I’ve been thinking a lot about how COVID will change the world. I put the following together in my research job at Macro Hive. BC is “before COVID” and AC is “after COVID” :
Bilal
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Viruses are themselves an enigma that exist on the edges of life. That’s how John Barry describes viruses in his excellent The Great Influenza, which describes the events around the 1918 Spanish Flu. Barry has the knack for explaining biological concepts. In the era of the coronavirus, I thought it would be good to know what a virus actually is and his description is one of the best I’ve read. I’ve extracted the relevant parts from the book and you’ll see what I mean:
Continue reading “What Exactly Is a Virus?”
As we continue living in isolation, the words of Albert Camus in The Plague keep coming back to me. It was published in 1947, yet it captures the mood we are in today so well. I guess plagues and pandemics affect people in the same way, no matter what era we live in. Here are some excerpts and I replace the words ‘plague’ with ‘coronavirus’ and ‘pestilence’ with ‘pandemic’ to make it feel more current:
Continue reading “The coronavirus has covered everything.”
I was recently asked by a friend what tips I had to stay mentally strong during these uncertain times. Here’s what I suggested:
1) I’ve been reading and watching plague-related content! So for example, I read Camus’ The Plague and I recently watched the Korean show Kingdom (historical drama with zombies!). They give me a visceral feeling of much worse situations which makes our current situation look better.
Continue reading “Tips to mentally survive the COVID lockdown”
It’s as if we’ve crossed a threshold into a new world. If someone sneezes, you recoil. If someone reaches out their hand, you waver. If someone asks to meet, you hesitate. Wash your hands often. Don’t touch your face. Get a face-mask. Don’t get a face-mask. Welcome to the COVID coronavirus era.