On the 31st of December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases was reported in Wuhan, China. A novel coronavirus strain, which we now know as SARS-CoV-2, was eventually identified as the agent causing these pneumonia cases: a respiratory disease we now know as COVID-19. With a new disease comes new…

In the wake of #BlackOutTuesday, a global social media effort involving uploading a black square to your profile, questions have been raised surrounding the sincerity of some efforts. …

Sometimes, I wonder how Shasta is holding up. Shasta is the name my dissection group chose for our cadaver, a name that’s supposed to symbolise that she is s teacher who has donated the physical aspect of her being for us to learn from. Sitting behind a computer, many miles…

I think I would call myself a headline addict. Addict, to indicate that there are points where my scrolling through headlines has become mindless. Not a search of the latest, greatest and most important, but a habit of opening the news app as an in-betweener. In between classes, for instance…

Written in conjunction with: Dr S.H. Vilane Coronaviruses were first described in poultry in the 1930’s, causing respiratory, gut, liver and neurological diseases in animals. 7 Coronaviruses are known to cause disease in humans: 4 most frequently cause symptoms of the common cold, with the remaining 3 causing severe and…

Above: an actress emulating Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, who told hungry peasants to ‘eat cake’ There is a certain time during your country’s lockdown (or social distancing measures) when it no longer crosses your mind that you’re living during a pandemic. Some people describe this moment as ‘surreal’: while…

As I scroll through my YouTube recommendations, a video from Cambridge University pops up: ‘Spanish Flu: a warning from history’. I can’t shake the ominous feeling that hangs in the room when I notice that it was posted a year ago. Of late, a lot of people are telling us…

2 weeks ago, I went on an early morning run. …