Subterms
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
No leadership and no plan: is Trump about to fail the US on coronavirus testing? Donald Trump, left, hands a swab that could be used in coronavirus testing to Mike Pence during a taskforce briefing in Washington DC, on 19 April. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP Declarations of false victory and a vacuum of federal leadership have […] 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
The catalog of omissions in the British government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is well known. The decision to lock down was taken far too late in the day. Scientists have been too slow to criticize one another and too sure of their assumptions and methods. Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) are killing nurses, […] More
A lot has changed since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, China, in December last year. While much remains unknown about the new coronavirus, COVID-19 has since spread rapidly from its origin in China to every corner of the world except Antarctica. Unlike previous health crises such as SARS (severe acute respiratory […] More
Last week, on William Shakespeare’s 456th birthday, US President Donald Trump — presumably under the influence of James Joyce, whom The Donald undoubtedly remembers as the author of “Finnegan’s Woke” — let the stream of his semi-consciousness guide his thoughts along a meandering medicalized path traversed by rivers of ultraviolet light subcutaneously striving to bleach […] More
