A collection of 135 posts
The problem isn’t just the number of ventilators and ICU beds, but also the limited number of staff who can operate such equipment.
While the disease itself is, of course, an apolitical phenomenon, Iran’s repressive, theocratic political system has played a role in the especially high toll that coronavirus is taking on the Iranian people.
When thousands of people took to the streets anyway, the president himself shared videos of the demonstrations, even though he’d recommended their suspension.
The governments of the US, UK, and other nations have made real progress, but they must go much further in being transparent about their vision of how to win the war on coronavirus, and what they are doing to achieve it.
But what’s now clear is that these strict interventions are necessary both for our health and our economy: Without decisive action, the pandemic will linger on, suffocating our economies week by week amid a climate of fear.
COVID-19 is going to send them crashing through it. And the challenge of how to help them rebuild their lives will be with us long after the pandemic itself has been tamed.
The World Health Organization announced last week that Europe is now the epicentre of the new coronavirus epidemic. As the announcement was made, many countries in Africa and Asia were imposing strict restrictions on the arrival of flights and visitors from Europe. It felt like a great historical reversal, one
When confronted, China frequently accuses its critics of racism. Last month, for example, Beijing expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in retribution for an opinion column titled “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” China Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiece, declared the headline “astonishingly racist”—despite the fact the
I went out on Tuesday morning wondering what a country on lockdown looks like. I live in the un-touristy Garbatella neighbourhood of Rome, where it was sunny and 15 degrees. It wasn’t as quiet as I expected. Oblivious to government directives, the parrots were squawking in the eucalyptus trees
There is another world out there. There is another world, with another President Donald J. Trump. There is another world in which President Trump saw coronavirus sweeping through China and grasped how powerfully and elegantly his claims about the authoritarian and deceptive nature of the Chinese state had been illustrated.
By way of aspirational example, consider the 12th-century case of Hildegard von Bingen‚ whose epic transformation during her own lengthy isolation paved the way to sainthood.
The offenders include rich countries like the United States and Japan, vast countries like Indonesia and India, communist countries like China and Vietnam, theocracies like Iran and Saudi Arabia, oligarchies like Russia and Nigeria, social democracies like Germany and France.
Measures implemented too early are deemed “alarmist,” if implemented too late, “negligent.”
Xi’s hope is that he can present himself as the strong man—the decisive leader—who saved China and the world from the virus.