Leading vaccine expert shares wide-ranging views on the nature, development, trials and use on human populations

Dr Jerome Kim, the Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) and one of the world’s leading vaccine expert about COVID-19 vaccine, shares his insight on vaccines, their development and how they would be distributed. This video is 43 minutes.

View here (Asian Boss, YouTube, April 25, 2020)

David Nabarro underscores and defends WHO's role in the pandemic

With nation states across the world struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic, there is an urgent need for an internationally coordinated response. That is where the UN agency the World Health Organisation should have a vital role to play, but right now the WHO is at the centre of a political storm. Donald Trump has withdrawn US funding, accusing the agency of being China-centric. Stephen Sackur speaks to WHO special envoy for Covid-19 David Nabarro. Is his organisation failing its greatest test?

View here (BBC, Youtube, April 20, 2020)

Musim Sengsara or The Season of Suffering

Heritage activist Khoo Salma has written an inspirational song dedicated to frontline health workers against Covid-19 in Malaysia. Sung by Ayie, it is entitled ‘The Season of Suffering’ or ‘Musim Sengsara’

View here (Youtube, April 17, 2020)

Swedish epidemiologist Johan Giesecke‘s forthright views on Covid-19

In this 34-minute interview, Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government, lays out with typically Swedish bluntness why he thinks:

1. UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based 
2. The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only 
3. This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product” 
4. The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better 
5. The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact 
6. The paper was very much too pessimistic 
7. Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway 
8. The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown 
9. The results will eventually be similar for all countries 
10. Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people. 
11. The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1% 
12. At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

View here (LockdownTV, Youtube, April 17, 2020)

First case of Covid-19, presumably Type A, occurred ‘no earlier than September 13, 2019 and no later than December 7, 2019’

‘Peter Forster, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, has identified three distinct strains of COVID-19. Forster and his team traced the origins of the epidemic by analysing 160 genomes from human patients and found that the strain in #Wuhan mutated from an earlier version.’

View here (CGTN, Youtube, April 11, 2020)

Dr Amar Singh on life after Covid-19 and other personal beliefs

In this 20-minute interview, Dr Amar Singh talks about his background and experience, who his co-author Dr Lim Swee Im is and life after Covid-19, detailing three exit strategies. He also delves into what the government should do and the type of leadership needed. On a more personal level, he discusses (a) why people should not chase the usual success markers: money, power and fame (b) why belief matters, and (c) ‘life is short, live “death days”…

Amar is a columnist with Malay Mail Online on Covid-19. He is a retired paediatrician, public health practitioner, columnist and avid birdwatcher. This video is part of a series ‘Do More: Take control of your life’ created by former staffer of The Edge, Khoo Hsu Chuang.

View here (Do more, YouTube, April 8, 2020). Listen to podcast here

Timeless lessons from Albert Camus’ “The Plague” (published 1947)

‘There is no more important book to understand our times than Albert Camus's The Plague, a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town. Camus speaks to us now not because he was a magical seer, but because he correctly sized up human nature. As he wrote: “Everyone has inside it himself this plague, because no one in the world, no one, can ever be immune”.’

View here (The School of Life, YouTube, April 1, 2020)

Video on dynamics of pandemics

“This 8 minute video is more informative than 2 weeks of cable news.” This is one of the comments on this video. It gives a great summary of how pandemics develop so that people can be better prepared for their consequences. It is a useful way to explain the epidemiology of pandemics to a mass audience.

View here