acute

While desalination facilities are abundant in countries like Israel, Australia, and Saudi Arabia where water scarcity is acute, the energy required to desalinate water at scale presents a significant environmental hurdle.

But to reduce or suspend funding for research into infectious diseases that can have an acute impact on public health, as though all this research is part of a zero-sum game, would be catastrophic.

In a move which could be likened to swallowing half a paracetamol for acute appendicitis, the government made sure people were paying slightly less than the market rate for a litre of petrol.

This summer, Martthew Perry’s autopsy reported he died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” putting into question how the drug is regulated.

They also both have acute heart failure, a condition where the heart cannot pump blood around the body properly.