The COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage our lives through diminished social contact, disrupted commerce and illness and death. One unobvious example has been interruptions in food supply chains, from farmers' markets to large food manufacturers. To respond to crises, agriculture must be as efficient, innovative and resilient as possible.

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The World Health Organization has called attention to a COVID-19 "infodemic" – "an overabundance of information ... that includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals." Part of that inaccurate information is the patently false and misleading claim that COVID-19 is like the flu, only less lethal.

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Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been many thousands of articles and commentaries published on almost every imaginable aspect of the SARS-Cov-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic it has caused. They have appeared online, in journals, on preprint servers, in newspapers, and on blogs. As much as we might try to keep up, there will always be important facts or developments we might have missed, so below are a few that should help us understand some of the nuances of the pandemic.

#1 THERE APPEARS TO BE AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE IN EFFICACY BETWEEN THE Pfizer-BioNTech AND Moderna COVID-19 VACCINES.

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When was the last time you read an online magazine or newspaper, only to find yourself bombarded with shopping ads specifically targeted to your preferences and needs, seemingly by magic? How about the detection of fraud or the filtering of spam from your email inbox? Well, that was most likely the handiwork of "machine learning," a subset of artificial intelligence that uses computer algorithms that over time and multiple experiences, or iterations, can automatically improve, without being explicitly programmed to do so. It enables the computers to learn without human intervention or assistance and adjust their actions accordingly. This powerful technology has already insinuated itself into many aspects of our lives, often invisibly. And there is much more on the horizon.

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NASDAQ recently proposed new diversity requirements for the corporate boards of companies listed on the exchange. "Successful companies must cultivate diversity to fuel innovation and to thrive in today's era of ongoing environmental, social and economic change," said TechNet president and CEO Linda Moore in support of the proposal. The NASDAQ proposal arbitrarily determines that a minimum of two directors must be female, minority, or LGBT. The criteria are not linked in any meaningful way to the demographic profile of society; they merely reflect the do-gooder biases of NASDAQ executives and influencers.

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