Last night I dreamt that the Grand Canyon was on fire – the flames were coming over the horizon, rushing through valleys and circling rocks, and I could hear them well before I could see them. An impersonal announcement stated that by now even the areas that used to be cool were on fire, as a few frightened animals ran past trying to escape the blaz...  Read this >>

The world is running against the clock in order to develop a safe and efficient vaccine for COVID-19. These developments are not free from political hardships - despite many biomedical complexities - and social consequences. In the international system, this vaccine-race is showing us the many flaws of international cooperation (which we can, surely, fix....  Read this >>

I’m having covid fatigue these days. I’m getting to a point where I lack the energy to feel strongly about the latest UK government mess-up, their latest new ideas on how to put profits before people, on how to overreach and avoid parliament scrutiny. And so on. It’s difficult to sustain feelings of outrage, and there’s so much to ...  Read this >>

Ten days ago, I helped my sister move into halls at a university in Scotland, where she has just started an undergraduate degree. As expected, it was a surreal experience. She was given a one-hour slot in which to arrive, and we barely saw a soul as we lugged those big blue IKEA bags with pots, pans, duvet, laundry basket and more student essentials up th...  Read this >>

It is a sad milestone day in so many ways, some close to home. The USA passed 200,000 deaths on the same day India overtook it as the country with the highest recorded numbers of infections. It now has over 5 million confirmed cases. This is thought to represent only a fraction of real cases, even though India has substantially ramped up testing – n...  Read this >>

Back on 19 March I wrote in my offline diary "when we come out of this I will be close to 40"... for those who don't know me, my 40th birthday is end of November 2021... (some time to go still...) That was 7 months ago, and probably the easier 7 months, considering the 7 months to come here in the UK until Easter 2021 - which is as far as my horizons tak...  Read this >>

* I’ve realized that the pandemic makes me impatient, impulsive and a bit negative. Decision that I made recently proves it. I’ve been busy recently with dealing with multiple things. I am packing for a four-month-stay in Korea, packing to move from the current flat and searching for a new flat that I hope I sign contract before leaving the ...  Read this >>

In my last blog post (how was this already more than a month ago?) I sketched my ideas on the invisible body in the context of COVID-19. With the background of researching on images of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa where images of grief, sickness and death were the norm, the visual absence of the body in the case of COVID-19 caught my attention. In my...  Read this >>

One of the things I've started to do again since the pandemic is run. I used to run loads, and then I became an academic and stopped making time for myself. Right at the start of lockdown, I knew I would need something to do for myself - something that grounded and centred me and helped me get through the long haul. So I ran, first just 2km per day as tha...  Read this >>

In month six of the pandemic, I find myself pulled to nature - trees, ravines, shrubs, wildflowers and grasses - the less I see signs of people, the better. I don't need to go very far from buildings and streets and cars, I just need to be out of sight and hearing of them, for even a short time. I've never felt the pull this strongly before. I've always ...  Read this >>

This week, the UK government has announced that it is relaunching its public health slogan to advise citizens on safe behaviour during the pandemic. The re-revealed central message is ‘Hands. Face. Space.’ This follows on from ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’ and the much more conflicted ‘Stay alert, control the vi...  Read this >>

The COVID-19 global health crisis has triggered economic and political processes that defy easy conceptualisation. The LSE COVID-19 blog, and the latest issue of the journal Nations and Nationalism, contribute to the elucidation of the political and economic aspects of the crisis caused by the pandemic. Both sources acknowledge the tentative character of ...  Read this >>

Although I was trained in pretty much the mainstream of political science, this pandemic has caused me to question a pretty basic assumption of how we understand governance and what affects that. The usual poli sci trinity of explanatory families is "Ideas, Institutions, Interests." That is, most explanations for how we see people—whether individua...  Read this >>

This is the final part of the collection of posts on the triple crises of private health, these largely having focused on the private hospital sector.  I will be splitting this post into two parts, one looking at national responses and the other the emerging multilateral governance of the crises of private health. So far, by means of focus on a rang...  Read this >>

Across the US, cities and states are rationalizing the threats and impacts of Covid-19 quite differently. Having lived in northern Wisconsin for most of the pandemic, an area with considerable resistance to Covid-19 public health safety measures, life hasn’t felt drastically different for me. While I chose to wear my mask at indoor public spaces lik...  Read this >>

I like to read pop neuroscience and so I'm familiar with the idea that during prolonged stressors such as the covid pandemic, our survival-wiring gets jacked up and hyperactive, and bypasses the front part of our brain, where abstract thought and concentration reside. This is why I can't seem to get high-level cognitive work done - either I can't re...  Read this >>

Were it not for my Twitter feed, I wouldn't have realized that my city has been living with COVID for 6 months. What a different world it is now. On top of mind for me today is risk--both in terms of Communications as well as risk perception in relation to public trust. My local public health authority, (Ottawa Public Health) is employing just the right ...  Read this >>