Tag Archives: COVID-19 pandemic
Courts and COVID
India’s courts have played a prominent in helping (or not) the country manage its COVID-19 epidemic, especially during the second wave this year – from asking the government to explain which proofs of identity will be accepted at vaccination centres … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds
Tagged B.1.1.7, B.1.617, COVID-19 pandemic, Indian judiciary, oxygen shortage, Supreme Court of India
Comments Off on Courts and COVID
Being apolitical doesn’t mean politics doesn’t exist
A few years ago, we had a writer who would constantly pitch articles to us about how the Indian government should be doing X, Y or Z in the fight against this or that disease. Their submissions grew quickly tiresome, … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Anthony Fauci, COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines, epidemics, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh
Comments Off on Being apolitical doesn’t mean politics doesn’t exist
The constructionist hypothesis and expertise during the pandemic
Now that COVID-19 cases are rising again in the country, the trash talk against journalists has been rising in tandem. The Indian government was unprepared and hapless last year, and it is this year as well, if only in different … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm
Tagged biochemistry, complexity, COVID-19 pandemic, disease transmission models, epidemiological modelling, epidemiology, expertise, immune escape, more is different, novel coronavirus, novel coronavirus variants, Philip Warren Anderson, scale, virology
Comments Off on The constructionist hypothesis and expertise during the pandemic
The Government Project
Considering how much the Government of India has missed anticipating – the rise of a second wave of COVID-19 infections, the crippling medical oxygen shortage, the circulation of new variants of concern – I have been wondering about why we … Continue reading
Posted in Culture
Tagged black holes, City of a Thousand Planets, COVID-19 in India, COVID-19 pandemic, history, India oxygen shortage, medical oxygen, spacetime continuum
Comments Off on The Government Project
Exporting risk
I’m torn between admitting that our cynicism about scientists’ solutions for the pandemic is warranted and the palliative effects of reading this Reuters report about seemingly nothing more than the benevolence of richer nations not wasting their vaccine doses: Apart … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged AZD1222, COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines, Covishield, vaccine apartheid, vaccine nationalism
Comments Off on Exporting risk
COVID-19, due process and an SNR problem
At a press conference streamed live on March 18, the head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced that the body – which serves as the European Union’s drug and vaccine regulator – had concluded that the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was not … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged adverse events following immunization, AstraZeneca, COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines, Covishield, European Medicines Agency, mRNA vaccines, Omelas, public health, risk communication, signal-to-noise ratio, T Jacob John, Ursula Le Guin
Comments Off on COVID-19, due process and an SNR problem
Anti-softening science for the state
The group of ministers (GoM) report on “government communication” has recommended that the government promote “soft topics” in the media like “yoga” and “tigers”. We can only speculate what this means, and that shouldn’t be hard. The overall spirit of … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Bharatiya Janata Party, COVID-19 pandemic, free press, Gautam Adani, government communication report, Group of Ministers report, independent media, Mukesh Ambani, neglected tropical diseases, Patanjali Ayurved, Principal Scientific Adviser, research and development, S.S. Bhatnagar Award, science journalism, soft topics, tigers, vaccine apartheid, vaccine nationalism, yoga
Comments Off on Anti-softening science for the state
Pandemic: Science > politics?
By Mukunth and Madhusudhan Raman Former Union health secretary K. Sujatha Rao had a great piece in The Indian Express on January 14, whose takeaway she summarised in the following line: Science, evidence and data analytics need to be the … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Op-eds, Science
Tagged Central Drug Standards Control Organisation, Covaxin, COVID-19 pandemic, Covishield, criminal negligence, democracy, middle class, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, scientism, Tamil Nadu elections, West Bengal elections
Comments Off on Pandemic: Science > politics?
A future obscured by exponential growth
A couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I think most of us realised how hard it is to comprehend the phenomenon of exponential growth. Mathematically, it’s trivial – a geometric progression – but more physically, the difference between linear and … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged COVID-19 epidemic, COVID-19 pandemic, exponential growth, Factorio, Homo sapiens, logistics, MachinePix, predicting the future, quality control, rotary screen printer, supply chain management, technology, wheat and chessboard problem
Comments Off on A future obscured by exponential growth