Commentary March 17, 2020, was the first day of the end of civilized life, the one for which Western peoples had been fighting for one thousand years. It was the first full day following the lockdowns that ended all rights and liberties, including even the right to have friends for dinner or go to community…

Pandemic public measures such as lockdown may have made it harder for Australians wanting to quit smoking and even led people to resort to smoking as a way to reduce stress during the early stages of COVID-19. That is the speculation of a group of researchers from the University of Queensland’s Queensland Alliance for Environmental…

Commentary While millions were locked down, forbidden from going to events or even church, and the schools and arts were shut down, people kept asking a fundamental question: why is this happening, what is government doing, and what is the exit strategy? There were a number of possibilities. Maybe it was to preserve hospital capacity…

Commentary Visiting with a restaurant owner last night, he told me that they fared pretty well throughout the pandemic period. They had a large restaurant so the capacity restrictions didn’t hurt their business. They have a known brand and had already set up the takeout and delivery apparatus. They had high ranks in every rating…

A former Hong Kong district councilor, Lance Yan Pui-lam, was convicted of violating the “social distancing measures” earlier and was sentenced to 80 hours of community service. He appealed to the High Court against his conviction. The High Court ruled on Dec. 16 in favor of Yan and overturned the earlier sentence and penalty on…

Commentary These days I rarely encounter people who disagree that the pandemic policy was a disaster. You can usually get a laugh at a cocktail party when making fun of sanitizer madness, 15 days to flatten the curve, ubiquitous plexiglass, or 6 feet of distance. The school closures are in disrepute, as are the restriction…

Commentary By April 2020, two months into the lockdowns, eminent Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben had put his finger on a point that was bugging many of us. He observed that the purpose of “social distancing”—really just a euphemism for confinement—was not intended merely as a temporary measure but a new structure for society itself. Thinking it through,…

Commentary On an afternoon stroll yesterday, I noticed across the street a quick-walking woman on a sidewalk headed toward a family of four coming the other direction. The woman ran into the family like a bowling ball hitting pins. On the other side of the resulting mess, the woman who was the main cause of…

Commentary The single most bizarre aspect of the pandemic policy response was the shutting of schools, public and private. One country never did that—Sweden—and the results were fabulous: zero deaths and zero educational losses. That this was the right choice should have been obvious from the beginning. COVID was never a serious threat to kids,…

Leticia Wong Man-huen, former Civic Party Shatin District Councillor, and her then district councillor assistant were issued Fixed Penalty Tickets for violating the social gathering ban in Hong Kong when they set up the booth outside City One MTR (Mass Transit Railway) Station for distributing anti-pandemic materials with several members of the “Hong Kong Student’s…