21 May 2020 PANELISTS: 2:00 Samuel Veissière (McGill): Introductory remarks on the ‘infodemic’, the role of the Internet, and pre-existing social pathologies 2:15 Cécile Rousseau (McGill): Symptoms – Virtue – War 2:30 Stefan Ecks (Edinburgh): The importance of social science in pandemic epidemiology 2:45 Robert Dingwall (Nottingham Trent): The three social pandemics: fear, explanation and… Read More »
All infectious disease outbreaks generate three social epidemics – of fear, explanation and action. The last describes the pressures to “do something”, however pointless or irrelevant. The Government’s lockdown represents another triumph of populism over science. Its approach is reminiscent of the line from the Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht about the failure of the people… Read More »
A programme for Arriang TV – a Korean English-language channel. I joined forces with a psychologist from a local university to discuss the human consequences of self-isolation. On the video page
In a democratic society, we should be very cautious about allowing the state to encroach on the space for individual decision-making and voluntary actions. This does not mean that states cannot signal preferred choices but that citizens have some freedom to interpret them in the light of their unique knowledge of their own circumstances. Even… Read More »