Tag: covid19

  • Notes of Covid as approach end of 2021

    “The development of a safe, effective and cheap vaccine, however, is only a first step towards community-wide control. Epidemiological, economic and motivational issues are at least as important as technological ones.” Nature, 1985 Vaccine implementation defines the efficacy of vaccines role in influencing a pandemic. How, when, to whom, by whom, where, why, timescale are…

  • Europeans and Omicron: The Children of Hercules

    Published in Gods & Radicals Press: This pandemic isn’t a random mutation of Nature. It’s a living product of imperial imagination In Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, I combed through 12,000 years of evidence on how people have related to ‘Nature’. Notably, a key shift toward a binary between people and ‘Nature’ was the ‘othering’…

    Europeans and Omicron: The Children of Hercules

  • Containing Covid19 in the UK

    Published at Mutual Interest Media. This was written before testing became more widely available in the UK when it mattered In collaboration with Laura Burke and Charles Beach Back in March as SARS-CoV-2 was integrating itself into the population of the UK, we – a couple of anthropologists – put our heads together to evaluate…

    Containing Covid19 in the UK

  • PART 3: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

    The Necropolitics of Care My main interest in the aforementioned work of Scoones is in exploring how ‘uncertainty’ is dealt with through modelling. An epic industry that stretches far beyond academia into insurance giants and risk management in all sectors of life. A recent book by Frederic Keck explores the question of uncertainty in disease…

    PART 3: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

  • PART 2: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

    Where Care Meets Social Context Starting with Adia Benton’s webinar that initiates thinking about ‘ (i) What kind of powers are granted in any kind of emergency; (ii) Needing to reimagine our international institutions; (iii) Needing to consider epidemiological and clinical concerns in the context of different social and economic realities; (iv) COVID-19 has revealed…

    PART 2: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

  • PART 1: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

    Some weeks ago I listened to Eben Kirksey’s webinar in relation to COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). It was a tad of fresh air in comparision to the dogmatic perspectives on biological phenomenon so many of us are schooled in. For me however, the webinar was very light going having studied genetics and being an anthropologist foucssed on…

    PART 1: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

  • Should we not all be dreaming of a world without more police?

    Last year in light of the ‘London Bridge’ attack and a General Election, the Labour Party argued for more and better-equipped police.  There was talk of the police having been spread thin and having ‘lost control of the streets’. There was talk of increasing the number of police jobs and putting more money into centralised…

    Should we not all be dreaming of a world without more police?

  • Life ≠ Quarantine

    Hypothesis: Source of zoonotic pandemics is ongoing. More global pandemics are on horizon. Focus on quarantine/distancing normalises what our reaction are instead of addressing the cause. Like 9/11 normalisation of invasive securitisation and loss of liberties but no real fix. — Avi (Dr KBH) (@avi_khalil) May 6, 2020 The social shock of a global pandemic…

    Life ≠ Quarantine

  • COVID-19 testing is the bottleneck in managing the pandemic. Can we open-source testing?

    People in East Asia learnt from SARS, that open knowledge networks across society are the best way to enable people to contextually coordinate and adapt to a pandemic. Opaque decisions informing a command-and-control attitude cost lives and increase the dangers associated with broad interventions from above. I have indicated here and here why this is…

    COVID-19 testing is the bottleneck in managing the pandemic. Can we open-source testing?

  • What culling corvids tells me about the UK government response to COVID-19

    I spent five years of my life trying to work out why people around me were shooting so many corvids (crows and magpies). They told me the corvids were stealing their partridges and rabbits. What I saw was that it was fun to spend the day with some friends out roaming the countryside. I saw…

    What culling corvids tells me about the UK government response to COVID-19

  • Scenarios for C19 in the UK

    WHAT IS THIS? These are pen portraits of possible scenarios for viral contagion and government response in the UK. They give some broad indication of what the status of contagion will be dependent on accompanying government measures. I am trying to give myself a starting point for thinking how to plan for the next two…

    Scenarios for C19 in the UK

  • Interferons, Plants and Viruses: One ‘likely’ way to prepare yourself for C19 and other viral infections

    A longstanding Cuban antiviral is being reported as one of the medications used in China for people infected with COVID-19 coronavirus (C19). It acts as “a protective mechanism, preventing patients from getting worse, reaching a severe stage, with death as the outcome”. The antiviral is ‘Interferon Alpha 2b’. It has proven effective for viruses with…

    Interferons, Plants and Viruses: One ‘likely’ way to prepare yourself for C19 and other viral infections