Counterpoint

While we've been paying attention to COVID-19 another killer has been on the loose. That killer is ISIS and they bombing Sikhs in Afghanistan. Last year roughly 155, 732 people died around the world every day. Death, just like tax, is normal, that is, until now. Are you working from home right now? Are you enjoying it? The benefits of working from home have been talked about for the last 50 years. If you are lucky enough to have a garden, or live close to a park, now is the time to go out and explore and watch.

Can we trust China? How? The internet has changed the world but has it also created 'unprecedented concentrations of power, which are making society not only less transparent, but more brittle as well'? Can we compare COVID -19 to the Black Death? Are we nearly at the point, with social media, of needing to legislate and police friendship?

Will globalisation survive the COVID-19 pandemic? What are some examples of successful public health polices? In the immediate aftermath of BREXIT many British academics and commentators claimed that people voted Leave because they were racist or were yearning for Empire and the good old days. Is this true? How good is your nose? It's all kinds of brilliant!

President Xi Jinping's rule of China is seemingly absolute, but is all as it seems? Outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases like Ebola, SARS, bird-flu and CVID-19, are on the rise around the world. Why? How did people in Ancient Greece cope with sickness and disease and how clean is the International Space Station?

Is Narendra Modi's India a democracy in peril? Might COVID-19 be a disaster without precedent? Civilization has brought millions of people out of poverty, out of hunger, and saved millions of lives, so why does it seem that some academics want to destroy it? Emotions can be tricky and unpredictable but should we be using them more to help us face some of our most pressing problems?