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Egg prices are coming down

US wholesale egg prices have fallen by more than half since their peak in February.

That is welcome news. Still, we should note that from a historical perspective, egg prices were never really that high.

Economist and Human Progress board member Gale Pooley has calculated that in 1919, it took unskilled workers in the United States 12 minutes to earn the money to buy a single egg. In February, when a dozen eggs cost over eight dollars, an unskilled worker could buy one with 2.4 minutes of work.

Remember that we are in the middle of a bird flu pandemic! Between December and February, US egg producers culled 44 million hens to curb the disease, and eggs were still five times more abundant than a century ago. That’s worth considering the next time someone questions the “resilience” of industrial agriculture.

Drones could assist Sherpas on Mount Everest

The New York Times reports that a Nepalese startup called AirLift has begun testing delivery drones above Mount Everest. The quadcopters, which can carry up to 35 pounds at Everest’s altitudes, could transport food, equipment, and garbage up and down the mountain.

The main beneficiaries may be Sherpas, who often haul this stuff themselves—and sometimes die doing it:

Goods that would normally take seven hours to be transported by foot from Everest’s base camp to Camp I can be airlifted within 15 minutes. By lightening the Sherpas’ burdens, drone operators hope that the chances of fatal accidents—which have risen as climate change has accelerated snowmelt—can now be reduced.

A remarkable example of automation improving workplace safety!

Once-yearly lenacapavir injection could prevent HIV

Lenacapavir is a cutting-edge antiretroviral that made headlines in 2024 for preventing HIV with a twice-yearly injection.

Now, a recently published study suggests that new formulations of the drug could function similarly with just a single annual injection.

In the study, researchers compared blood samples of participants injected with the once-yearly formulations with blood samples from trials of the earlier twice-yearly formulation. The new formulations produced higher levels of the drug over the entire 56-week period.

Gilead is planning a larger trial of the new formulations to further test their effectiveness, and whether the drug remains safe at the much higher doses required. If successful, the result would be a much more practical version of an already groundbreaking medicine, especially in regions with poor health infrastructure.

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