Juan Convers

A couple of days ago I was chatting to one of my colleagues that this world cup has been really weird. Leaving aside all the justified controversies about the way Qatar treats migrant workers, the fact that this world cup is being played at Christmas time has been really strange. Since I live in Europe I have always associated this event with summer and people enjoying themselves outside, watching the games and having a good time. That has not been the case in 2022.

Now I wonder if any of the countries that have won the cup before will manage to do it again? Italy didn’t even qualify, Spain is out this week, Germany and Uruguay didn’t make it past the first round. So it could be Brazil or Argentina again? or European teams like France or the UK? We will see soon, but again this winter cup has lost a bit of its charm.

The US has more than 3.7 Million confirmed cases of Covid-19 cases and it's therefore the country with the highest number of those in the world. What it has been in the news lately is how states that rushed up to reopen as quickly as possible such as Texas and Florida, have an steady and exponencial increase on the total number of cases.

Next to California, who has seen also a sharp increase in the number cases, mainly in Los Angeles county, those states are getting closer to match the numbers of New York. It feels like a cautionary tale, that "going back to normal", won't as the precovid-19 normal until there is an effective vaccine or treatment in place.

Fortunately the an mRNA vaccine trial preliminary report in the NEJM stated the vaccine induced anti–SARS-CoV-2 immune responses in all participants, and no trial-limiting safety concerns were identified. Crossing the fingers for the next phases of those promising results.

After a couple of days of competition in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the medals table starts to look similar to London 2012. This is the current table

And this is how the table looked at the end of the London competition.

Clearly the US and China are dominating on this sport event.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen are the most bike friendliest cities in the World based on the Copenhagenize Index