It seems that just about everyone is doing COVID-19 research these days. To date, more than 3,500 COVID-19 trials have been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov this year (compared to, for example, just 263 trials on “testicular cancer” in the entire history of the site). Meanwhile, the social sciences are also experiencing […]
Tag: COVID-19
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 […]
The other pandemic
There has been another racist attack on property in Galway, where I live: Arsonists have burned down a house that the local council was preparing for new residents. A family from the Traveller Community were about to move in. Late on Sunday night, just before 5 am, attackers set the […]
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, […]
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 […]