Arguably, no one has been more active in promoting and funding research on vaccines aimed at dealing with coronavirus than Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. From sponsoring a simulation of a coronavirus global pandemic, just weeks before the Wuhan outbreak was announced, to funding numerous corporate efforts to come up with…
As Western nations descend into a panic over the coronavirus pandemic, Americans are getting a taste of what it’s like for the millions who have been living under U.S. sanctions and warfare. Iran has been hit hard by the pandemic with 850 confirmed deaths to date. It’s Rial lost 80 percent of its value and…
This gig is kinda weird at the moment. I write about what’s going on in the world for a living, and there’s certainly plenty going on in the world to be written about. But also there’s this acute awareness that anything I write about today is going to look petty and insignificant in the very…
Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the…
If a disease can teach wisdom beyond our understanding of how precarious and precious life is, the coronavirus has offered two lessons. The first is that in a globalised world our lives are so intertwined that the idea of viewing ourselves as islands – whether as individuals, communities, nations, or a uniquely privileged species –…
We see the word virus a lot these days, along with various forms of adjective referring to the causes and nature of Covid-19, the name given to the Coronavirus disease by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and used internationally when referring to the health crisis that has fallen upon our globe. It is used by…
