The Question
What are your predictions for 2023?
Talking Points
- Donald Trump's tax returns hit the headlines
- Congress advanced a $1.7tn spending bill
- Sam Bankman-Fried was extradited to the US
- The World Cup parade in Argentina ended in chaos
- Unrest in Peru stretched into a second week
- Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected as leader of the ANC
- Mark Rutte apologised for the Dutch slave trade
- The Bank of Japan made a surprise shift in policy
- A Thai navy vessel sank with dozens still missing
- A deal was reached at the COP15 summit
See, it wasn't all bad
This is the last Weekly Wrap of 2022 — we'll be back in the first week of 2023! We were mere suckling babes when this year began. Now, grizzled and gnarled, we hobble towards the New Year. To close out, we've consulted the archive for the stories that warmed us, educated us, and, most importantly, had us in fits of laughter.
STEM kids will save the world
There are some who would eschew topics like Covid-19, cancer, malaria, and ebola in an annual tally of good news. It's better left unsaid what we think of such pollyannas and quietists. As you all inkl readers (and gourmands) know; balance is impossible without bitterness and sourness. Infectious and noncommunicable diseases shape our world. They shift priorities, shorten lives, shape societies, and leave an indelible mark on those left behind. We've spent several millennia using traditional remedies on illnesses that can scarcely be remedied. Recently we've developed frighteningly potent — sometimes toxic — treatments. But in 2022 we've caught a glimpse of a new paradigm: vaccines for just about everything.
You are well abreast of Covid vaccines — there's a good chance the antibodies stirred up by them are still bumping around your system. Please set aside the screaming inequality of vaccine access for a moment and reflect on what has been achieved. You can spray them up your nose now. Mortality rates among the vaccinated have plummeted. The clenched fist of public health policies is opening. An ersatz 'new normal' lies in its palm. For the first time in several years, the goals around vaccine policies are clear: make more, distribute them widely, bring the entire world up to the World Health Organisation's 70% target. The COVAX program fell well short of this but still managed to achieve an average of 52% coverage among its recipient states. That's well over a billion people vaccinated.
This year a fourth person was effectively cured of HIV after a stem cell transplant suppressed the replication of the disease. All too often we lean on cliches about what those working in cutting-edge medical research are like. But nothing sparks this level of scientific inquiry like an expansive sense of humanism. Take Ravindra Gupta, the doctor who helped cure Adam Castillejo of HIV in 2019. After achieving stratospheric fame, he started a clinical microbiology lab at Cambridge and has spent the pandemic churning out research on how new variants form. It's not the papers, grants, and machines-that-go-bleep pushing us forward. It's humans.
As we discussed last week, an mRNA melanoma treatment (don't call it a cure) has nearly halved the prospect of recurrence. We've gotten awfully good at mapping the genetic mutations the increase the likelihood of developing cancers. This year, a cancer vaccine became an inarguable reality. If that sounds impressive, imagine getting one over on mosquitoes. The pests are responsible for 2 out of 5 human deaths since the dawn of time — and 400,000 annually. Now, we are within grasp of a malaria vaccine . Then there's the ebola vaccine, which is being rolled out to control an outbreak in Uganda as we speak. A dengue jab also holds great promise. Both Rwanda and Australia are galloping towards the total elimination of human papillomavirus (HPV) and the cervical cancers that can follow it. Mpox? Done — don't even worry about it .
Our high-achievers
Leave some accolades for the rest of us!
It has been a year of extraordinary individual achievements. Lionel Messi did as Lionel Messi does (although it should be noted that the Argentine goalie, the exuberant and faintly villainous Emiliano Martínez, was Messi's equal). Ash Barty won a Grand Slam and, having gotten a whiff of a better life, retired at 26. Francis Kéré was awarded the Pritzker Prize for his extraordinary work in making architecture subservient to the needs of everyday humans. Anyone familiar with architects will know how pleasingly unorthodox this is. Sanu Sherpa became the only human to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000m+ mountains... twice .
All laudable efforts. But there is one person who takes the biscuits this year, and that is Sister Alfonsine Ciza of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Decades of civil strife have left the DRCs power grid paralysed, decaying, and incomplete. Just 20% of the country has access to electricity. Persistent power disruption is part of everyday life in South Kivu province. In Miti, a town of 300,000, the number of hours each week when the lights are on rarely hits double digits. Sister Ciza has seen firsthand in Miti how deleterious this is on the population: computers lie idle at schools, medical equipment unblinking at the clinic.
So the good sister went back to school to learn mechanical engineering. And for the last seven years she has led the fundraising and construction of her own hallowed hydroelectric plant. Canals, pools, regulators, turbines. The whole lot. In 2022, it was switched on. Capable of producing 1MW of power, this blessed project provides free power to the schools and clinic in town. And there she is in gumboots and a hardhat over her habit — an individual who saw a difficult engineering problem and decided screw it, I'll do it myself (perhaps not that exact phrasing).
Our four-legged friends
Our kingdom for an animal
Humans have shown why one species should not have dominion over the planet. Evidence of human intervention is everywhere. And given there are eight billion humans, and that resources are not equitably spread between us, there's a fairly good chance we'll continue encroaching on the few vestiges of wilderness left on the planet. It's precisely this economic imperative towards consumptive, extractive sprawl that makes conservation so precious.
At the risk of raising the ire of the entomologists among your number: we'll start with the Sumatran rhino. Yeah, yeah. We get it. Our ability to anthropomorphise gets a little fuzzy once the subject is smaller than a golf ball. We're staying with them not because they are cute (evidence above) but because they are, technically speaking, almost toast. The most comprehensive guesstimate is that there are somewhere between 37 and 43 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild. Another nine are in captivity. Given these perilous numbers, it is more than joyous to note that this year a female calf was born in an Indonesian sanctuary. Rosa, the mother in question, had endured eight miscarriages since the breeding program began in 2005. Every one counts.
Our polls have revealed certain traits shared by inkl readers. As it happens you all have great poise, a charming and not-at-all-weird laugh, and a lifelong interest in the health and wellbeing of the American plains bison (the subspecies name for which is, rather helpfully, bison bison bison ). When colonists arrived in North America, there were at least 30 million bison roaming the great grassy plains from as far south as the Carolinas up into what is now Alaska. By the 1900s, there were just a few hundred left. Today, there are tens of thousands of bison shared between 82 member tribes of the InterTribal Buffalo Council. The temporal resurgence has been greatly aided by the reestablishment of their spiritual place among America's indigenous peoples. It is that sacred bond which has undone 400 years of damage in a few short years.
And finally, a word of praise for inkl's Perpetual Bird of the Year : the endearing and utterly hopeless kākāpō. The population of the world's heaviest parrot jumped 25% to 252 in the last year — the highest total since the 1970s. Do NOT read any further about this conservation program if you are fond of stoats.
Our inadvertent comedians
The best medicine
During Theresa May's keynote speech at the 2017 Conservative party conference the lettering of the slogan 'Building a country that works for everyone' fell off the wall behind her. It was a delicate piece of physical comedy that, we foolishly thought at the time, would not be surpassed. The Boris Johnson years were funny in their own hammy, miserable way — but not true comedy. For that we had to wait for Johnson's scandalous downfall and his replacement by the inimitable Liz Truss . Calling the Irish Taoiseach the "tea sock". LARPing as Maggie Thatcher. Using the dullest political and economic worldview of the 1980s to bear in the 2020s and blowing a hole in the side of the economy. The desperate, cheesy grin after delivering a promise to open up new pork markets in Beijing. This was commedia dell'arte. We'll miss her.
When we weren't chortling at the Truss prime ministerial speed-run, we couldn't take our eyes off the science-fiction grandeur of Neom. You're telling us that a country which keeps losing ground wars against Yemeni farmers is going to build the ring from Halo ? That's a good one. But in all seriousness, if graphic design is your passion and you'd like to pocket some Saudi oil money, we highly recommend joining their design team.
And who could forget the mirth that Razzlekhan and Dutch gave us? This painfully cringe pair, fences for a far more successful hacking operation, helped launder some of the millions of dollars of crypto stolen in the Bitfinex hack. They channelled their cut into the funniest rap career since Lil Dicky.
Last, but certainly not least, a hearty cheers to Citigroup, Revlon, and the entire debacle of unwinding the $900m 'fat fingers' transfer . We're sorry that you've finally finished legal proceedings. But we are so, so grateful to you for humanising the entire banking profession.
Highlights
The Image
This year it was impossible to look passed the dazzling composites captured by the James Webb Space Telegraph. The majesty of space in a jpeg. What a universe. Photo supplied by The Guardian .
The Quote of the Year
"It was not a premeditated, organised party. He was, in a sense, ambushed with a cake."
– British Tory MP Conor Burns mounts a spirited defence of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson's lockdown party at Downing Street. Among all the ludicrous utterances of the year, Burns gave us a masterclass.
The Number of the Year
$44,000,000,000
- There are a great many ways to waste money when your mid-life crisis hits. Being compelled by a Delaware judge to spend $44bn on a social media network you don't want to buy is the new yardstick. This Christmas, please save a wish for Elon Musk's bankers who can't even get 60 cents on the dollar on the debt of this dodgy deal.
The Headline of the Year
"'Thematically richer than the Bible': What I learned at the first annual Boss Baby symposium" — The Guardian . Unsurpassed.
The Special Mention of 2022
It's inkl's worst-kept secret. We did, after all, tease it last week. After much deliberation this year's prize has been awarded to Sam Bankman-Fried. Why? All emergent technologies are rejected by threatened incumbents. It was fairly assumed that the biggest threat to cryptocurrencies would be from the Feds. But it turned out the call was coming from inside the house. Bankman-Fried managed to do incalculable damage to a global industry while lounging around in the Bahamas, clad in shorts. Congratulations, you are inkl's That Guy of the Year.
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek wants a ticket to see Taylor Swift
- Financial Times sits down with Nouriel Roubini
- The Atlantic undoes the myths of Appalachia
The Answer...
In all honesty, we didn't have 'land war in Europe' on our 2022 bingo card. Our predictions for 2023: King Charles abdicates the throne, successful Québécois independence referendum, a ChatGPT script wins an Oscar, and the Panama Canal gets Ever Given'd. All jokes aside, we've got everything crossed that 2023 is a banner year for human dignity, cultural flourishing, scientific discovery, global peace, and the Hawthorn Football Club.
