A little over a month ago, those who were fully COVID-19 vaccinated in America were feeling pretty good about themselves and their prospects for a summer of wining, dining and a bit of travel. The kiddies, even though unvaccinated, could for some unexplained reason do camp, amusement parks and...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns have brought economic activity to a standstill. As a result, the livelihoods of people around the world have been threatened. To respond to the crisis, some governments have considered how to expand their social safety net. This is particularly...
In an AP article last December, Maria Cheng and Aniruddha Ghosal noted that, despite official optimism concerning the capacity of emerging vaccines to provoke the definitive decline of the COVID-19 pandemic, “the chances that coronavirus shots will be shared fairly between rich nations and the...
Misinformation about the current public health crisis — which has either denied the existence of the virus entirely or framed it as an intentional product — has proliferated at an alarming rate.
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic and the associated lockdowns, it seemed like things would never wholly go back to how they were. We discovered that people could work efficiently from home without being monitored in the office. Students, some of whom had previously moved across the world...
If the current pandemic is a test of the global emergency response system, the international community is flunking big time. It has done just about everything wrong, from the failure to contain the coronavirus early on to the lack of effective coordination thereafter. As the predicted second wave...
The global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the unpreparedness and inability of many countries to effectively manage complex risks and ensure community resilience. An important dimension of this dangerous flaw is the sharp divide between those who rely on science to shape policies and actions, and...
There is an increasing din in America that this self-congratulatory cradle of democracy is not up to the primal task of planning and implementing a free and fair presidential election in a couple of months. So sullied are we by the institutional failure to hold Trump’s government...
It is hard to think of impending natural hazard-related disasters in the middle of a global pandemic. But it is absolutely essential that policymakers do so. This year, due in part to climate change, scientists predict one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record. In fact, nine...
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to governments around the world imposing state emergencies under the pretext of protecting public health. Such measures, which have included both partial and full lockdowns to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease, have had an...
In a dramatic headline, Yahoo News expresses its surprise if not dismay that a “staggering 62 percent of Americans no longer see America as Ronald Reagan's 'shining city on a hill.'” Yahoo and YouGov published their poll to give an idea of the mood of the nation on this year’s Fourth of July...
As the world grapples with the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19, it is important to remember that this is not the first but rather the seventh human coronavirus that scientists have discovered since the mid-1960s.
