• “Big Data Paradox”: 2 Early Vaccination Surveys Worse Than Worthless

    “Big data paradox” is a mathematical tendency of big data sets to minimize one type of error, due to small sample size, but magnify another that tends to get less attention: flaws linked to systematic biases that make the sample a poor representation of the larger population. Analyst found that that tendency caused two early vaccination surveys to be misleading – a findings which holds warning for tracking efforts as governments and health officials as they formulate policies to battle the pandemic.

  • How the U.K. Government Managed the Balance between Taking Credit and Apportioning Blame for Its Covid Response

    How does a government manage a problem like COVID-19? Political scientists have long noted that governance is not just about managing the problem itself: Governance is also the managing of wider perceptions and expectations of how the problem is being managed. To manage the perceptions of how it was managing the crisis, the U.K. government used four key narratives: unprecedented government activism; working to plan; national security, wartime unity and sacrifice; and scientific guidance.

  • How Has COVID-19 Changed the Violent Extremist Landscape?

    Coronavirus has highlighted how anxiety, uncertainty, and the reordering of democratic state-citizen relations can breed susceptibility to violent extremist thinking and action.

  • German Police Investigating Anti-Vax Assassination Plot against German Politician

    A group of conspiracy theorists used Telegram to call for an armed response to Saxony’s state premier Michael Kretschmer’s restrictions on the unvaccinated. The right-wing extremism branch of Saxony’s anti-terror unit is investigating.

  • Viral Vendettas: Pandemic-Driven Growth of Online Conspiratorial Movements

    Graphika has just released a new report which  tracks the growth of conspiratorial movements online throughout the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, seeking to understand how these communities have evolved, and to what extent they have enabled real-world and online harms.

  • Preventing and Responding to High-Consequence Biological Threats

    A new report offers actionable recommendations for the international community to bolster prevention and response capabilities for high-consequence biological events.

  • The U.K. Government’s Preparedness for COVID-19: Risk-Management Lessons

    A new report from the U.K. National Audit Office (NAO) examines the government’s risk analysis, planning, and mitigation strategies prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report notes that the pandemic has exposed a vulnerability to whole-system emergencies – that is, emergencies which are so broad that they require the engagement of the entire system.

  • Covid Is Less Risky to Children than Covid Vaccines

    We should be careful about vaccinating children against the COVID-19 because it is likely that more children will die from the effects of the vaccine than from Covid itself.

  • COVID: Will the U.K. Vaccinate Children Under 12?

    The U.K. Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunizations (JCVI) will help decide whether the U.K. should follow other countries – the U.S., Israel – in offering COVID-1 vaccines to all children aged five and over. When the JCVI weighed up vaccinating the next youngest age group – 12-to-15-year-olds – it found that the benefits were only “marginally greater than the potential known harms.” So marginal, in fact, that it advised against offering vaccines to this group. So, for the JCVI to give the green light to vaccinating over-fives, the health benefits will need to be more compelling than for 12-to-15-year-olds. But what does the evidence say?

  • Are Political Parties Getting in the Way of Our Well-Being?

    Today, the two major political parties are often blamed for a plethora of problems in American governance. But for most of the last century and a half, political party competition has had positive effects on the welfare of Americans. Party competition is linked to increased public investment, greater social well-being.

  • Two-meter COVID-19 Rule Is “Arbitrary Measurement” of Safety

    A new study has shown that the airborne transmission of COVID-19 is highly random and suggests that the two-meter rule was a number chosen from a risk ‘continuum’, rather than any concrete measurement of safety.

  • Big Batteries on Wheels: Zero-Emissions Rail While Securing the Grid

    Trains have been on the sidelines of electrification efforts for a long time in the U.S. because they account for only 2 percent of transportation sector emissions, but diesel freight trains emit 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and produce air pollution that leads to $6.5 billion in health costs, resulting in an estimated 1,000 premature deaths each year. Researchers show how battery-electric trains can deliver environmental benefits, cost-savings, and resilience to the U.S.

  • Russian Anti-Vaccine Disinformation Campaign Backfires

    For more than a year, Russian-aligned troll factories overseeing thousands of social media accounts have been spreading anti-vaccine messages in an aggressive campaign to spread conspiracy theories and cast doubt on Western coronavirus vaccines. But the year-long offensive appears to have backfired. Russian officials now worry that the anti-vaccine skepticism encouraged by the troll factories has spilled over and is partly responsible for the high level of vaccine hesitancy among Russians.

  • News Manipulation by State Actors

    Did authoritarian regimes engage in news manipulation during the pandemic? How can such manipulation be brought to light? New report shows that both Russia and China appear to have employed information manipulation during the COVID-19 pandemic in service to their respective global agendas.

  • Zombie Apocalypse? How Gene Editing Could Be Used as a Weapon – and What to Do About It

    There is a scarier scenario that a repeat of the COVID-1 pandemic: What if the threat wasn’t COVID-19, but a gene-edited pathogen designed to turn us into zombies – ghost-like, agitated creatures with little awareness of our surroundings? With recent advances in gene editing, it may be possible for bioterrorists to design viruses capable of altering our behavior, spreading such a disease and ultimately killing us. And chances are we still wouldn’t be sufficiently prepared to deal with it.