A collection of 135 posts
Social isolation can be so stressful that it “disrupts brain development (in younger members of social species) and leads to mental health problems later in life.”
In some cases, the efforts of nurses and doctors have been called heroic, especially in hot spots such as Italy and New York City.
Dr Jemma Geoghegan, a virologist at the University of Otago, talks to Jonathan Kay about how viruses evolve and the lessons we can learn about social distancing from fish, dogs and rabbits. She is the co-author of several papers in evolutionary virology, including ‘Hidden diversity and evolution of viruses in
And if indeed “everything hangs on one’s thinking,” as he and his philosophical heirs frequently remind us, then this pandemic is just as much an opportunity as it is a curse.
Our business model is simple: We build and fix things so that other people have a place to live and work, and so that we can pay our own bills and live our own lives.
There is no guarantee that the Danish health system will have the resources to help everyone who needs care. And the economy might be in tatters when the quarantine ends.
The Black Death wiped out half the population of Europe in the space of four years.
We are currently in the throes of a new kind of crisis where the underlying economy is healthy, but a non-economic crisis is stopping it in its tracks.
It was only after coronavirus proved so much more deadly in China and Italy that governments outside of Asia took dramatic actions including radical social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
Even if a COVID-19 vaccine were invented tomorrow (it won’t be), our experience with the virus shows how underprepared we are for this kind of public-health emergency.
According to the social science literature, there appears to be a positive correlation between the prevalence of disease and an increase in authoritarian-nationalist political views.
New digital connections could incubate a new urban culture unlike any we have seen.
It often seems like it’s mostly feminists who disparage female work and praise so highly the world of corporate and professional success.
The blind struggle against infectious diseases began to end when the microscope allowed for the discovery of the bacilli responsible for anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera in the late 19th century.
For the first time in a week, the daily number of new global confirmed COVID-19 deaths has dropped—from 1,690 to 1,660. That’s a small drop, but it’s important.