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Four Questions About the Covid-19 Pandemic

Emergency Planning

What are, and have been, the key challenges in coping with the Covid-19 pandemic? The first challenge is to understand the behaviour of an emerging disease caused by a new variant of a virus. Viral pandemics can have impacts that are as significant in the socio-economic field as they are in epidemiology and viral medicine.

Pandemic 176
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A Proposed Strategy to Advocate for Improved Civil Protection in the United Kingdom

Emergency Planning

The lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, alas largely negative, show that a good civilian system designed to protect the public against major hazards and threats can save thousands of lives and billions in losses and wasted expenditure. Non-seasonal influenza retains the potential to cause a pandemic on the level of that of 1918-1920.

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State of the Nation - a UK Perspective on Covid-19

Emergency Planning

Since the start of the crisis, I have constantly affirmed that the key to understanding the effects of this pandemic is the UK Government's failure to give adequate weight to emergency planning and management (Alexander 2020a, 2020b). There were major exercises on pandemics in 2005, 2007 and 2016. Exercise Cygnus Report.

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Common Misconceptions about Disaster

Emergency Planning

Whereas it is not possible to stop earthquakes, it is possible to construct anti-seismic buildings and to organize human activities in such a way as to minimize the risk of death. Activism is much more common than fatalism (this is the so-called "therapeutic community"). Myth 35: We are well organised to face a pandemic or CBRN attack.

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More on the Covid-19 Academic Gold Rush

Emergency Planning

As the university world undergoes a radical metamorphosis and transfers its activity to remote working and distance learning, we are all asked to "do more" to achieve this seismic shift. If we are asked to do more, it must be at the expense of some other activity. What use is it then?

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Interpreting Covid-19 as a Disaster

Emergency Planning

Image: US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases In terms of its scope, Covid-19 is like no other disaster that has occurred in the last 100 years, since, in fact, the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 killed more people than both world wars combined, and contributed to the end of the First World War.