Author: Luca Dellanna
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But what about Sweden?
Discussing school closures and lockdowns, many people take Sweden as an example. “We should have done like them; they didn’t close and ended up relatively unscathed.” This argument is built under the assumption that if we had done like Sweden, we would have ended up like Sweden. Is this a sensible assumption? Only if early…
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Was COVID a lab leak?
We cannot know for sure unless new information comes up, but the chances are that COVID was indeed a lab leak. Before examining the clues, let’s clarify that “lab leak” doesn’t imply “created in a lab.” For example, a researcher might have traveled to a remote cave, collected a blood sample from a bat, went…
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A simple model to understand indoor infection risk
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. Imagine you have to spend some time indoors with a smoker, and your objective is to ensure that your spouse doesn’t notice the smell of cigarettes when you get back home. If the room is poorly ventilated and you spend…
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Was stopping people from going outside bad policy?
Stopping people from taking a walk or running outdoors has no direct benefit (because the risk of outdoor contagion in case of an airborne virus is pretty low). Moreover, it comes with hefty costs: people need ways to exercise and avoid feeling trapped in the house, and removing ways to fulfill those needs leads to…
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How can we prevent the next pandemic?
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. The 2020 pandemic brought plenty of suffering – both from COVID directly and from the measures that were implemented as a reaction to the virus. If we want to avoid similar suffering in the future, we must prevent the next…
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How could institutions have communicated better? [dos and don’ts of institutional communication]
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. Most institutional communication regarding the 2020 pandemic was terrible. Let’s review some of the core mistakes and what institutions can do differently in the future. Don’t: say things that might be incorrect Remember the March 2020 WHO tweet containing the…
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Ten small actions you can take to reduce viral spread without sacrificing your social life
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. Hence, take small actions to reduce viral spread. Even if each doesn’t seem to matter much in isolation, their compounded effect is massive. Download all the one-pagers as a PDF here.
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Why should we care about a virus with a 99.8% survival rate?
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. This is a commonly asked question. There might be reasons to dispute the 99.8% figure with respect to COVID, but for the sake of the argument, let’s assume that the survival rate is indeed 99.8%. Why should we care about…
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How to safely keep schools open during a pandemic?
Watch the video, read the text further below, or download the flyer at the bottom. During the recent pandemic, schools in many countries faced temporary closures. These are obviously bad – primarily because of their impact on the learning and socialization of the students, but also because of the pressures they put on families that…