Subterms
There is no part of the globe that has not been affected by the novel coronavirus pandemic. At the time of writing, over 200 countries and territories have reported outbreaks as the global number of confined COVID-19 cases continues its steady march towards 4 million. But there is another pandemic that is threatening the health […] More
On March 16, French President Emmanuel Macron was the first head of state to declare war in the battle against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In a televised address to the French nation, he repeated the phrase “we are at war” as obsessively as Cato the Elder more than two millennia ago, who insisted […] More
There has been much debate around the world about the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from its origin in a laboratory or at Wuhan’s seafood market or some other form of animal-to-human transmission. While there is no proof (yet) that the virus may have been inadvertently released from one of the two biological research […] More
US President Donald Trump had already taken a sledgehammer to the export-led growth model. With the COVID-19 pandemic rousing primal passions, hitherto unfashionable ideas are emerging like Dracula from their grave. Protecting infant industries to improve future competitive advantage or strategic players for national security reasons are policies many are embracing with gusto again. Some […] More
As the coronavirus spreads fast in Indonesia, experts believe that the country will become Asia’s new epicenter. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has been criticized for not implementing a nationwide lockdown. Yet such measures would not be a silver bullet to contain COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Other countries such as South Korea […] More
Brazil’s President Jair Messias Bolsonaro seems to be trying to go down a different route than the rest of the world when it comes to the COVID-19 crisis. While the “Trump of the Tropics” has been following US policy on many fronts, Donald Trump has stepped back from his earlier claims that the coronavirus is […] More
On April 5, India responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to light earthen lamps for nine minutes at 9 pm. Earlier on March 19, he appealed for a 14-hour “people’s curfew” three days later. On March 25, Modi imposed a national lockdown over 1.3 billion people, the biggest such exercise in the world. Bringing […] More
You pay little attention to the systems of your body — circulatory, digestive, pulmonary — unless something goes wrong. These automatic systems ordinarily go about their business, like unseen clockwork, while you think about a vexing problem at work, drink your morning cup of coffee, walk up and down the stairs and head out to […] More
