or they went from fitting in unselfconsciously to being , or feeling , not good enough .
They became aware of all the ways that they were different—by being late bloomers , perhaps , or being bookish in a school that venerated athletes or being less wealthy—at a time when different was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not even getting into the issue of bullying , which is horrific but , fortunately , is far less common than the run-of-the-mill , day-in-day-out drama and meanness and insecurity and exclusion typical of the age .
People remember those years , too , as the moment when they became aware of things that were messed up in their families—when their eyes were opened in ways they hadn ’ t been before , and they were overwhelmed by what they saw .
And all the awkwardness and confusion and rejection and pain cut @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a unique kind of immediacy in our memories because of brain changes that happen right around puberty .
How do brain changes figure into the “ perfect storm ” ?
Those brain changes are set in motion by the very same events that start puberty : The hypothalamus triggers the pituitary gland to instigate the release of the hormones testosterone , estrogen and progesterone .
These sex hormones then activate the visible physical changes we associate with puberty and also act upon the brain in ways that we don ’ t see or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a kind of overall tune-up—sharpening our memories , making us more attentive to the world around us and also making us better able to think abstractly and consider a problem from various angles and perspectives .
We also , not so positively , become more sensitive and reactive to the things that happen to us .
We become particularly reactive to stress , and what ’ s extra-stressful to us is how other people see us and whether they want to be with us .
As University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book Popular , the brain changes of puberty mean that kids both crave “ ‘ social rewards ’ —feedback that makes them feel noticed , approved , admired , and powerful among peers ” and are highly motivated to go seek those rewards over and over again .
In a cruel trick of nature , that development in what scientists call the brain ’ s “ reward circuitry ” occurs hand in hand with a big spike in what psychologists call “ social cognition ” skills : the ability to read other people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peers ’ feelings and social cues .
In other words , kids develop new abilities to both notice and interpret their peers ’ smirks , eye rolls and sidelong glances just at the point when they ’ re biologically proved to suffer over them the most—and at the point when meanness and bullying in school reach their peak .
It ’ s hard to watch your kid at this age , but you argue that parents are actually making the situation worse .
How so ?
Parents of our generation typically struggle with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The whole way we parent , very often , is a reaction to what we perceived as adult absence—physical or emotional—during our own growing up years .
It ’ s very well intentioned .
But it means that we really run the risk of overidentifying with our kids , especially in the middle school phase of life , precisely because our own memories are so intense , and we so fear our children suffering the way that we did .
The problem , though , is that parents need to be parents—to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We need to dedramatize and put things in perspective , not spin out like our kids when they ’ re in pain .
We also have a tendency to hold onto things long after they ’ re ready to make peace and move on or to dwell on painful things that happen to them and amplify them by asking for explanations or follow-up .
Unfortunately , middle school parents , entering into early middle age , have a lot of the same insecurities and are facing a similar degree of uncertainty as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ super easily , which means they ’ re not in control of their emotions .
So am I to understand that middle age is the return of middle school ?
That might explain a lot .
I think it ’ s more that middle age marks the return of a lot of the same vulnerabilities and insecurities that we associate with middle school : an uptick in anxiety about who we are and where we ’ re going ( not to mention what we look like ) and worries about whether we ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we reenter a period of transition in family relationships .
Only whereas once we were the ones pulling away from our parents , now we ’ re the ones being “ left ” ( without our kids actually going anywhere ) , so while they ’ re struggling to navigate that push-pull and looking for new places to feel at home and fit in , we ’ re left with a feeling of abandonment that we usually don ’ t recognize as such until long after .
We also go through a period @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from us and refuse to let us make them the center of our lives in the ways that we have until that point .
People get pretty disoriented by that .
I was surprised , when I was going through it , to see the marriages around me falter .
I had expected that to happen a few years later , when the kids left for college .
As with all the painful changes of middle school , though , there are a lot of silver linings .
Many parents—though this , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such until long after—find returning to themselves a very positive thing , filled with renewed opportunities .
Sometimes the change in parental status actually strengthens their marriages ( though generally not right away ) .
It ’ s worth keeping in mind that those silver linings can exist , so parents can , as early as possible , start looking for the light at the end of the tunnel .
You seem to fall in the “ popularity is overrated crowd.
” My middle school self has a lot of trouble processing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schooler that this is the case ?
With a lot of subtlety—and indirectly .
And it would really have to be contextual , because the argument in the abstract wouldn ’ t be convincing at all .
But the social science evidence shows—and has shown for a long time—that the “ popular crowd ” is a very perilous place to be .
Because it ’ s all about power and status .
Because ruling the roost necessarily means that there ’ s a big mass of the ruled over who are angry and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if you ’ re in a mean crowd , the meanness will , at some point , turn on you ; it ’ s inevitable .
So if you have a kid who isn ’ t in and wants desperately to be—and perhaps is turning him or herself inside out to try to get in , suffering greatly along the way—I think the worst thing you can do is feed that desire or reinforce that behavior .
Far more useful , both short- and long-term , is getting a kid to think “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone I interviewed put it to me—by which she meant : rather than obsessing on how other people feel about you , think hard about how you feel when you ’ re with them .
If you feel nervous or insecure , like you always have to prove yourself and be good enough , if you feel you have to mold yourself into what they want , if you ’ re unhappy with the way that you or others are being treated but are going along for the ride because that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s worth remembering what good friendship really feels like .
Think about what it ’ s like when you ’ re with a friend who makes you happy and values you for who you really are .
And ask yourself how you want to feel as you move through life day after day .
She said that when she finally came to that way of thinking for herself—decades after being stuck in bad relationships—it changed her life forever .
She was doing all she could to get that message across to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think she ’ d come to an incredible level of wisdom , and I ’ ve tried to share her words with other people—of whatever age—ever since .
When it comes to sharing these thoughts with your middle schoolers , you have to get them across very lightly.You can ’ t sound judgmental or moralistic .
And what I would never recommend doing is demonizing the “ popular ” kids .
That doesn ’ t help anyone .
There is an irony in talking about middle school at a moment when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools ” because of COVID-19 .
What advice do you have for parents who have been unexpectedly spending a lot of time with their middle schooler and may be doing so well into the next year ?
There are some really interesting bits of information and experience that have come out of this period .
For one thing , some parents are reporting that their middle schoolers are actually happier—because they ’ re not dealing with the daily ups and , especially , downs of their social lives .
Those who didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ends trying to find a place to sit in the cafeteria or were never chosen as partners for group projects or never had a seat held for them in the classroom—are removed from these day-to-day indignities ( which are particularly infuriating because they ’ re largely avoidable if school adults make the slightest effort to open their eyes and change their classroom or lunchroom practices through things like assigned seating and work groups ) .
Some middle schoolers are reconnecting to elementary school friends they ’ d withdrawn from as not cool enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actors who don ’ t have to run , and judge , with the pack .
Some are able to reconnect with interests or talents that once occupied a big place in their lives but fell by the wayside when their social lives became all-important .
Those are all great things .
But for parents whose middle schoolers are miserable , who maybe aren ’ t doing any of that but are just staring despondently at their screens , they shouldn ’ t become something they use to bludgeon themselves .
They ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ age vary enormously and that—as we all know is occurring among adults—social distancing is just fine for introverts ( who tend not to be supersuccessful socially in middle school ) and can be truly devastating for extroverts ( who are more likely to be the kids who are supersocial and have lots of friends ) .
The most important thing parents can do in this period is focus on their own self-management so that they can be in the best possible place and be a nonanxious , nonaggressive presence in their kids ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hardest thing of all—and a goal that doesn ’ t lend itself to lists of parenting how-tos .
But I know for a fact , both through tough personal experience and my research for the book , that it ’ s also the most crucial .

The French call them “the ugly years”: that awkward, searing time of physical change and overwhelming emotion summed up by the phrase “middle school.” Judith Warner, a journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, has set out to make sense of this time, drawing on psychology and social science, as well as the experiences of teachers, students and parents, herself included. In her book And Then They Stopped Talking to Me, she makes a passionate argument for recognizing the fullness and richness of this age—a first step, she says, in helping our middle schoolers, and our relationships with them, not just survive but thrive. It’s an urgent message for a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has brought chaos to our schools and families. Warner answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
When many of us think of middle school, we have an almost physical reaction—it’s so uncomfortable and so vivid. Why is that?
So many people remember it as the most painful time in their lives. At base, that’s because the early adolescent years are when a perfect storm of new social and educational developments in kids’ lives combine with biological changes that set them up to be supersensitive and vulnerable to their encounters with the world.
It’s the time when we’re most likely to encounter exclusion, rejection, harsh hierarchies of ranking (in looks and popularity)—and also the time when we care about these things the most and suffer over them the most acutely. People’s middle school memories tend to be quite similar, at least in general themes: They got “dumped” (or dumped others and lived to regret it). Or they were ostracized suddenly and were never given a reason. Or they went from fitting in unselfconsciously to being, or feeling, not good enough. They became aware of all the ways that they were different—by being late bloomers, perhaps, or being bookish in a school that venerated athletes or being less wealthy—at a time when different was not acceptable. And I’m not even getting into the issue of bullying, which is horrific but, fortunately, is far less common than the run-of-the-mill, day-in-day-out drama and meanness and insecurity and exclusion typical of the age.
People remember those years, too, as the moment when they became aware of things that were messed up in their families—when their eyes were opened in ways they hadn’t been before, and they were overwhelmed by what they saw. And all the awkwardness and confusion and rejection and pain cut extra deep. They are inscribed with a unique kind of immediacy in our memories because of brain changes that happen right around puberty.
How do brain changes figure into the “perfect storm”?
Those brain changes are set in motion by the very same events that start puberty: The hypothalamus triggers the pituitary gland to instigate the release of the hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. These sex hormones then activate the visible physical changes we associate with puberty and also act upon the brain in ways that we don’t see or typically realize. They give the brain a kind of overall tune-up—sharpening our memories, making us more attentive to the world around us and also making us better able to think abstractly and consider a problem from various angles and perspectives.
We also, not so positively, become more sensitive and reactive to the things that happen to us. We become particularly reactive to stress, and what’s extra-stressful to us is how other people see us and whether they want to be with us. As University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill psychologist Mitch Prinstein explains in his 2017 book Popular, the brain changes of puberty mean that kids both crave “‘social rewards’—feedback that makes them feel noticed, approved, admired, and powerful among peers” and are highly motivated to go seek those rewards over and over again.
In a cruel trick of nature, that development in what scientists call the brain’s “reward circuitry” occurs hand in hand with a big spike in what psychologists call “social cognition” skills: the ability to read other people’s facial expressions and interpret their peers’ feelings and social cues. In other words, kids develop new abilities to both notice and interpret their peers’ smirks, eye rolls and sidelong glances just at the point when they’re biologically proved to suffer over them the most—and at the point when meanness and bullying in school reach their peak.
It’s hard to watch your kid at this age, but you argue that parents are actually making the situation worse. How so?
Parents of our generation typically struggle with maintaining their emotional boundaries with their kids. The whole way we parent, very often, is a reaction to what we perceived as adult absence—physical or emotional—during our own growing up years. It’s very well intentioned. But it means that we really run the risk of overidentifying with our kids, especially in the middle school phase of life, precisely because our own memories are so intense, and we so fear our children suffering the way that we did.
The problem, though, is that parents need to be parents—to think like adults, not like 12-year-olds. We need to dedramatize and put things in perspective, not spin out like our kids when they’re in pain. We also have a tendency to hold onto things long after they’re ready to make peace and move on or to dwell on painful things that happen to them and amplify them by asking for explanations or follow-up. Unfortunately, middle school parents, entering into early middle age, have a lot of the same insecurities and are facing a similar degree of uncertainty as their kids. So they get triggered super easily, which means they’re not in control of their emotions.
So am I to understand that middle age is the return of middle school? That might explain a lot.
I think it’s more that middle age marks the return of a lot of the same vulnerabilities and insecurities that we associate with middle school: an uptick in anxiety about who we are and where we’re going (not to mention what we look like) and worries about whether we’re good enough. In addition, we reenter a period of transition in family relationships. Only whereas once we were the ones pulling away from our parents, now we’re the ones being “left” (without our kids actually going anywhere), so while they’re struggling to navigate that push-pull and looking for new places to feel at home and fit in, we’re left with a feeling of abandonment that we usually don’t recognize as such until long after. We also go through a period of identity shift as our kids withdraw from us and refuse to let us make them the center of our lives in the ways that we have until that point. People get pretty disoriented by that. I was surprised, when I was going through it, to see the marriages around me falter. I had expected that to happen a few years later, when the kids left for college.
As with all the painful changes of middle school, though, there are a lot of silver linings. Many parents—though this, too, they don’t recognize as such until long after—find returning to themselves a very positive thing, filled with renewed opportunities. Sometimes the change in parental status actually strengthens their marriages (though generally not right away). It’s worth keeping in mind that those silver linings can exist, so parents can, as early as possible, start looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.
You seem to fall in the “popularity is overrated crowd.” My middle school self has a lot of trouble processing that. How would you convince a middle schooler that this is the case?
With a lot of subtlety—and indirectly. And it would really have to be contextual, because the argument in the abstract wouldn’t be convincing at all. But the social science evidence shows—and has shown for a long time—that the “popular crowd” is a very perilous place to be. Because it’s all about power and status. Because ruling the roost necessarily means that there’s a big mass of the ruled over who are angry and resentful and maybe hate you. And if you’re in a mean crowd, the meanness will, at some point, turn on you; it’s inevitable. So if you have a kid who isn’t in and wants desperately to be—and perhaps is turning him or herself inside out to try to get in, suffering greatly along the way—I think the worst thing you can do is feed that desire or reinforce that behavior.
Far more useful, both short- and long-term, is getting a kid to think “from the inside out,” as someone I interviewed put it to me—by which she meant: rather than obsessing on how other people feel about you, think hard about how you feel when you’re with them. If you feel nervous or insecure, like you always have to prove yourself and be good enough, if you feel you have to mold yourself into what they want, if you’re unhappy with the way that you or others are being treated but are going along for the ride because that’s what it takes to be popular, it’s worth remembering what good friendship really feels like. Think about what it’s like when you’re with a friend who makes you happy and values you for who you really are. And ask yourself how you want to feel as you move through life day after day.
She said that when she finally came to that way of thinking for herself—decades after being stuck in bad relationships—it changed her life forever. She was doing all she could to get that message across to her kids, early and often. I think she’d come to an incredible level of wisdom, and I’ve tried to share her words with other people—of whatever age—ever since. When it comes to sharing these thoughts with your middle schoolers, you have to get them across very lightly.You can’t sound judgmental or moralistic. And what I would never recommend doing is demonizing the “popular” kids. That doesn’t help anyone.
There is an irony in talking about middle school at a moment when the biggest problem has been “no middle schools” because of COVID-19. What advice do you have for parents who have been unexpectedly spending a lot of time with their middle schooler and may be doing so well into the next year?
There are some really interesting bits of information and experience that have come out of this period. For one thing, some parents are reporting that their middle schoolers are actually happier—because they’re not dealing with the daily ups and, especially, downs of their social lives. Those who didn’t fit in—who were always at loose ends trying to find a place to sit in the cafeteria or were never chosen as partners for group projects or never had a seat held for them in the classroom—are removed from these day-to-day indignities (which are particularly infuriating because they’re largely avoidable if school adults make the slightest effort to open their eyes and change their classroom or lunchroom practices through things like assigned seating and work groups). Some middle schoolers are reconnecting to elementary school friends they’d withdrawn from as not cool enough, because they’ve rebecome independent actors who don’t have to run, and judge, with the pack. Some are able to reconnect with interests or talents that once occupied a big place in their lives but fell by the wayside when their social lives became all-important.
Those are all great things. But for parents whose middle schoolers are miserable, who maybe aren’t doing any of that but are just staring despondently at their screens, they shouldn’t become something they use to bludgeon themselves. They’ve got to remember that kids this age vary enormously and that—as we all know is occurring among adults—social distancing is just fine for introverts (who tend not to be supersuccessful socially in middle school) and can be truly devastating for extroverts (who are more likely to be the kids who are supersocial and have lots of friends). The most important thing parents can do in this period is focus on their own self-management so that they can be in the best possible place and be a nonanxious, nonaggressive presence in their kids’ lives. That may well be the hardest thing of all—and a goal that doesn’t lend itself to lists of parenting how-tos. But I know for a fact, both through tough personal experience and my research for the book, that it’s also the most crucial.