Plague Year Journal V: Science & Sensibility
The Covid-19 pandemic will be the best documented and most analysed in history. But the long-term impact will be in terms of changes in behaviour, writes Victor Hill.
The Covid-19 pandemic will be the best documented and most analysed in history. But the long-term impact will be in terms of changes in behaviour, writes Victor Hill.
Even Tory loyalists admit that the UK mortality figures are dire and the economic consequences of lockdown are grave – but Victor Hill refuses to blame Boris Johnson.
The Imperial College pandemic model was never peer-reviewed – until now. There are parallels between epidemiological models and catastrophic hedge fund “black box” investment strategies. Victor Hill has been scribbling in his Plague Year journal again.
Test, track and trace – this is the new formula to contain this and future pandemics. Victor Hill makes another entry in his plague journal.
Victor Hill investigates which airlines will survive in the post-pandemic world? Is this the end of the ‘golden age’ of air travel?
Daniel Defoe (of Robinson Crusoe fame) published his Journal of the Plague Year in 1722 – an eye-witness account of the Great Plague in London of 1665. How plagues play out can teach us lessons today. Victor Hill has begun to keep such a journal.
Every week of pandemic that goes by we are learning new lessons – but some nations are learning faster than others. The key question for all is when can the lockdowns be safely fully relaxed – if ever? Victor Hill is on the case.
The lockdowns across the world have induced an imminent global recession – the worst in 300 years according to one study. So the real question is: how long will that recession last?
Here comes the cavalry – or maybe not. Could anti-viral drugs cure Covid-19 and stem the tide of the pandemic? Will Big Pharma succeed? How long will it take?
For now Covid-19 is winning against the human race as cases and fatalities increase exponentially. We shall beat it – eventually. And we shall emerge on the other side poorer but also wiser.