COVID-19 in 2022 and 2023

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A piece on the New Zealand news site Newsroom on the value of a special day to help us correctly remember all the lives we saved by locking down during the pandemic. 

A piece for the ABC on how time poverty promotes conspiracy thinking. 

A piece with Newsroom on how Aotearoa's universities could contribute to healing of our sharp disagreements about Covid vaccines.

If we can't eradicate Covid-19 what are some signs that we are ready to step down from our war footing against the pandemic?

One of the features of protests against vaccine mandates is the diversity of reasons offered to appose them. Considered individually these reasons are easily countered. But they gain power in a mob. Boosting our cognitive herd immunity is the only real response.

This explores a tendency among politicians to seek the most optimistic interpretation of scientific advice. It explains many of our disappointments about the Omicron variant of concern.

Let's hope that the lasting legacy of the pandemic is a political empowerment of the warnings of established science.

This piece draws on a 1933 essay by John Maynard Keynes to pose a counterfactual. What if Aotearoa had really done everything it could to keep COVID-19 out? 

This piece defends the view that New Zealand's success against the coronavirus may be largely down to Māori ethical ideas.

New Zealanders will want to memorialise the pandemic. Can we remember the suffering in ways that prepare us for an uncertain future?

A piece on how to understand and respond to very vocal protests about vaccines.