COVID-19 interferes with CWC and BTWC meeting schedules
COVID-19 is messing up the diplomatic disarmament and arms control agendas. On 27 March Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen from Argentina announced as President-Designate the postponement of the 10th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Initially scheduled for 27 April – 22 May 2020, it was to take place by April 2021. The deadline was moved up to August. However, because of the United Nation’s original schedule of meetings for 2021 combined with the many rescheduled meetings of this year, the only possible opening in the agenda was an impractical slot from 4 to 29 January. The pandemic’s resurgence in …
COVID-19: A perfect storm foretold
Book review: Debora MacKenzie, COVID-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One (New York: Hachette Books, 2020), 279p. The book opens with the quote from a poster seen at the first March for Science on 22 April 2017: “Every disaster movie starts with someone ignoring a scientist”. My immediate thought: well, scientists may be clever, but they just cannot express their thoughts in a register that politicians and opinion shapers might understand. Another reflection replaced it instantaneously, this time on politicians: they are so ideological that if their teachings tell them to …
