Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
In a matter of months, the novel coronavirus has swept across the globe and entirely up-ended our understanding of normality. Now, as the virus continues to rage and signs of a second surge are emerging even before the first has ended, we’re rethinking everything we’d assumed and hoped for at...
As the world continues to endure the uncertainty and anguish bought by the invisible threat both to individual lives and the global economy, many politicians cling to the idea that once a vaccine against the COVID-19 disease is found, the return to normalcy will at last become possible....
Some news items manage to sum up in a simple and succinct narrative the entire madness of a phase of human history. We are now living in the era of hyperreality, in which everything that appears superficially ordered by logical principles is in reality structured by forces we have been trained not...
On Monday, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered many businesses statewide to shut down in response to the raging resurgence of COVID-19 in nearly all 50 US states. That same day, a friend of mine landed in San Francisco after having spent six months living in Japan. On his flight, a United...
The COVID-19 pandemic lays bare a global crisis of gender inequality. While women have achieved considerable success in their fight for equality, they continue to face violence, discrimination and exclusion globally. Women are now disproportionately bearing the costs of the pandemic, surfacing...
For months, as the COVID-19 disease was spreading and hundreds of thousands of people were dying across the world, accusations amplified by the media flew across borders in a global blame game. They raised three great destabilizing questions: Which nation was responsible for bringing COVID-19 into...
Six years ago, Sierra Leone was fighting Ebola, an infectious disease that devastated the country for almost two years. Today, like most countries around the world, the West African nation is in the midst of fighting another disease: COVID-19. The Ebola outbreak not only killed thousands of...
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts have been opining about when a vaccine may be discovered and become widely available. Many suggest that it is simply a matter of time, given how many organizations around the world are busy racing to find a cure. But that assumption could well be...
There was a time when modern medicine was primitive. There were no antibiotics, so every infection took its own course, leading to decline in health. Hypertension and diabetes were largely untreatable. X-ray was new, and remedies had changed but little from medieval times. No one ever embarked on...
If the United States had quick-thinking and efficient leadership, the pandemic would have infected about 100,000 people and killed only a couple thousand. That’s the experience of South Korea, times seven to account for the difference in population. If the United States had overwhelmed but...
In East Asia, face masks are accessories akin to hats and scarves, a civilian, not a medical, accessory. People wear them for a variety of reasons: the smog, the cold, the sun, hay fever, unruly acne or to send a message usually transmitted via earbuds in North America: Don’t talk to me unless...
