Amir AghaKouchak, UC Irvine professor of civil and environmental engineering and others write, “Iran has relied heavily on water-intensive irrigation to grow food in dry landscapes and subsidized water and energy use …. The concentration of economic activity and employment in major urban centers … has also catalyzed massive migration, further straining already overstretched water resources.

“It’s an incredible travesty, this sort of really crude and unsophisticated approach for dealing with what is a very serious issue,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “We have technological solutions for this that exist,” Mr. Brouwer said. Unfortunately, he said, California regulations and planning have been “insufficient for that technology to be used instead of just turning the power off.” [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries.

At the moment, companies around the world are scrambling to build ventilators quickly, including Virgin Orbit, a firm backed by billionaire Richard Branson which usually manufactures rockets. Virgin Orbit, however, is building a simple version of the machine. “This one is going to basically be for all the patients who need a ventilator but do not need a top-line ventilator. That will free up all these top-line ventilators for the sickest of the sick,” said Dr.