Sentinel minutes for week #34/2024

Status: greenish; mpox continues to grow as a threat.

Biological risks

Mpox

Clade Ib mpox continues to spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo and nearby countries, with more than 1k cases on the DRC alone. Outside of Africa, it had previously been detected in Sweden, and this past week also in Thailand, in a 66-year-old European male, and perhaps in Honduras.

Perhaps most worryingly, a patient was detected in Gabon who had stayed for two weeks in Uganda, suggesting that the virus may be spreading much more widely in Uganda than has been detected. To date, 4 cases have been detected in Uganda, but the Gabon case makes it likely that this is a gross underestimate. Over 170 cases have been detected in Burundi, where the virus continues to spread.

With lesions appearing more often in the throat with clade Ib than clade IIb mpox virus infections, it is possible that clade Ib could transmit more by the respiratory route, like smallpox did (in contrast, clade IIb spreads exclusively or almost exclusively by close, direct contact). 

Vaccines are being produced and delivered, but one key supplier has been waiting to formally get orders, rather than producing the vaccines and then later waiting for someone to pay up (or not). Meanwhile, sources on the number of cases per country aren’t easily available: a WHO’s dashboard powering Our World in Data stopped updating, and Wikipedia also being slow at updating its table.

In the absence of intervention, our forecasting team thinks that clade Ib mpox would almost certainly become pandemic and then an endemic human poxvirus, like smallpox once was. Indeed, the elimination of smallpox is making the emergence of mpox possible, as immunity to smallpox offers protection against mpox, its genetic cousin, and likely previously prevented the worldwide emergence of mpox.

In the presence of intervention, our forecasting team is uncertain about whether the world will successfully suppress the clade Ib mpox strain. We elicited the distribution of deaths by the end of 2025: the two more experienced biorisk forecasters gave 1k to 10k and 5k to 15k deaths respectively, and a non-biorisk-expert forecaster gave a wider range of 1k to 50k deaths, on account of sigmoids being very hard to predict beforehand, mpox already reaching levels similar to those of the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak. 

On whether there would be no new cases reported of claude Ib in last two months of 2025, forecasters gave around 20%. But even if clade Ib mpox does not go pandemic, it is a matter of time before another mpox strain emerges again.

Other biorisks

The spread of H5N1 on dairy farms in the US may be slowing, but the virus continues to spread in birds and mammals worldwide and to pose a pandemic threat. Many have argued that a universal flu vaccine that would offer protection against all or most flu strains must be developed, and one such vaccine is yielding promising early results.

A 10-month-old child in Gaza was diagnosed with polio. In response, the UN will launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza 

2024 has seen the highest number of dengue cases recorded worldwide.

A case of Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) ,which is spread by mosquitoes, was diagnosed in Massachusetts in the US. The Oropouche virus—another disease spread by mosquitoes with symptoms similar to dengue—has been spreading in Brazil, and has already reached 10k cases and its first two confirmed deaths. As the earth warms, we can expect to see expansion of the geographical ranges of mosquito-borne pathogens such as EEEV, Oropuche, or dengue.

A preprint reported on by The Guardian looks at the presence of micro- and nano-plastics in an n=51 sample from the US. They find that their prevalence in brains increased from 2016 to 2024, to 0.48%. This is surprisingly high, particularly given the blood-brain barrier, which is supposed to stop contamination like this.  In general, even if this low-n study doesn’t replicate, the general class of hard-to-detect environmental threats does seem worth keeping track of.

A cardiologist used falsified data in some studies before heart surgery, leading to an estimated ~800K premature deaths over the last several decades

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI have announced their opposition to California’s draft AI bill SB-1047, which would make frontier AI companies liable for causing a catastrophe. OpenAI whistleblowers Daniel Kokotajlo and William Saunders have written a letter criticizing OpenAI’s position on the bill. They point out that Sam Altman and OpenAI have repeatedly publicly called for regulation and talked about the extreme risks of AI, yet OpenAI opposes regulation when it’s on the table.

After some of Anthropic’s proposed amendments to water down the bill were accepted, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote a letter indicating a change of their position, writing “we believe its benefits likely outweigh its costs”.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and China’s President Xi Jinping held a call in which they discussed stepping up cooperation on artificial intelligence, among other matters.

OpenAI and Condé Nast, which owns Vogue, The New Yorker, and GQ, have announced a partnership.

Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Ek published an op-ed on why they think Europe should go for open-source AI.

A group of authors are suing Anthropic for copyright infringement.

Trump shared a mix of real and AI-generated “Swifties for Trump” imagery. Follow-up reporting from media publications generally made emphasis on the AI generated part. In general, we can see a dynamic coming where campaigns use AI routinely, and each campaign can accuse images and videos that go against its narrative of being AI generated.

Cyberattacks

A critical Windows vulnerability allowed for taking over a machine by sending IPv6 packets. It rated a 9.8-out-of-10 on the CVSS severity scale.

A cyberattack shut down part of Halliburton, one of the largest oil and fracking companies.

The US has accused Iran of cyberattacks on the Trump and Harris presidential campaigns.

Geopolitics:

Middle East

Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel early on Sunday, as Israel's military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare. Back and forth strikes continue.

An Israeli strike killed a Fatah commander in southern Lebanon.

China

China is setting up a satellite communications system to rival the Starlink satellite network.

The US has condemned “dangerous actions” by China against Philippines vessels.

"President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal. The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade."

Defense analyst Tom Shugart discussed on X how Chinese military integration with its commercial sector, together with the development of military equipment disguised in shipping containers, poses a threat to navies in port, such as that of the US.

Taiwan conducted live-fire missile drills.

Russia/Ukraine

Russia and Ukraine both have reported battlefield gains.

Putin accused Ukraine of trying to strike Russia’s Kursk nuclear plant.

Modi, the Prime Minister of India, visited Ukraine. India, a long-time ally and trading partner of Russia, might actually have some influence in persuading it to end the war.

Inmates killed at least three Russian prison guards on Friday during a prison siege, officials reported. The assailants were said to have apparent connections to the Islamic State group. Ultimately, snipers ended the incident. However, in the meantime Putin looked extremely rattled.

The Houthis attacked and blew up an oil tanker.

France

France arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, on charges of the platform Telegram not cooperating with authorities against criminals. Internet commentators have expressed various degrees of sympathy, and pointed out that Telegram group chats are generally not end-to-end encrypted.

Climate

A meteorologist argues that, "Intensifying extreme weather events and an insurance crisis are likely to cause significant economic and political disruption in the U.S. sometime in the next 15 years."

Panama is coming up with ways to increase water storage to keep the Panama Canal functioning as droughts caused by climate change make the transit increasingly difficult over time.

The world's oceans continue warming, and the mechanisms by which they absorb heat might be disrupted, affecting plankton, fish, CO2 capture, oxygen flows in ocean currents, and various systems interlocked with global temperatures.