© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Trying to remember the years BC

In so many conversations these days the point arrives where somebody says something like: "but that was before Covid". Yesterday it was somebody talking about the new travel gear they bought before the pandemic stopped travel. The day before it was somebody else describing how their childrens' career plans were upended by the virus. The day before that it was something else, then something else again. I'm calling that remembered time the BC years: Before Covid. Not that I can really quite recall all the detail now. So many other shocks have followed. And it's not…

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Viruses, vaccinations and me

Have you had Covid? I’m not sure if I have. Twice since the end of 2019 I’ve had something that might have been Covid, but I don’t really know. The first time was after Christmas 2019. We were in Sweden and had to return to Australia in a hurry to deal with a family crisis. We caught a long, hard, crowded flight via Hong Kong and were surprised at Hong Kong airport when staff there – kitted out with masks and looking very stern – were pointing long-range thermometers at us as we trooped through the…

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Vaccines, viruses and global politics

US President Joe Biden announced recently that the United States was boosting exports of Covid vaccines. Great news. I guess this is because Joe and his government care deeply about the suffering of people in other countries and want to do their bit to help. Oh, wait, no. He's doing it to "reclaim American leadership" in the pandemic fight. Specifically, he wants to put Russia and China in their places because - as one news report puts it - "Moscow and Beijing have been taking advantage of the worldwide crisis to spread influence through distribution of…

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