What Shakespeare teaches us about living with pandemics

Apr. 23. 2020‍Twitter has been taunting us: When he was in quarantine from the plague, William Shakespeare wrote “King Lear.”He had an advantage, of sorts: Shakespeare’s life was marked by plague. Just weeks after his baptism at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford – upon – Avon in 1564, the register read, “Hic incepit pestis” (Here begins the plague). Shakespeare, the son of the town’s gl...

Boris Johnson hospitalized as Queen urges British resolve in face of epidemic

Apr. 13. 2020‍Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized Sunday evening after 10 days of battling the coronavirus, unnerving a country that had gathered to watch Queen Elizabeth II rally fellow Britons to confront the pandemic and reassure them that when the crisis finally ebbed, “we will meet again.”“I am speaking to you at what I know is an increasingly challenging time,” the queen sa...

Scientists and industry are dashing to make more ventilators

Apr. 12. 2020One of the most worrying symptoms of COVID-19 is the way the coronavirus attacks the lungs of those infected. This means some patients need a ventilator to help them breathe until their lungs recover. But there is a dire shortage of these machines in hospitals, so intensive-care units will be overwhelmed.So what chance do science and industry have of dramatically ramping up product...

Wuhan’s beautiful cherry blossoms captured in stunning drone footage

Apr. 08. 2020Cherry blossom season is a widely anticipated event in cities around the world, a sign that spring has arrived, an opportunity for people to get out and enjoy nature’s unrivaled beauty.Right now, no city is more deserving of that message of hope and renewal than Wuhan, which has been under lockdown since January 23 due to the coronavirus outbreak.Wuhan’s cherry blossom trees are ...

“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” – the getaway video game we all need right now

Apr. 01. 2020‍While a deserted island is the setting for a shedload of games, none have ever tried very hard to live up to the “Desert Island Discs” dream that most of us have fantasized about at one time or another. But now along comes “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” to make BBC Radio 4 listeners purr with satisfaction.The premise of “New Horizons” is really not vastly different from th...

Bill Gates stepping down from Microsoft’s board

Mar. 30. 2020Bill Gates is stepping down from the board of Microsoft, the software giant he helped found more than four decades ago.“I have made the decision to step down from both of the public boards on which I serve – Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway – to dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities including global health and development, education, and my increasing engagement in tack...

Covid-19 is spreading rapidly in America. The country does not look ready

Mar. 25. 2020As of March 11th, almost 1.300 Americans had been diagnosed with covid-19. Several times more probably have the disease undetected and are transmitting it within communities. And still the country looks behind in its preparations for what now threatens to be a bruising pandemic.How America got here was the result of two significant failures – one technical, the other of messaging....

As Europe shuts down, Britain takes a different, and contentious, approach

​Mar. 21. 2020Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain once said his political hero was the mayor in the film “Jaws,” praising him for defying mass hysteria to keep the beaches open after a constituent is eaten by a shark.While countries across Europe have shut schools, sporting events and even restaurants and bars, Johnson has largely kept Britain open, opting for more targeted measures like...

The race to produce a vaccine for the latest coronavirus

​Feb. 28. 2020Most recent vaccines have taken years to develop. But technological innovations and a more streamlined development process could dramatically shrink the time it takes to produce a vaccine against a new pathogen that has the potential to cause an epidemic.The new coronavirus that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December presents vaccine – makers with an urgent test. Scien...

As the coronavirus spreads, misinformation is spreading even faster

Feb. 08. 2020It’s no coincidence that internet phenomena share a vocabulary with certain diseases. As fast as a viral pathogen can spread in a world connected by air travel, bad information can move even faster. Half of the top 10 most shared English-language links about coronavirus on Facebook from the month of January were hyperbolic, fear-mongering and at times blatantly misleading articles...