The Duck of Minerva

This is a guest post Jonathan Powell, an Associate Professor in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (Twitter: @prof_powell) and Christopher Faulkner, a Visiting Assistant Professor in the International Studies program at Centre College (Twitter: @C_Faulkner_UCF) The general narrative is that preventative measures such as hand-washing and social distancing can slow the transmission rate of COVID-19. The importance of such efforts cannot be understated, but the reasons are often poorly understood. For example, USA Today reports that...

This is a guest post from Gabriel Cardona-Fox who lives in Bologna, Italy with his wife Patricia and two daughters.  He is an Associate Fellow at the Bologna Institute for Policy Research at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) – Europe. He received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a BA from Princeton University.  His research revolves around internal forced migration and humanitarian affairs.   This week, Italy put in place some of the most draconian restrictions on freedoms and movement of any western...

This is a guest post from Renu Singh, PhD Candidate at Georgetown University in political science, researching public health policy, global health security, and European politics. After weeks of the spiraling transmission of COVID-19, the outbreak has spread from its source in Wuhan, China to nearly 70 locations worldwide. To date, the number of people with confirmed infections of coronavirus has surpassed 100,000, where more than 3,000 have died and over 60,000 have recovered. Mainland China, Italy, South Korea, and Iran remain the hardest hit with confirmed cases in the thousands, but the...

This is a guest post from Dr. Joshua R. Moon is a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, researching biomedical research global health security policy. Research & Twitter The coronavirus epidemic that is ongoing at the moment is not the first to spark global panic and it certainly won’t be the last. Looking to the future, even as we strive to end transmission and bring the epidemic to a close, we have an opportunity to examine the 21st century’s record when it comes to health emergencies. Looking from SARS to COVID19 tells us a story of...

This is a guest post by Summer Marion, a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Northeastern University, where she is a PhD candidate in Political Science. Her research examines international cooperation and crisis politics, with a specific focus on philanthrocapitalism in global health emergencies. On February 5, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked the international community for $675 million to fund a global response plan for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, including $61.5 million to cover urgent needs between...