[A version of this article appeared in the Irish Examiner on 22 October 2020 ] The challenges of COVID-19 have been well reported. Death, disease, and debilitation are the scariest. Discombobulation also makes the list — nobody likes it when the entire world (more or less) gets turned upside-down. And […]
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COVID conspiracies and the psychology of vaccine hesitancy
There’s a lot of talk about a vaccine for COVID-19. However, vaccines only work if people take them, and for that we require people to think cogently and coherently about the coronavirus. But if that were actually happening, there might not actually be a pandemic in the first place. Take […]
Post-Covid syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and the recurring pseudoscience of mass hysteria
The people who want you to think that everything is “all in your mind” are back, their schtick now revised and updated for a COVID-19 world. Here’s the Daily Telegraph: Some local coronavirus outbreaks could be ‘mass hysteria’, Joint Biosecurity Centre warns Some local coronavirus outbreaks may just be mass hysteria, […]
Things to do in Chernobyl when you’re alive
Given the current global lockdown scenario, I thought it was high time I posted some photographs from my (pre-Covid) visit to Chernobyl and the now deserted nearby city of Pripyat. Perhaps such places present a lesson. We get to see what society looks like when humanity itself is no longer […]
Covid-19, Psychology, and the Politics of Life-and-Death Science
[This article appeared in the June 2020 issue of the ‘Irish Psychologist’] As we all know by now, contagion is a matter of behaviour as well as biology. What we do, where we go, and how we think can all help to suppress the invisible enemy. Handwashing is back in […]
Why the British really voted for Brexit
It’s Brexit Day. It’s done. And right on cue, I have a piece in today’s Irish Times: It was as early as July 2016 when one British national broadsheet warned of “Brexhaustion”, claiming the UK public were being crippled by Brexit fatigue. This was a mere three weeks after the […]