Everything seems normal in Brazil, except that we now have more than 120,00 COVID-19 deaths. Among the most challenging topics to be handled in this continental country is science, fake news (as usual, baby), and the Brazilian Unitary Health System (SUS). The latest discussions about vaccine development in Brazil include a convoluted topic: science and t...  Read this >>

I took a walk this morning along the upper reaches of the Aeron valley; an area of gently sloping pastures grazed by sheep and cattle, rolling land with sunken trackways and woods, scattered cottages and old chapels. It has been one of my favourite routes for years, but it starts with a challenge. The bridleway (unsigned from the road) follows a track tha...  Read this >>

The world’s attention has been focused on the development and fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. However, financial contributions to the COVAX initiative, a global coordinated effort to promote the development of COVID-19 vaccines and ensure fair allocation of the vaccines, has been unsuccessful to reach its target amount. Last week, the WHO m...  Read this >>

It really seems as though you can get used to pretty much anything, given enough time. Whatever was shocking and disruptive months ago has by now become a sort of new normality for many people – including the new rules, the masks everywhere and the slight unease whenever you suddenly and unexpectedly find yourself in a larger crowd. Like many people...  Read this >>

Policy Network’s engaging series Aftershock: Society and Politics after the Pandemic has managed to illuminate and also propose solutions to the overlapping crises facing society in the aftermath of COVID-19. The greatest public health emergency for over a century has undoubtedly accentuated inequalities, revealed the lack of effective political lea...  Read this >>

Late August and the weather has changed; storms in from the sea blowing away the warm, sleepy air of mid-summer, freshness coming in with the rain. The strength of the gales, the intensity of the rain, the unpredictability of the heat-waves, unsettles me. In the heart of lockdown back in June I had sleepless nights listening to the wind around the house,...  Read this >>

Dear all, I hope you are doing fine! The last 24 hours have been complicated in Brazil, primarily because of the widespread corruption news about the President's wife. Honestly, these things do not impress me too much. I do not feel comfortable in admitting this. Well, but amid a pandemic and many corruption scandals, I asked myself how to (not) solve the...  Read this >>

Queensland in Australia is experiencing a new outbreak centred o a youth detention centre in Brisbane. After months of zero cases and no community transmission we are back in the wait and see game. I have been wearing masks to shops throughout, but gradually easing off in my own precautions. I have been deliberately trying to ease my own unease about open...  Read this >>

In the spirit of our founder (the mysterious COVID-19 Diaries), let’s kick off with a little controversy… global health actually just equals colonial medicine. Given the focus of my research perhaps this is not that controversial, but don’t take my word for it. No less than the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine has apparently been &ls...  Read this >>

So I'm finally here. A few words of introduction. I currently work within the Washington DC policy industrial complex, in a job in which it's better to remain formally pseudononymous. I'd prefer that what I say not be associated with my superiors (and they might think the same!), and while we have a organizational policy that allows blogging, I don't thi...  Read this >>

The ‘quality’ (I use that term with a great deal of hesitancy) newspapers in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere) along with social media fora have offered a litany of references to the British government’s incompetence in myriad areas. In the category of ‘definitely not ancient history’ are the suggestions that the Grenfell trage...  Read this >>

If you watched Kingdom of Heaven (2005). you might be familiar with the story of King Baldwin IV - King of Jerusalem - who were affected by leprosy and was reigned under heavy political pressure by politicians in his court. King Baldwin was not a weak King, anyway; he was decisive and wises. But his physical condition means that he can't get to ...  Read this >>

When the first signals of quarantine were shown in Brazil, I remember that many people said, "we are overreacting. This "Chinese virus" will not cause damage in Brazil." Well, from the first beginning, these people were wrong! I can also recall many sentiments of xenophobia about Chinese people and Brazil's neighbors (mainly towards Argentina, Paraguay, a...  Read this >>

  I have just been reading Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. At one point she points out how an unprecedented phenomenon is difficult to deal with because we misrepresent it by trying to find a precedent in our existing knowledge. Or, as she puts it: “The unprecedented is necessarily unrecognizable. When we encounter ...  Read this >>

“When do you think we’ll see a return to normality?” “As soon as the vaccine comes out.” “Yeah, sounds like the Oxford one is showing promise. Seems like it might even be out before Christmas.” This is an approximation of conversations I, and I’m sure others, have overheard or been involved in over the la...  Read this >>

All over the news yesterday was Putin's announcement that he was authorising the use of the newly developed vaccine - Sputnik V. His daughter has been part of a small cadre of people reciving it as part of a trial, way below the threshold for normal Phase 3 in terms of size, or really for Phase 2 for that matter. Mass vaccination in Russia will commence i...  Read this >>

Venice in February is an acquired delight. From my first winter visit there around 25 years ago, the relative emptiness of the winding streets, the fog from the canals and the possibility to admire views of the landscape without the typical hoard of tourists has been one of my favorite escapes. On Valentine’s Day during the first year of COVID 19, i...  Read this >>

1.       It has been a month since I posted a diary piece on this blog. I am getting slow in posting. I started posting a diary piece from the beginning of the pandemic, to express my confusions and concerns associated with this pandemic. Therefore, my slow postings may indicate that I have found some rhythm and stability in the virus ...  Read this >>

I read an article about how loneliness rewires the human brain to perceive all relationships the same - friends, acquaintances and celebrities all become 'people around me but not with me'. (The article by Satviki Sanjay in Vice) This explained a few things I'd been feeling since the start of the pandemic but couldn't articulate. I realised that 'physica...  Read this >>

I grew up in a period of conservative resurgence in the US. I lived in Massachusetts, known nationally as the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. Even the liberal state of Massachusetts went for Ronald Reagan and the neoliberal agenda that set off this conservative wave in 1980. The "Christian Right" driven by Jerry Falwell and the "Moral Majority" put the...  Read this >>

I have just returned from first week off since Xmas, spending 1 week in an apartment overlooking the sea in the south of Queensland. It was lovely. The apartment block facing the sea backs on to a road the other side of which is the Gold Coast airport. Normally flights start at 6.30 am and end at 10.30 pm, with jet after jet landing to service the extende...  Read this >>

A few weeks ago I had to have a minor eye surgery. The choice was surgery in a pandemic or no vision, so being someone who has to read a lot, I took a chance and opted for the former. Anyway, after the surgery, I was told to keep my head down for 24 hours. “Just look down at the floor as much as you can.” The 24 hours then became about 4 days,...  Read this >>

The pandemic is messing with my sense of place as well as time. By “place” I don’t mean anything topographic (for instance, the fact that I’m writing this in the Bonnie Doon Community League Park as opposed to Casablanca). I mean the building blocks of spatial awareness - what is here, what is there, what is near and what is far.&n...  Read this >>

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been feeling Chile is slowly moving towards disaster. We are used to earthquakes, floods, and volcano eruptions, but every single one of these events was abrupt and there is little anyone could have done to avert most of the damage.  The pandemic, on the other hand, started for Chile in February when news f...  Read this >>

I am writing this, wearing a mask, from the eerily empty departure lounge at Glasgow International Airport. Waiting for a flight that I would rather not, but must necessarily, take for reasons that aren’t important here. What I would like to discuss here is anxiety, particularly the anxiety when faced with crossing borders and how a sudden change in...  Read this >>