The Mechanical, Psychological, and Biological Interventions of a Pandemic
The Mechanical, Psychological, and Biological Interventions of a Pandemic With Johnson and Johnson also pausing it’s #Covid19 #vaccine trial, it is becoming clearer to more of the public, that the long steady path to a vaccine is not something that can be rushed for anyone’s political agenda or preferred view of the world.
We’re learning about and just about have the mechanical interventions worked out – mask wearing, social distancing, continual hand washing and where needed restrictions of movement to ever small circles to stop infection spread.
We don’t yet have a full handle on the psychological interventions – supporting individuals and society placed into smaller circles to stop the spread. Many businesses have done a great job at allowing their staff to find ways to connect whilst at home. Schools and familial disconnections seems harder, and the ideological space harder again.
And the biological intervention, despite the ideological wish-list and myth-making could be years off because it plays in the realm of scientific truth – best knowledge for now, not final knowledge for now. In that space it is always open to new discoveries, some pleasant, some less so. But no amount of myth-making will bring the vaccine to fruition sooner. And myth-making that claims it will, places an ever increasing burden on the psychological and mechanical interventions that have kept many people safe
The MP3 file below captures part two of our chat looking at the Future of Sex. Picking up on the theme of new technology that popped up towards the end of our first discussion in week one, here we move onto haptics and holographics and the extension of that technology from beyond the bedroom and…
Read More >Who’s Been Sleeping In My House? is a new Australian series presented by archaeologist Adam Ford that looks at the stories behind some of our old homes. Adam is the man behind the recent ‘Ned Kelly’ dig among other great archaeology finds here in Australia and the UK. As a futurist I’m always interested in…
Read More >The Association of Professional Futures is holding its first Virtual Gathering, following the sun from Europe, across North America and finishing in the Australia pacific zone. It kicks off tomorrow and links to the program and registration (it’s only $45 for guests for a program featuring some of the worlds most prominent futurists) You…
Read More >I join Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Darwin radio where we continue our discussion about the future of sex. We consider three main areas in this session – smart phone applications; remote relationships and the combination of haptics and holographics as one the emerging means by which we’ll maintain physical contact. You can download the…
Read More >In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on radio ABC Darwin we discuss the future of sex. This is the first of potentially three conversations where we look at the increasing reach of technology way beyond current online match making sites, the social pressures driving the use of technology as well as the use of technology…
Read More >There’s been a bit of discussion in recent months about a softening housing market around Australia but I wonder how much of it is more indicative of unrealistic expectations on behalf of sellers? In futures work we think in terms of Assumptions and Expectations and aim to test our understanding and so I offer this…
Read More >Unfortunately it looks like my main email address has been hijacked and has been used to send out a series of spam emails. I’d like to apologise to anyone who has received some junk email purporting to come from ‘desiredfutures’ with a series of html links asking you to go and have a look. You…
Read More >Given the amount of plastic swimming in our oceans and rivers and the volume littering our land, the NT Government is aiming to introduce compulsory returns legislation on soft-drink bottles (as happens in South Australia), something that has apparently raised the ire of bottler, Coca Cola. Although they’ve recently backed away from their initial statement…
Read More >Deciphering the hype from reality with regard to drug use can be a challenge for most of us. Professor David Nutt in the UK has given me permission to post a link to the paper he has co-authored with Ruth Weissenborn that looks at the reality of a comparison of harm caused by two common…
Read More >Vicki Kerrigan and I finished off our discussion about the Future of Clothing on ABC Darwin yesterday. We discussed invisibility style cloaks, singlets that monitor your heart rate and stress levels, runners that capture electricity to power your wearable electronics and a few philosophical questions regarding our ability to deal with stress. The file…
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