Tag: Covid-19
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Covid – five years in
ONCE, we all respectfully listened to what epidemiologists said. We queued up for vaccines, observed distancing lines and confidently asked unmasked passengers on public transport to cover their faces. A tyrannical virus ruled over us, and we did everything in our power to limit its ravages… This article first appeared in The Guardian on 9…
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Covid origins
ANGELA Rasmussen studies the interactions between hosts and pathogens and how they shape disease. Before the pandemic, she worked on the emerging viruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Ebola, dengue and avian flu. Then, when Covid-19 erupted, the American virologist, who works at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, was drawn into the…
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Going viral
FIRST the pharaoh changed his name, from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten. Then he decreed that a new capital should be built far away from the old one. And in this city, one god should be worshipped, forsaking all others: the sun god Aten… This article first appeared in New Scientist on 19 July 2022. To continue…
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From zero to hero
IT was the alt-history, the policy that didn’t get enacted. No-Covid, zero-Covid or elimination aimed to stamp out community transmission of Covid-19 in a given area, rather than just reduce it to “manageable” levels. Most of the world eschewed it, and it got bad press from the start. Only autocratic regimes could pull it off,…
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How does Covid end?
AS Cop26 gets under way in Glasgow this weekend, one collective action problem is taking centre stage against the backdrop of another. Covid-19 has been described as a dress rehearsal for our ability to solve the bigger problem of the climate crisis, so it seems important to point out that the pandemic isn’t over. Instead,…
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What is Covid’s real death toll?
FOR the past 18 months, hunkered down in his Tel Aviv apartment, Ariel Karlinsky has scoured the web for data that could help him calculate the true death toll of Covid-19… This article first appeared in The Guardian on 9 October 2021. To continue reading, click here.
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Covid lawsuits and inquiries loom
EARLIER this month, proceedings opened in Austria in a civil suit brought against the authorities by the widow and son of a man who died of Covid-19 after staying in Ischgl, the ski resort widely regarded as having hosted a super-spreader event early in the pandemic. The week before, former French health minister Agnès Buzyn…
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The latest investigation into Covid’s origins is also inconclusive
US intelligence services have just briefed the president, Joe Biden, on the results of their 90-day investigation into the origins of Covid-19. They were asked to test two hypotheses: that it had a “natural” origin, or that it escaped from a lab. Preliminary reports suggest that their findings are inconclusive… This article first appeared in The…
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Make vaccine passports inclusive
WE have arrived at another of those moments, in this pandemic, where it’s critically important that countries respect a central decision-making body rather than go their own way. The issue on the table now is the use of health certificates to regulate international travel… This article first appeared in The Guardian on 15 July 2021. To…
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On leaky labs and parsimony in science
THE coronavirus pandemic has raised so many questions as it has continued its inexorable spread across the planet, but perhaps the first of them remains the most contentious: where did Sars-CoV-2 come from…? This article first appeared in The Guardian on 18 June 2021. To continue reading, click here.