20 October 2025

Book Review: “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us”

By Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee

I picked this book up after reading a review in The Economist. It has been a fascinating read for me. If nothing else, it has shattered many of my assumptions and beliefs about COVID, including the origin and containment measures.

At the core, the two political analysts discuss how healthcare experts assumed a significant role in public policymaking during the COVID-19 pandemic. This resulted in the adoption of social measures that were highly focused on saving every single life – often with data that was known to be incorrect – instead of considering the larger harm it would cause to the population, both in the short term and in the long term.

It also highlights how the media and journalists abandoned their duty to question decisions and instead joined in vilifying anyone who held an opposing viewpoint. They reserve their harshest comments for scientists and health experts, who often resorted to name-calling any other scientist or health expert who might have cast doubts. Which, the authors point out, goes against the basic definition of science.

The authors first point out that, before COVID-19 actually hit, how to deal with a viral pandemic was well studied and documented as late as 2019 by multiple agencies worldwide. Without fail, each had concluded that measures such as masks, social lockdowns, and the like would not work. It has not, in the past, either. The virus, once it reaches community spread, can only be dealt with by achieving herd immunity. Like it or not, it will be exposed to everyone. Till a vaccination could be quickly made, such measures of masking and isolation were to target those who were most likely to be fatally affected. This included the old and folks with certain medical histories. This would allow prioritization of valuable medical resources and “flatten the curve”.

For the first few days, that was indeed the response. The authors then detail how China’s touting of the success of shutting down the Wuhan district and then the WHO writing glowingly about it (which the authors contend did not take into account open and truthful data), and then Italy – the first Western country – shutting the country down, everybody threw their manuals away and followed suit.
This, the authors say, was because of a mistaken goal of trying to save every single life at an enormous price to the community. That price is not only about taking personal freedoms away but also about the vast economic and mental health costs that the world will reel thru for decades. The authors believe that health officials aiming for “no lives lost” is a commendable goal. But they are not the ones to make public policy. That has to be done by elected officials with input from many experts, including those outside of health, as well as experts with opposing views. After all, the people elect officials, not elites, to tell them the rules.

The authors outline the significant costs that society is currently bearing. They are fairly scathing about the “elites” (”laptop workers”) who turned a blind eye to the “essential workers” who still had to go to work, and a vast majority of lower-income people who lost their livelihood, temporarily supported by government dole out, and continue to struggle today. They talk about how people died alone and not surrounded by their loved ones, how families could not be around the final rites of their loved ones, and how the mental health of a whole generation of kids has been permanently damaged.

The authors take readers through a wealth of interesting history – how the lab theory of origin was actively shut down by certain powers in the health field, despite severe doubts from others. They discuss how it was widely known that masks were of virtually no use against this particular virus – certainly not in the way most citizens were using them. They further take us through how there was overwhelming data about the effectiveness of the first vaccination, but none of the booster doses have been proven to be of that level of fidelity.

The authors painstakingly take us through the data of red states versus blue states. And how the political leaning of folks led to the timing of the measures. Red states, almost without fail, opened up faster but were far slower in vaccinations. Governors of red and blue states differed markedly in their responses, resulting in significantly different outcomes in terms of COVID-19 cases and deaths. And yet, virtually all of them returned to power with significant margins.

Remember Sweden? They were vilified for not taking what was then considered the appropriate steps. The topic was hotly contested there, too. However, they adhered to the original game plan. As a result, while they initially took a larger hit than most other countries, in the end, all their statistics (until vaccinations were available) turned out to be the same as those of others. Just like the original handbook on pandemic has predicted!! And they today have far fewer cases of economic displacement or mental health issues compared to the beginning of the pandemic.

Ultimately, the authors are careful to point out that mistakes are often made during the heat of the moment. And not everybody has the same way of looking at an event. However, now that we are much separated from the pandemic, there needs to be a national debate. If not, they are afraid that we will commit the same mistakes of leaving public policy to elite experts in a field, and worse, shut down each other without listening to the other side of the debate. Worse, all in the name of “science”!

A must-read, in my opinion.

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20 September 2025

One of these days, I am going to get into real trouble with her

Woke up sharp at 5 am, blithe as a lark and went about my early morning routine. Vitals measured and noted down, classical music put on in my study, logged previous day’s 64 point updates, wrote in my journal, made my first cappuccino and settled down in my chair. Suddenly, I heard Sharmila screaming from our bedroom upstairs:

“Rajib, are you around?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I think the dishwasher is beeping. Need to call the mechanic. Can you switch it off?”.
“Okay”.

Hmmm…. now what do I do? I started wondering. You see, that high pitched beeping noises were not coming from the dishwasher. (admittedly, I was impressed with her confidence without doing any debugging).

It was actually me, on my new learning spree. So, about a month back, I took it upon myself to learn Morse code! I know, I know, in these days of GenAI, I could not have picked up anything more anachronistic. After a month of learning my dots and dashes, I got myself a Morse code machine. And that is where I was trying to spell out different words. Not sure what is so dishwasher-y about it.

Anyways, I went back to practicing after connecting the audio output to my headphones.

Eventually, her coffee was ready and she came down. I was hoping she would have forgotten the incident.

“What happened to the dishwasher?”

My burgeoning hopes were summarily … err… “dash”ed!!

I took her to my study and showed her my Morse code machine.

Have you ever noticed how people driven to exasperation involuntarily put their arms on their hips with their palm folded around the wrists? A visage like that was the last recollection I have before I heard her say “You are a quirky man”.

Helplessly, I sat there grinning to myself with no re-Morse whatsoever! I am going to keep learning this…

So there.

Ha! (that would be dot-dot-dot-dot dot-dash to you)

15 September 2025

Book Review: TALK by Dr. Alison Wood Brooks

I was listening to this Harvard professor’s Ted Talk on the difficulties of having engaging conversations and how to overcome some of them. Picked her book up which is essentially a research into what makes conversations interesting and what does not. A lot of the input is from simulated exercises of speed dating.

There are some interesting things to pick up from the book no doubt. Some of the pointers, I am sure, we are all aware of but the book serves as a good reminder. To finish the whole book though, you really need to be interested in the science behind conversations. Which can quickly turn to be fairly dry.

Some interesting things I learnt:

1. Most of us think our conversations are worse than they actually are!
2. A good conversation is usually devoid of “strong opinions”
3. Conversation, at the end of the day is a huge coordination game that requires a staggering amount of simply guessing the other party’s mind.
4. The name of the book is actually an acronym for what the author says makes for a good conversation – Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness
5. Topic : The author says prepping for conversation is the best option. Most would object to this might becoming rehearsed but she cites a lot of research to prove otherwise. If not anything else, it helps, per her, in switching up when the conversation gets stuck or go “up” and “down” in the pyramid of familiarity as the conversation progresses.
6. Asking: Even insincere questions is a form of caring. No boomer asking or repeated questions. Follow up questions are most engaging.
7. People who ask more questions are better liked.
8. This is interesting: Researchers never found any evidence that asking sensitive questions is more dangerous than asking benign ones!
9. Levity: Find the fun, rather than trying to be funny. Compliment effusively. Laugh
10. We massively underestimate the positive impact of compliments and overestimate how bothered or uncomfortable they can make somebody.
11. Kindness: This takes work. Speak respectfully and listen responsively.
12. Calling people by their names (or by other preferred forms of address) matters tremendously!
13. Great listening is not to be equated with silence and attention. Great listening is expressed through verbal response.
14. Group Conversations: These are more tricky. There are fluid status hierarchies in topic to topic. Take a stewardship mindset.

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12 September 2025

Pardon my French!

I was talking to this executive the other day who I had just met for the first time. In an animated moment while expounding his background, he said “Pardon my French” and then proceeded to utter some English invectives. I think he proceeded to ramble on further to justify his position… but my mind had drifted away somewhere else..

My mind endeavored in exploring questions of far reaching import. For example…

Why do we say “Pardon my French” and immediately follow through with words that are clearly English?

In fact, I reckoned as I was packing up my thoughts to come back to the present moment, if you ever said “Pardon my French” and actually used French words after that, given my French, I would have absolutely no idea whether to extend you that sought after pardon at all!!

25 July 2025

Book Review: The Bright Side by Sumit Paul-Choudhury

I had picked up this book randomly at an airport bookstore. Did not have much expectations. Turned out to be a fairly interesting one. Won’t go to the extent of recommending this book but if you come across one, it is a good read. A few good observations and insights from the author.

This is more of a scientific look at what is optimism and anecdotes of how optimism made a difference in the world. It certainly is not about how you can be an optimist. On that point, the second part of the subtitle is a bit misleading. This is no self help book.

The author starts with his personal tragedy of losing his wife at a very young age after their first and only pregnancy. From there it dives straight into why “Optimism is the only true moral courage” (quote from Shackelton and his incredible voyage of getting lost and yet getting every person back home alive – which included going back to an uninhabited island to retrieve the ones that had to stay back).

An interesting concept is that of “optimism gap”. People tend to be more optimistic about their personal future but far less of that of the society. Even more interesting find is that the richer the country, the larger the gap! Interestingly, we extend that optimism to those close to us but it weakens as we go further. (Lawyers are an exception to this!! They see their futures more closely tied to the world’s futures)

“Optimism bias” is built into most human beings. Our expectations – even when given data on reality – supersedes most all likely scenarios. In fact, we tend to be more optimistic on things that are desirable, mundane or controllable.

So, what is the case for an essentially positive illusion that optimism is? The author argues that while optimism may not make the outcomes better (too many uncontrollable variables), it will make you better able to deal with them without becoming stressed. Upon reflection, I concur with this when I think about friends and colleagues in my life.

Another way of looking at it was articulated by the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci who was imprisoned by Mussolini and suffered appallingly. “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. The ability to see the world for what it is and press on anyways.”

A few more interesting learnings for me –

(*) We tend to pay more attention to information when it holds positive implications for our futures and less when it has negative

(*) Mark Zuckerberg quote – “Optimists tend to be successful; pessimists tend to be right!”

(*) Research has shown that while, in general, people with higher incomes are happier than poorer people at any given time, they don’t get any happier if there’s any general increase in income. It seems that our happiness is less about how much we make but more about how much we make in comparison to people around us!

(*) “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Towards the end of the book, the author dives deep about two very relevant topics of today – AI and Climate warming. I am not sure he did a good job of drawing the connection of his discussions to the topic de jure.

P.S. There is an irritating part where a few paragraphs are repeated word for word in two different chapters. Seems like an editing snafu.

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9 July 2025

Book Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

This is a near 400 page book that is a must read, in my opinion, for every person. Young or old. One of the better books which takes a stab at trying to make sense of what is going on in the world. Not that the conclusions are going to be any less scary. But it frames all the changes in the world going on in a thoughtful framework.

Of the various systems – fascism, communism and liberalism, only the last had survived. First one died after Second World War. Second died with the collapse of the Soviet Union. But liberalism is also dying now. Ecological collapse and technological disruption (that brought globalization) has out sped liberalism. We know the system is not working but we do not know what the new system will be. Across the whole world, we are seeing this struggle against liberalism. While different people/country are taking different approaches all are agreed on good international relations and are equally against immigration.

The scariest prediction the author makes is that technology will concentrate wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer that will create massive new “useless” class. This will lead to social and political upheavals the likes of which we have never seen before.

We are looking at an era where technology changes will need people to continuously retool themselves. In theory, it sounds good. In practice, that is impossible. The emotional cost of realizing one does not have a job and skills are useless and needs to start re-learning… over and over again will give rise to mental issues that is going to throw the society into turmoils it has not seen.

The author gets into another controversial topic. It starts with the theory that democracy is a superior system because it gives everybody a choice to rationally decide what is best for them. And then goes to prove that the “rational” part is overblown. We are not rational at all and certainly most of us are not knowledgeable enough to know what is best for us. Richard Dawkins – the famous evolutionist – when asked about Brexit had asked the interviewer a head scratcher – “why are you asking me to vote? I am not an economist. I am not an expert on this. I want experts to tell me what is good for me.”. In the end, the author says, we vote the way we “feel” not what we “know” to be best for us.

One observation I am personally very aligned with the author is the fallacy in believing in what the media says. I get into regular debates with the TikTok generation on this. Media, as the author points out is not about truth. It is about getting your attention. Getting your eyeballs is what makes them money. The data they gather on you when you are paying attention to what they are saying is what is then sold to advertisers and others. You would do the same if owned a media channel (or were an influencer or had your podcast) – provided you wanted to make money off it.

The big question about AI and super accelerated technology is this… who gets to own “Big Data”? The author suggests both Big Tech and Government are extremely bad choices. Government slightly more so.

And this only concludes the first part of the five part book. If this has intrigued you, you will love the rest of the book too.

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