Things are gradually going back to normal. Pubs, restaurants and hairdressers have reopened. People can be seen in pubs again. The streets are as busy as before the lockdown. The traffic gridlocks during peak hours have returned. During the weekend, the city centre is as crowded as usual. After a drastic drop in greenhouse gas emissions over the last few ...  Read this >>

Today I was on the bus. I needed to go to my office to get some books. The faculty had kindly organised for academic staff to enter their offices for a time slot of fifteen minutes each. The campus was still closed, and I really needed some books from my office for my current research and teaching preparation. It was ten past ten in the morning, and I was...  Read this >>

Tomorrow, Monday, 01 June, the British government will start easing the lockdown. In British society, there has been a heated debate about the pros and cons of this step. Does it come too soon? Is it just right? Should the lockdown continue? Many people, particularly parents, think it is too soon to ease the lockdown and reopen schools and nurseries. Ther...  Read this >>

In these bizarre days, I sometimes feel like a character in a novel. Not necessarily a surreal novel, not fantasy and not magic realism. Rather like one of these anonymous characters in one of José Saramago’s abstract, hypothetical and almost academic novels. Most of Saramago’s novels begin with an abstract thought experiment from whic...  Read this >>

Since the beginning of the pandemic and its global spread, I have come across an abundance of articles, passionately announcing that this historic event will change everything; that it will change how we work and live; that it will even change our attitude towards climate change and make us more aware of global threats and the necessity to find together a...  Read this >>

These days we have received some news from Brazilian friends we visited a few years ago. They live in Foz do Iguazú, a sleepy Brazilian town next to one of the seven wonders of nature, the Iguazú Waterfalls. The town is now even more ghostly than usual due to the lack of tourists, its primary source of revenue. The national park enclosing th...  Read this >>

This afternoon we watched a live stream on YouTube showing a solo performance by Andrea Bocelli in the Cathedral of Milan. The stream started with live images of an eerily silent and deserted city. The sun was setting; two trams were soundlessly sliding along an avenue; and nothing but the wind could be heard. Today on Easter Sunday, the Cathedral would ...  Read this >>

I went to the supermarket yesterday. Online grocery deliveries have broken down. No matter which website we opened, be it Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, none of them were working properly. Several times we were put into a long virtual queue. Once we had finally selected all of our groceries, the payment system would not work, or all possible deliver...  Read this >>

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept empty the avenues and squares, roads and streets, train stations and airport terminals, tram and underground platforms of the world’s towns and cities. Train services suspended, aeroplanes grounded, cars abandoned. With the emptying of public space, time seems to have come to a grinding halt. Time management, just-in-...  Read this >>

In times of crisis, societies frequently rally around their leaders to seek reassurance, guidance and leadership. Over the last few weeks, approval ratings of democratically elected governments, such as France, Germany and Italy, have all surged. Even the approval ratings of the US president and the UK prime minister are up despite their blasé reac...  Read this >>

Ignorance kills. With all its Brexit hubris and nationalist arrogance, the UK government has taken this viral tsunami so lightly that once the waves of the pandemic hit British shores, the country did not even have enough testing kits for NHS workers. Other countries like South Korea and Germany demonstrate that testing is a fundamental tool to tackle the...  Read this >>