Author: lauraspinney
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The coronavirus slayer!
ON 20 January, KK Shailaja phoned one of her medically trained deputies. She had read online about a dangerous new virus spreading in China. “Will it come to us?” she asked. “Definitely, Madam,” he replied. And so the health minister of the Indian state of Kerala began her preparations… This article first appeared in The Guardian on…
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Will coronavirus lead to fairer societies? Thomas Piketty explores the prospect
THE French economist Thomas Piketty is the bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) and its follow-up, Capital and Ideology (2019), a sweep through 1,000 years of the history of inequality. Speaking to the Guardian, he said he had been thinking about the opportunities this pandemic may present to build fairer, more equal…
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Coronavirus: on protecting the vulnerable
PANDEMICS force societies to take a hard look at themselves. With many countries beginning to lift lockdown, we’ve arrived at another one of those mirror moments: whether we experience a second wave of coronavirus infections depends in large part on the health status of some of the most vulnerable groups in society… This article first…
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Caught in the second wave
ON 15 March, just before Covid-19 hit the Lariboisière Hospital in Paris, the head of its emergency service was calm. “My team is ready,” said Eric Revue… This article first appeared in the New Statesman on 29 April 2020. To continue reading, click here.
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Interview: Christian Drosten
CHRISTIAN Drosten, who directs the Institute of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, was one of those who identified the Sars virus in 2003. As the head of the German public health institute’s reference lab on coronaviruses, he has become the government’s go-to expert on the related virus causing the current pandemic… This article…
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Heart attack and stroke patients delay seeking help
FURTHER evidence is emerging of dramatic falls in numbers of hospital patients presenting with serious medical conditions such as strokes and heart attacks since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic… This article was published in The Guardian on 16 April 2020. To continue reading, click here.
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God’s perfume
IN THE EARLY 1990s, the then Mayor of Versailles, André Damien, discovered a folded paper in the drawer of an antique desk he had just bought at auction. When he opened the paper up, he saw that it had written on it a formula for what seemed to be a perfume, so he took it…
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Food, globalisation and pandemics
ONCE a dangerous new pathogen is out, as we are seeing, it can be difficult if not impossible to prevent it going global. One as contagious as SARS-CoV-2 has the potential to infect the whole of humanity. Eighty per cent of cases may be benign, but with such a large pool of susceptible hosts, the…
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On pandemics and inequality
A LOT has been written about how this pandemic is exacerbating social inequalities. But what if it’s because our societies are so unequal that this pandemic happened…? This article first appeared in The Guardian on 12 April 2020. To continue reading, click here.
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When will we have a Covid-19 vaccine?
WHEN will we have a Covid-19 vaccine? Public-facing scientists such as the UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and his US counterpart, Anthony Fauci, keep repeating that it won’t be before 12 to 18 months. But other voices – including some of those in the race to create a vaccine themselves – have suggested…