For today’s interconnected food supply chains, “efficient” is what it’s supposed to be: Each country specializes in what it’s best at and puts it on the global market. Producers and processors within countries specialize, too, as a way to minimize costs. As a result, at least in theory, prices stay low, the world gets fed and everyone wins.

However, the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates what is wrong with this approach. When barriers prevent food from reaching its markets, or demand suddenly drops — both of which are happening now — the system falls apart. Belgium, a leading exporter of potatoes, lost sales on the domestic and overseas markets because of lockdowns (封锁). At least the Belgians can try to eat the potatoes at home. That strategy won't work for every crop: Ghana, the world’s top cocoa exporter, lost markets when people focused on buying essential items instead of chocolate.

The loss in export income in Africa more generally could have a huge impact if the COVID-19 crisis continues, as many countries there rely heavily on imported (进口) grains. The prices of these grains have rocketed not only because of rising demand for these grains during the crisis, but also because a few countries — including Russia and Vietnam — carried out export restrictions out of fear that sending food abroad would lead to higher prices domestically.

Seeing the spoiled products across the world should force all of us to rethink our “efficient” food supplies. We need to rejuvenate (使恢复活力) local and regional food systems to reduce the vulnerabilities that come with being relying too much on imported foods. This doesn’t mean cutting off all trade or abolishing all packaged foods, but it does mean building diversity, and increasing opportunities for small and medium-scale enterprises to flourish in shorter, more sustainable (可持续的) food supply chains that are closer to home. For governments around the world, it should be the place to start.

Back in 2020, when schools were still virtual and citizens were living their lives in masks, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, emerged as one of the earliest critics of remote work. “There’s a huge value to working together in terms of cooperation and creativity and training the younger people,” he said.

Three years later, Dimon’s opinion is unchanged. The difference now is that it has gone mainstream. With the pandemic declared over, most American companies seem to have settled on the idea that some in-person time is beneficial — even necessary — for workplaces.

Studies have found people get more feedback when they’re in the same space as their coworkers, leading to more opportunities for advancement. And while findings on productivity are mixed, there’s evidence that fully remote workers encounter more friction when trying to convey information quickly.

After making remote work possible for millions of people, Zoom is now telling some of its own employees to show up in person. The company has decided that employees who live within 50 miles of a Zoom office are required to work in-person two days per week in the office.

However, many office workers who enjoyed greater autonomy while working from home are not readily giving that up, even as their employers step up demands for them to come back. Hired by Microsoft as a senior training associate, Garcia Espejo works from home most of the time, scheduled as she sees fit. For Garcia Espejo, who’s been caring for her elderly parents, it will be painful to lose this flexibility.

“Post-COVID for the first time ever, people are being told when and where to show up, and it just is causing this reaction from people like, ‘Wait a minute. I’m not ready!’” says Debbie Lovich, managing director at the Boston Consulting Group.

Still, the trend is coming. A recent survey of 1,500 office workers, conducted by Boston Consulting Group, found 85% working in “a hybrid mode,” and only 8% fully remote.

My mother died of breast cancer when she was merely 50 in 1970. Afterwards, the comment repeated most often was: “You’ll need to be careful for the rest of your life because it may have been passed to you.” In 1994, the first ever breast cancer gene testing arrived. I jumped right to it and tested negative. I’m thankful for the science that has given me this preventive screening (筛查). Good for me, but is it good for everyone?

Here’s the catch. Research on genetic disease has been based mostly on European people, like me. The same went to the mapping of the human genes. The problem is that we know little about how new treatments might work for people of other races. If we diversify patients in clinical trials, we can realize the promise of personalized medicine for everyone, not just white patients. Faced with the unfair phenomena in medical research, what should we do to resolve the problem?

Not only do we need more diverse populations participating in research, but we also need diversity among biomedical researchers and medical professionals to make efforts. That makes research stronger and builds trust with diverse communities. A medical team is working on this now. They are building a diverse next generation of gene editing researchers by teaching high school and community college students from different backgrounds about promising technologies like gene editing to encourage them to become future researchers. This sort of educational outreach can also help to build trust in the medical and research communities. The team leader, John Cooper, PhD, has been outspoken about the current inequalities of delivering new technologies to all people at a fair cost.

Numerous scientists and medical leaders are working to change the situation. While science wasn’t yet far enough along to save my mother, I have harvested the benefits of advanced research and so should we all.