One of the critical and key uncertainty about the COVID-19, among so many, is the immunity a patient may have after recovery from the COVID-19. In other words, can someone who recovered from the COVID-19 catch the disease again and infect other people again? As long as we have neither vaccine nor fully efficient antiviral …
Continue reading “The COVID-19, Immunity and Isolation Exit Strategy”
The world is now struggling to know how to face the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to know how long the pandemic will last. Actually, what we want to know is when the pandemic will end and when life will be able to resume normally. As we explained in the opening article for this series, to …
Continue reading “COVID-19 Antiviral Treatments and Scenarios”
The COVID-19 pandemic is now a global fact. It still involves many uncertainties. At present and in the near future, we need to handle the ongoing pandemic as a global catastrophic crisis with complex cascading impacts. We also need to start thinking about reconstruction. We are here concerned with reconstruction that will allow polities to …
Continue reading “The COVID-19 Pandemic, Surviving and Reconstructing”
On 11 March Chancellor Merkel warned that the SARS-CoV-2 – the virus for the COVID-19 – could infect between 60 and 70% of Germany’s population (DW, “Coronavirus: Germany’s Angela Merkel urges ‘solidarity and reason‘”, 11 March 2020). She was accused to spread panic (Ibid.). Chancellor Merkel’s point was to highlight the very real danger Germans …
Continue reading “Worst Case Baseline Scenarios for the COVID-19 Pandemic”
As the COVID-19 spreads throughout the world, its cascading and multiple impacts deepen. As a result, fear spreads. Meanwhile, finance and business firms now started promoting the idea that the COVID-19 epidemic was a “black swan event”. For example, Goldman Sachs, in its Top of Mind, issue 86 (February 28, 2020) featured an article titled …
Continue reading “Why the COVID-19 is NOT a Black Swan Event”
On 11 March, the WHO characterised the COVID-19 as a pandemic. The probability to see the WHO, finally, accepting the label had been rising everyday. Indeed, we have witnessed the proliferation of clusters and outbreaks globally, that led to the emergence of multiple epidemic centres. Since we first published this article, the pandemic intensified. On …
Political risk is an idea many actors very often use. But what does political risk mean? What does political risk address? With the video below, we explain what is political risk. Meanwhile, we experiment with a new medium. We also test an approach through brief explanations of fundamental concepts and ideas. Let us know what …
When dealing with the future, we use a language that includes specific notions such as the expression of probability and of impacts. In terms of probability, for example, we use words such as “likely” and for impacts terms such as “severe”. Furthermore, to be truly complete, we should add a confidence judgement. As explained by …
Continue reading “Expressing and Understanding Estimative Language”
Scenarios regarding the future of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak in China and globally vary wildly (David Cyranoski, “When will the coronavirus outbreak peak?“, Nature, 18 February 2020). The estimates go from the outbreak peaking at the end of February 2020 to months away with millions infected (Ibid.). The WHO Director-General stressed the necessity to remain …
The coronavirus epidemic is “a very grave threat” because “Viruses can have more powerful consequences than any terrorist action”. This is what the WHO Director stressed as an international meeting of 400 scientists and other experts convened in Geneva (Sarah Boseley, “Coronavirus should be seen as ‘public enemy number one’, says WHO“, The Guardian, 11 …
Continue reading “The Coronavirus COVID-19 Epidemic Outbreak is Not Only about a New Virus”
