The Queen Victoria Market in Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, is usually a thriving affair. Like any ancient agora, people travel to meet there, purchase fresh produce, and natter. The fruit and vegetable vendors are all colour, a profusion of smells and noise. The meat market heaves with patrons keen […]
Tag: Coronavirus
Trouble In Vaccine Land: The Wiliness Of South Africa’s Coronavirus Variant
It began as a shudder through the scientific and public health establishments. A new variant of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 had been found, mutating in South African climes, potentially outwitting human responses to it. Vaccines such as Oxford-AstraZeneca’s would have to be brushed up. Rollouts would have to be reconsidered. […]
Going Airborne: Coronavirus And Hotel Quarantine
It has happened again. This time, a diligent worker, having followed all the protocols given to him, had returned a positive result for COVID-19. The 26-year-old had been serving as a resident support officer in the Australian Open quarantine program in Melbourne, Victoria. Yet for all that, he still could […]
Coronavirus Education: Learning And Teaching From The Margins
The coronavirus student, a species brought forth in the world of education by a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 people in the United States and 100,000 in the United Kingdom, is a troubled creature. When universities and schools across the globe were given varying and often contradictory messages on […]
Two Strategic Errors In Facing Covid-19
Western countries succumbed to panic in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic. Turning irrational, they committed two strategic errors: confining their healthy population at the risk of destroying their economy, and betting everything on MRA vaccines to the detriment of health care, or even at the risk of causing particular disorders due to this new vaccine technique.
Boris Johnson And The Deaths Of The Hundred Thousand
Not exactly Thermopylae. Not even close. The hundred thousand who have now been taken by COVID-19 in Britain were not determined warriors holding up the forces of a mighty empire to save their land. They were the innocent victims of infection, mismanagement and miscalculation. Central to the policy which led […]
Not Knowing What You Stand For: Deborah Birx And Public Health
Pity the public health official tasked with convincing those beyond convincing that a pandemic crisis is worthy of serious consideration. This is further complicated in instances where such officials feel the need to play court jester, appeaser or silent sufferer. When she was made coordinator of the White House coronavirus […]
Masking Up Under Biden: The Perils Of Tribalism, Bureaucracy And Lawsuits
One crackling theme streaking through the US elections of 2020 was the issue of mask wearing. Critics initially felt that facemasks were of the too important category in combating the novel coronavirus: purchasing and using them was tantamount to prizing valuable protective equipment from doctors and frontline workers. But COVID-19 […]
The Gold Comes Off: A COVID-19 Outbreak In Sydney
Australia has various advantages as an island continent. It is monumental and only accessible in the most impractical ways. It is discouragingly far and almost impossible to invade without a huge investment of personnel and material. The decision to place convicts on the island by the British was audaciously cruel […]
Yuletide Lockdowns And Cancelling Christmas
The mind changer in Downing Street has struck again. With UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the helm, changes of direction are compulsive, natural and sudden. The U-Turn has become the prosaic expectation. “Too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to […]
Hoarding The Jabs: The Inequalities Of Vaccine Distribution
Public health is no excuse to keep business and patriotism at bay. Not a very humanitarian sentiment, but then again, healing the sick and preserving the healthy can become parochial, nationalist objectives. The least convincing language of the pandemic has been this baffling and trite notion that “we” and “all […]
Julian Assange: Covid Risks and Campaigns for Pardon
Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak. From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh […]
Comments