Axios

Climate scientists and indigenous leaders are urging policymakers to embrace traditional burning to avoid catastrophic wildfires like those experienced in the American West in recent years.

Why it matters: Climate change is expected to cause extreme fire events this decade. Per traditional cultural practitioners like Don Hankins, who's worked alongside indigenous leaders in California and northern Australia, indigenous controlled burns are proven to help prevent fire disasters.

The COVID-19 variants first detected in the U.K. and South Africa and now circulating globally aren't a current threat to the effectiveness of the first vaccines, but mutations will be closely monitored because "they could be an issue," NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios.

The big picture: Vaccinations are underway, albeit with a slow start. The get-back-to-normal-goal depends on reaching 70%–85% herd immunity in the population, Fauci says. While there are some concerns the mutations might circumvent the vaccines, he says they pose more of a problem for certain treatments than for vaccines.

Despite the slow roll out of vaccines so far, NIAID director Anthony Fauci says the COVID-19 vaccination campaign will ramp up fast enough that Americans should see "a degree of normality in the fall."

Driving the news: President-elect Biden is planning a program that will have "much more interaction between the federal government and the states than there are right now" in order to reach his goal of 1 million vaccines a day for 100 days, Fauci tells Axios.

The universe is 13.77 billion years old, according to a new measurement taken using a powerful telescope in Chile.

Why it matters: The precise age of the universe is an important factor for scientists trying to understand the evolution and expansion of the cosmos.

A lack of transparency by Chinese officials — particularly about the novel coronavirus' transmission and the obstruction of a top U.S. scientist from investigating it — played a significant role in allowing COVID-19 to spread outside China, NIAID director Anthony Fauci tells Axios.

The big picture: Axios first spoke with Fauci one year ago this week about the "mysterious pneumonia" in Wuhan, China, which he suspected was a novel coronavirus but was being reported by Chinese health officials as not that infectious.