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AnswerGarden " What would you recommend for reading during quarantine?

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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AnswerGarden " What would you recommend for reading during quarantine?

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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Updated Feb 2023 - let me know if there are any problems.

You can set this page as a homework task for a group of students; doing so will give you a record of who has completed the task. Visit the teacher's section for more information.

You can share this page by using the link below.

This is a mini game for studying English phrasal verbs. The target audience is learners of English as a second language.

A phrasal verb is a pair of words that go together and act as a verb. For example, "give up" is a phrasal verb meaning to quit. Phrasal verbs are typically made of a verb + preposition. For example, "take on", meaning to be responsible for something, is made up of the verb "take" and the preposition "on". Often the meaning of a phrasal verb can vary from the meaning of the component parts. For example, "throw up" meaning to vomit would be quite hard to infer just from the 2 parts. Because of the subtle meanings, phrasal verbs can be a difficult area for language learners.

The aim of this game is to help students learn and practice a set of phrasal verbs in an easy and engaging way. Hopefully, students can understand the meaning from the image and sentence, then from repeatedly matching the phrasal to this context they can associate the phrasal verb with the meaning, and then subsequently transfer this to everyday usage. In this respect, the game is quite behaviourist in its approach - repeatedly pairing the words and meaning to strengthen the association. Although, as with most content like this, the responsibility is really on the learner to make best use of this as a resource. Some learners may even feel they get most out of just clicking though the images on the review screen.

The game has 48 phrasal verbs which were chosen according to how easy they are to represent visually. The phrasals used here are not the most common phrasals or the easiest, they are just the ones that are more visual. This is a list of those used:

The game has 3 parts. In the first part, you just click on the phrasal verb that matches the image. This part covers all the phrasals used in the game and it repeats any items that mistakes are made on. In the second part, you click on the image to match the text. The third part presents a larger image and you have to make a phrase or sentence.

This game is made in Javascript using the Pixi.js library. If you have any comments, questions or feedback, then please use the form below to post a message.

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A simple game for learning phrasal verbs in English. The game shows pictures to represent the verbs and then plays audio and shows text. This is a fun way to practice ESL phrasal verbs.

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verything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we've walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We've seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so.

Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible - the work of years, not mere days. We refresh the news not because of a civic sense that following the news is important, but because so much may have happened since the last refresh. These developments are coming so fast that it's hard to remember just how radical they are.

Cast your mind back a few weeks and imagine someone telling you the following: within a month, schools will be closed. Almost all public gatherings will be cancelled. Hundreds of millions of people around the world will be out of work. Governments will be throwing together some of the largest economic stimulus packages in history. In certain places, landlords will not be collecting rent, or banks collecting mortgage payments, and the homeless will be allowed to stay in hotels free of charge. Experiments will be underway in the direct government provision of basic income. Large swathes of the world will be collaborating - with various degrees of coercion and nudging - on a shared project of keeping at least two metres between each other whenever possible. Would you have believed what you were hearing?

It's not just the size and speed of what is happening that's dizzying. It's the fact that we have grown accustomed to hearing that democracies are incapable of making big moves like this quickly, or at all. But here we are. Any glance at history reveals that crises and disasters have continually set the stage for change, often for the better. The global flu epidemic of 1918 helped create national health services in many European countries. The twinned crises of the Great Depression and the second world war set the stage for the modern welfare state.

But crises can also send societies down darker paths. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, government surveillance of citizens exploded, while George W Bush launched new wars that stretched into indefinite occupations. (As I write this, the US military's current attempt at reducing its troop presence in Afghanistan, 19 years after the invasion, is being slowed by coronavirus-related complications.) Another recent crisis, the 2008 financial crash, was resolved in a way that meant banks and financial institutions were restored to pre-crash normality, at great public cost, while government spending on public services across the world was slashed.

Because crises shape history, there are hundreds of thinkers who have devoted their lives to studying how they unfold. This work - what we might call the field of "crisis studies" - charts how, whenever crisis visits a given community, the fundamental reality of that community is laid bare. Who has more and who has less. Where the power lies. What people treasure and what they fear.

In such moments, whatever is broken in society gets revealed for just how broken it is, often in the form of haunting little images or stories. In recent weeks, the news has furnished us with countless examples. Airlines are flying large numbers of empty or near- empty flights for the sole purpose of protecting their slots on prime sky routes. There have been reports of French police fining homeless people for being outside during the lockdown. Prisoners in New York state are getting paid less than a dollar per hour to bottle hand sanitiser that they themselves are not allowed to use (because it contains alcohol), in a prison where they are not given free soap, but must buy it in an on-site shop.

But disasters and emergencies do not just throw light on the world as it is. They also rip open the fabric of normality. Through the hole that opens up, we glimpse possibilities of other worlds. Some thinkers who study disasters focus more on all that might go wrong. Others are more optimistic, framing crises not just in terms of what is lost but also what might be gained. Every disaster is different, of course, and it's never just one or the other: loss and gain always coexist. Only in hindsight will the contours of the new world we're entering become clear.

he pessimistic view is that a crisis makes bad things worse. People who study disasters - and especially pandemics - know all too well their tendency to inflame xenophobia and racial scapegoating. When the Black Death came to Europe in the 14th century, cities and towns shut themselves to outsiders - and assaulted, banished and killed "undesirable" community members, most often Jews. In 1858, a mob in New York City broke into a quarantine hospital for immigrants on Staten Island, demanded that everyone leave and then burned the hospital down, fearful that it was putting people outside at risk of yellow fever. Wikipedia now has a page collating examples from more than 35 countries of "xenophobia and racism related to the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic": they range from taunts to outright assault.

"In a totally rational world, you might assume that an international pandemic would lead to greater internationalism," says the historian Mike Davis, a renowned American chronicler of the disasters incubated by globalisation. For Davis, who wrote a book about the threat of avian flu in 2005, pandemics are a perfect example of the kind of crises to which global capitalism (with its constant movement of people and goods) is particularly vulnerable, but that the capitalist mindset (with its inability to think in terms beyond profit) cannot address. "In a rational world, we would be ramping up production of basic essential supplies - test kits, masks, respirators - not only for our own use, but for poorer countries, too. Because it's all one battle. But it's not necessarily a rational world. So there could be a lot of demonisation and calls for isolation. Which will mean more deaths and more suffering worldwide."

In the US, President Trump has tried hard to brand the new coronavirus as inherently "Chinese", and to use the pandemic as a pretext for tightening borders and accepting fewer asylum seekers. Republican officials, thinktanks and media outlets have claimed or implied that Covid-19 is a man-made Chinese bioweapon. Some Chinese officials, in turn, have pushed the conspiracy theory that the outbreak came to China by way of American soldiers. In Europe, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, recently announced: "We are fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement."

When you're fighting a war, you want to know as much about the enemy as possible. But it's easy, in the rush of crisis, to put in place surveillance tools without thinking about the long-term harm they might do. The scholar Shoshana Zuboff, the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, reminded me that, prior to 9/11, the US government had been in the process of developing serious regulations designed to give web users real choice about how their personal information was and wasn't used. "In the course of a few days," Zuboff says, "the concern shifted from 'How do we regulate these companies that are violating privacy norms and rights' to 'How do we nurture and protect these companies so they can collect data for us?'"

For governments looking to monitor their citizens even more closely, and companies looking to get rich by doing the same, it would be hard to imagine a more perfect crisis than a global pandemic. In China today, drones search for people without facemasks; when they are found, the drones' built-in speakers broadcast scoldings from police. Germany, Austria, Italy and Belgium are all using data - anonymised, for now - from major telecommunications companies to track people's movement. In Israel, the national security agency is now allowed to access infected individual's phone records. South Korea sends texts to the public identifying potentially infected individuals and sharing information about where they've been.

Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

Not all surveillance is inherently malign, and new tech tools very well might end up playing a role in fighting the virus, but Zuboff worries that these emergency measures will become permanent, so enmeshed in daily life that we forget their original purpose. Lockdowns have made many of us, sitting at home glued to our computers and phones, more dependent than ever on big tech companies. Many of these same companies are actively pitching themselves to government as a vital part of the solution. It is worth asking what they stand to gain. "People have a hard time remembering privacy rights when they're trying to deal with something like a pandemic," says Vasuki Shastry, a Chatham House fellow who studies the interplay of technology and democracy. "Once a system gets scaled up, it can be very difficult to scale it back down. And then maybe it takes on other uses."

In the space of a few weeks, the prime ministers of both Israel and Hungary have effectively been given the power to rule by decree, without interference from courts or legislature. Meanwhile, the UK's recently rolled-out coronavirus bill gives police and immigration officers the authority - in place for the next two years - to arrest and detain people suspected of carrying the virus, so that they can be tested. The US Department of Justice has, since the outbreak began, filed a request with Congress for a new rule that would allow judges to suspend courtroom proceedings in emergencies, creating the possibility of people being jailed without ever being able to formally object. "Those of us who follow the police know how this goes," said Kevin Blowe of Netpol, a UK group focused on protest rights. "These powers get put in place, and it sounds reasonable enough at the time - and then very quickly they're applied for other purposes that have nothing to do with democracy and nothing to do with public safety."

In a 2008 report on the legal aspects of pandemic response, prompted by the increase in pandemic flu outbreaks, a team of historians and medical ethicists assembled by the American Civil Liberties Union bemoaned a common tendency - resurgent, in their view, since 9/11 - for government to address public health problems using mindsets more appropriate to tracking down criminals. This suspicious mindset, they argued, ended up most affecting racial minorities and the poor. Tactics like these can make fighting the disease harder, by driving a hard wedge of distrust between government and citizens. As the report put it: "People, rather than the disease, become the enemy."

here's another school of thought that looks at crisis and sees glimmers of possibility. For thinkers in this camp, the example of the 2008 financial crash looms large. But where, from their view, 2008 led to defeat - with the broad public giving up a great deal while a small few profited - Covid-19 might open the door to political progress.

"I think we're just so different to how we were before we saw the aftermath of the 2008 crash," said the American writer Rebecca Solnit, one of today's most eloquent investigators of crises and their implications. "Ideas that used to be seen as leftwing seem more reasonable to more people. There's room for change that there wasn't beforehand. It's an opening."

The argument, in its simplest form, is this: Covid-19 has revealed the political status quo to be broken. Long before anyone had heard of the new coronavirus, people died of diseases we knew how to prevent and treat. People lived precarious lives in societies awash with wealth. Experts told us about catastrophic threats on the horizon, including pandemics, and we did next to nothing to prepare for them. At the same time, the drastic measures governments have taken in recent weeks testify to just how much power the state does have - the extent of what government can accomplish (and quickly!) when it realises it must act boldly or risk being seen as fundamentally illegitimate. As Pankaj Mishra recently wrote: "It has taken a disaster for the state to assume its original responsibility to protect citizens."

For years, in mainstream politics the conventional line - on everything from healthcare to basic living expenses such as housing - has been that even if the world has its problems, expansive government intervention is not a feasible solution. Instead, we have been told that what works best are "marketplace" solutions, which give large roles to corporations motivated not by outdated notions like "the public good" but by a desire to make a profit. But then the virus started spreading, governments spent trillions in days - even going so far as to write cheques directly to citizens - and suddenly the question of what was feasible felt different.

From this perspective, the task today is not to fight the virus in order to return to business as usual, because business as usual was already a disaster. The goal, instead, is to fight the virus - and in doing so transform business as usual into something more humane and secure.

In her 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Solnit used case studies of disasters - including the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the 2001 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina - to argue that emergencies aren't just moments when bad things get worse, or when people inevitably become more scared, suspicious and self-centred. Instead she foregrounded the ways in which disasters opened up human reserves of improvisation, solidarity and resolve, pockets of purpose and joy, even in the midst of loss and pain. The book was not a call to celebrate disaster - but to pay attention to the possibilities it might contain, and how it might shake us loose from old ways. In Solnit's telling, "official" disaster responses had a tendency to muck things up by treating people as part of the problem to be managed, not an invaluable part of the solution.

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Sometimes this mismanagement is a result of mere incompetence - other times it is more sinister. In her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, the Canadian writer Naomi Klein laid out a dark account of crisis politics. In Klein's view, there is always Disaster 1 - the earthquake, the storm, the military conflict, the economic slump - and Disaster 2 - the bad things that people with power subsequently get up to, such as ramming through extreme economic reforms or gobbling up post-crisis opportunities for self-enrichment, while the rest of us are too dazed to notice. (In fact, Klein argued, these people sometimes engineer Disaster 1 to get the process started.)

Unlike Solnit's book, The Shock Doctrine doesn't have much to say about the resilience of everyday people when everything goes horribly wrong. (Indeed, Solnit directly criticised Klein for this omission.) But the two books fit together like puzzle pieces. Both address crisis not in terms of what inevitably - or "naturally" - happens as they unfold, but in terms of choices that people make along the way. And both were well-timed to contribute to the political conversations taking shape in the rubble of the financial crash.

In 2008, days after Barack Obama's election, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Today's leftists, for whom Obama mostly represents disappointment, are prone to agree. They feel that, in the wake of recent crises, they lost, and now is the time to make amends. If, facing a pandemic, we can change this much in a few weeks, then how much might we change in a year?

For anyone making this argument, the contrast between 2008 and the present crisis is striking. Compared to the opaque financial crisis, with its credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations, the coronavirus is relatively easy to understand. It is a dozen crises tangled into one, and they're all unfolding immediately, in ways that cannot be missed. Politicians are getting infected. Wealthy celebrities are getting infected. Your friends and relatives are getting infected. We may not quite all be "in it together" - as always, the poor are hit worse - but there is more truth to the idea than there ever was in the wake of 2008.

In this, the optimists believe, there is hope that we might begin to see the world differently. Maybe we can view our problems as shared, and society as more than just a mass of individuals competing against each other for wealth and standing. Maybe, in short, we can understand that the logic of the market should not dominate as many spheres of human existence as we currently allow it to.

"More people are in a position to connect the dots," Klein said. "It has to do with people's experiences; for people of a certain age, their only experience of capitalism has been one of crisis. And they want things to be different."

hat screaming buzzsaw noise in the background of this conversation is the sound of the climate crisis. If 2008 is the disaster that Klein and like-minded thinkers want to avoid repeating, climate change is the much bigger disaster they see coming - that they know is already here - and that they want to fight off. Indeed, in the years since publishing The Shock Doctrine, Klein has made climate change her central focus, framing it as the paradigmatic emergency that must be wrenched from the clutches of fossil-fuel profiteers and their enablers in government.

Although Covid-19 is likely the biggest global crisis since the second world war, it is still dwarfed in the long term by climate change. Yet the two problems have suggestive similarities. Both will require unusual levels of global cooperation. Both demand changes in behaviour today in the name of reducing suffering tomorrow. Both problems were long predicted with great certainty by scientists, and have been neglected by governments unable to see beyond the next fiscal quarter's growth statistics. Accordingly, both will require governments to take drastic action and banish the logic of the marketplace from certain realms of human activity, while simultaneously embracing public investment. In other words, to think of this new level of state intervention as a temporary requirement is to ensure that we continue barrelling down the path to climate disaster.

"We've been trying for years to get people out of normal mode and into emergency mode," said Margaret Klein Salamon, a former psychologist who now heads the advocacy group The Climate Mobilization. "What is possible politically is fundamentally different when lots of people get into emergency mode - when they fundamentally accept that there's danger, and that if we want to be safe we need to do everything we can. And it's been interesting to see that theory validated by the response to the coronavirus. Now the challenge is to keep emergency mode activated about climate, where the dangers are orders of magnitude greater. We can't think we're going to go 'back to normal', because things weren't normal."

The analogy between the two crises only goes so far. There is no getting around the fact that the impacts of climate change are more gradual than those of Covid-19. Most people do not feel they or their loved ones could die from the climate crisis this month, and so emergency mode is harder to activate and sustain. As Salamon pointed out to me, if we truly accepted we were in a climate emergency, then every day the news would lead with updates about which countries were reducing their emissions the fastest, and people would be clamouring to make sure their leaders were adopting the policies that worked.

But it is not unimaginable that the experience of Covid-19 could help us understand climate change differently. As the virus has reduced industrial activity and road traffic, air pollution has plummeted. In early March, the Stanford University scientist Marshall Burke used pollution data from four Chinese cities to measure changes in the level of PM2.5, a particularly harmful pollutant that attacks the heart and lungs. He estimated that, in China alone, emission reductions since the start of the pandemic had in effect saved the lives of at least 1,400 children under five and 51,700 adults over 70. Meanwhile, people around the world have been sharing their own anecdotal findings online - stories of sweet-smelling breezes, expanded bike lanes and birdsong returning to neighbourhoods - in a way that almost resembles a digitally distributed Rebecca Solnit project: people catching glimpses, in the midst of a disaster, of a future they know they want and need.

Alongside these hopeful signs, a far less heartening story is unfolding, which fits Klein's "shock doctrine" framework. Disaster 1: Covid-19. Disaster 2: the dismantling of even the meagre existing rules designed to protect the environment. On 26 March, following lobbying from the energy industry, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that, in recognition of the pandemic's effects on the workforce, it will not punish violations of pollution regulations so long as companies can link those violations to the pandemic. China's environmental ministry has started waiving inspections that assess the environmental impact of industrial facilities. And advocacy groups funded by the plastics industry have launched a public relations blitz on behalf of single-use plastic bags, spreading the unproven claim that the virus is less likely to stick to plastic than to the cloth fabric of reusable bags. Looking back at the crisis of 2008, we can see that emissions dropped then, too - only to rebound drastically in 2010 and 2011.

Salamon believes that one lesson of the coronavirus crisis is the power of shared emotion, which has helped make possible radical action to slow the pandemic. "I'm not talking about people giving each other medical expertise. I'm talking about people calling each other up and saying: 'How are you doing? Are you scared? I'm scared. I want you to be OK, I want us to be OK.' And that's what we want for climate, too. We need to learn to be scared together, to agree on what we're terrified about." Only then, she said, would governments be forced to act. "It's good that we're entering emergency mode about the pandemic," she said. "But unless we also do it for climate ... " She didn't finish the sentence.

hat kind of actions would it take for the optimists' vision to materialise? The historian Philip Mirowski, author of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, warns against complacency. "The left thought it was so obvious to everyone that the crisis revealed the utter bankruptcy of a certain way of looking at the economy," he told me. "And it wasn't obvious to everyone, and the left lost." How do we prevent the world from going back to a version of the way it was before Covid-19, with the virus vanquished but all of the old ongoing disasters still unfolding?

"The political outcome of the epidemic," said Mike Davis, "will, like all political outcomes, be decided by struggle, by battles over interpretation, by pointing out what causes problems and what solves them. And we need to get that analysis out in the world any way we can." One major obstacle, of course, is social distancing, which certainly hinders many time-tested methods of waging such struggles, such as political canvassing and street protest. "The biggest risk for all of us," said Klein, "is going to be frittering away this time sitting at home on our social media feeds, living the extremely limited forms of politics that get enabled there."

Davis hoped protesters would find their way into the streets sooner rather than later, and speculated that a street action with all the sign-holding participants spaced 10 or 15 feet apart would make a dramatic media image. He lives in San Diego, and as our conversation wrapped up, he mentioned that he was planning to spend part of the afternoon doing his part by standing by himself on a street corner, holding a sign. He hadn't decided what to write on it yet, but was thinking about "SUPPORT THE NURSES' UNION" or "DEMAND PAID SICK LEAVE".

Solnit told me she was taking heart from all the new ways people were finding to connect and help each other around the world, ranging from the neighbourhood delivery networks that had sprung up to bring groceries to people who couldn't get out, to more symbolic interventions, such as kids playing music on an older neighbour's porch. The Italian political scientist Alessandro Delfanti said he was finding hope from a post-outbreak wave of strikes roiling Amazon warehouses in the US and Europe, and also the steps that workers across different sectors of the Italian economy were taking to help each other secure equipment they needed to stay safe.

What happens next might depend on the optimists' ability to transport such moments of solidarity into the broader political sphere, arguing that it makes no sense to address Covid-19 without at least trying to fix everything else, too, creating a world where our shared resources do more for more people. "We don't even have a language for this emotion, in which the wonderful comes wrapped in the terrible, joy in sorrow, courage in fear," wrote Solnit in A Paradise Built in Hell. "We cannot welcome disaster, but we can value the responses, both practical and psychological."

The world feels awfully strange right now, but not because - or not just because - it is changing so fast and any one of us could fall ill at any time, or could already be carrying the virus and not know it. It feels strange because the past few weeks have exposed the fact that the biggest things can always change, at any minute. This simple truth, both destabilising and liberating, is easy to forget. We're not watching a movie: we're writing one, together, until the end.

This article was amended on 31 March. An earlier version incorrectly stated that Mike Davis lives in Hawaii. He is now based in San Diego.

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'We can't go back to normal': how will coronavirus change the world?

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verything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we've walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We've seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so.

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Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions. When choosing between alternatives, we should ask ourselves not only how to overcome the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will inhabit once the storm passes. Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive - but we will inhabit a different world.

Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes. Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours. Immature and even dangerous technologies are pressed into service, because the risks of doing nothing are bigger. Entire countries serve as guinea-pigs in large-scale social experiments. What happens when everybody works from home and communicates only at a distance? What happens when entire schools and universities go online? In normal times, governments, businesses and educational boards would never agree to conduct such experiments. But these aren't normal times.

In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.

Under-the-skin surveillance

In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time. Fifty years ago, the KGB couldn't follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day, nor could the KGB hope to effectively process all the information gathered. The KGB relied on human agents and analysts, and it just couldn't place a human agent to follow every citizen. But now governments can rely on ubiquitous sensors and powerful algorithms instead of flesh-and-blood spooks.

In their battle against the coronavirus epidemic several governments have already deployed the new surveillance tools. The most notable case is China. By closely monitoring people's smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with. A range of mobile apps warn citizens about their proximity to infected patients.

This kind of technology is not limited to east Asia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recently authorised the Israel Security Agency to deploy surveillance technology normally reserved for battling terrorists to track coronavirus patients. When the relevant parliamentary subcommittee refused to authorise the measure, Netanyahu rammed it through with an "emergency decree".

You might argue that there is nothing new about all this. In recent years both governments and corporations have been using ever more sophisticated technologies to track, monitor and manipulate people. Yet if we are not careful, the epidemic might nevertheless mark an important watershed in the history of surveillance. Not only because it might normalise the deployment of mass surveillance tools in countries that have so far rejected them, but even more so because it signifies a dramatic transition from "over the skin" to "under the skin" surveillance.

Hitherto, when your finger touched the screen of your smartphone and clicked on a link, the government wanted to know what exactly your finger was clicking on. But with coronavirus, the focus of interest shifts. Now the government wants to know the temperature of your finger and the blood-pressure under its skin.

The emergency pudding

One of the problems we face in working out where we stand on surveillance is that none of us know exactly how we are being surveilled, and what the coming years might bring. Surveillance technology is developing at breakneck speed, and what seemed science-fiction 10 years ago is today old news. As a thought experiment, consider a hypothetical government that demands that every citizen wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature and heart-rate 24 hours a day. The resulting data is hoarded and analysed by government algorithms. The algorithms will know that you are sick even before you know it, and they will also know where you have been, and who you have met. The chains of infection could be drastically shortened, and even cut altogether. Such a system could arguably stop the epidemic in its tracks within days. Sounds wonderful, right?

The downside is, of course, that this would give legitimacy to a terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN link, that can teach you something about my political views and perhaps even my personality. But if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really angry.

It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. The same technology that identifies coughs could also identify laughs. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want - be it a product or a politician. Biometric monitoring would make Cambridge Analytica's data hacking tactics look like something from the Stone Age. Imagine North Korea in 2030, when every citizen has to wear a biometric bracelet 24 hours a day. If you listen to a speech by the Great Leader and the bracelet picks up the tell-tale signs of anger, you are done for.

You could, of course, make the case for biometric surveillance as a temporary measure taken during a state of emergency. It would go away once the emergency is over. But temporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies, especially as there is always a new emergency lurking on the horizon. My home country of Israel, for example, declared a state of emergency during its 1948 War of Independence, which justified a range of temporary measures from press censorship and land confiscation to special regulations for making pudding (I kid you not). The War of Independence has long been won, but Israel never declared the emergency over, and has failed to abolish many of the "temporary" measures of 1948 (the emergency pudding decree was mercifully abolished in 2011).

Even when infections from coronavirus are down to zero, some data-hungry governments could argue they needed to keep the biometric surveillance systems in place because they fear a second wave of coronavirus, or because there is a new Ebola strain evolving in central Africa, or because . . . you get the idea. A big battle has been raging in recent years over our privacy. The coronavirus crisis could be the battle's tipping point. For when people are given a choice between privacy and health, they will usually choose health.

The soap police

Asking people to choose between privacy and health is, in fact, the very root of the problem. Because this is a false choice. We can and should enjoy both privacy and health. We can choose to protect our health and stop the coronavirus epidemic not by instituting totalitarian surveillance regimes, but rather by empowering citizens. In recent weeks, some of the most successful efforts to contain the coronavirus epidemic were orchestrated by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. While these countries have made some use of tracking applications, they have relied far more on extensive testing, on honest reporting, and on the willing co-operation of a well-informed public.

Centralised monitoring and harsh punishments aren't the only way to make people comply with beneficial guidelines. When people are told the scientific facts, and when people trust public authorities to tell them these facts, citizens can do the right thing even without a Big Brother watching over their shoulders. A self-motivated and well-informed population is usually far more powerful and effective than a policed, ignorant population.

Consider, for example, washing your hands with soap. This has been one of the greatest advances ever in human hygiene. This simple action saves millions of lives every year. While we take it for granted, it was only in the 19th century that scientists discovered the importance of washing hands with soap. Previously, even doctors and nurses proceeded from one surgical operation to the next without washing their hands. Today billions of people daily wash their hands, not because they are afraid of the soap police, but rather because they understand the facts. I wash my hands with soap because I have heard of viruses and bacteria, I understand that these tiny organisms cause diseases, and I know that soap can remove them.

But to achieve such a level of compliance and co-operation, you need trust. People need to trust science, to trust public authorities, and to trust the media. Over the past few years, irresponsible politicians have deliberately undermined trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. Now these same irresponsible politicians might be tempted to take the high road to authoritarianism, arguing that you just cannot trust the public to do the right thing.

Normally, trust that has been eroded for years cannot be rebuilt overnight. But these are not normal times. In a moment of crisis, minds too can change quickly. You can have bitter arguments with your siblings for years, but when some emergency occurs, you suddenly discover a hidden reservoir of trust and amity, and you rush to help one another. Instead of building a surveillance regime, it is not too late to rebuild people's trust in science, in public authorities and in the media. We should definitely make use of new technologies too, but these technologies should empower citizens. I am all in favour of monitoring my body temperature and blood pressure, but that data should not be used to create an all-powerful government. Rather, that data should enable me to make more informed personal choices, and also to hold government accountable for its decisions.

If I could track my own medical condition 24 hours a day, I would learn not only whether I have become a health hazard to other people, but also which habits contribute to my health. And if I could access and analyse reliable statistics on the spread of coronavirus, I would be able to judge whether the government is telling me the truth and whether it is adopting the right policies to combat the epidemic. Whenever people talk about surveillance, remember that the same surveillance technology can usually be used not only by governments to monitor individuals - but also by individuals to monitor governments.

The coronavirus epidemic is thus a major test of citizenship. In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians. If we fail to make the right choice, we might find ourselves signing away our most precious freedoms, thinking that this is the only way to safeguard our health.

We need a global plan

The second important choice we confront is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity. Both the epidemic itself and the resulting economic crisis are global problems. They can be solved effectively only by global co-operation.

First and foremost, in order to defeat the virus we need to share information globally. That's the big advantage of humans over viruses. A coronavirus in China and a coronavirus in the US cannot swap tips about how to infect humans. But China can teach the US many valuable lessons about coronavirus and how to deal with it. What an Italian doctor discovers in Milan in the early morning might well save lives in Tehran by evening. When the UK government hesitates between several policies, it can get advice from the Koreans who have already faced a similar dilemma a month ago. But for this to happen, we need a spirit of global co-operation and trust.

In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians

Countries should be willing to share information openly and humbly seek advice, and should be able to trust the data and the insights they receive. We also need a global effort to produce and distribute medical equipment, most notably testing kits and respiratory machines. Instead of every country trying to do it locally and hoarding whatever equipment it can get, a co-ordinated global effort could greatly accelerate production and make sure life-saving equipment is distributed more fairly. Just as countries nationalise key industries during a war, the human war against coronavirus may require us to "humanise" the crucial production lines. A rich country with few coronavirus cases should be willing to send precious equipment to a poorer country with many cases, trusting that if and when it subsequently needs help, other countries will come to its assistance.

We might consider a similar global effort to pool medical personnel. Countries currently less affected could send medical staff to the worst-hit regions of the world, both in order to help them in their hour of need, and in order to gain valuable experience. If later on the focus of the epidemic shifts, help could start flowing in the opposite direction.

Global co-operation is vitally needed on the economic front too. Given the global nature of the economy and of supply chains, if each government does its own thing in complete disregard of the others, the result will be chaos and a deepening crisis. We need a global plan of action, and we need it fast.

Another requirement is reaching a global agreement on travel. Suspending all international travel for months will cause tremendous hardships, and hamper the war against coronavirus. Countries need to co-operate in order to allow at least a trickle of essential travellers to continue crossing borders: scientists, doctors, journalists, politicians, businesspeople. This can be done by reaching a global agreement on the pre-screening of travellers by their home country. If you know that only carefully screened travellers were allowed on a plane, you would be more willing to accept them into your country.

Unfortunately, at present countries hardly do any of these things. A collective paralysis has gripped the international community. There seem to be no adults in the room. One would have expected to see already weeks ago an emergency meeting of global leaders to come up with a common plan of action. The G7 leaders managed to organise a videoconference only this week, and it did not result in any such plan.

In previous global crises - such as the 2008 financial crisis and the 2014 Ebola epidemic - the US assumed the role of global leader. But the current US administration has abdicated the job of leader. It has made it very clear that it cares about the greatness of America far more than about the future of humanity.

This administration has abandoned even its closest allies. When it banned all travel from the EU, it didn't bother to give the EU so much as an advance notice - let alone consult with the EU about that drastic measure. It has scandalised Germany by allegedly offering $1bn to a German pharmaceutical company to buy monopoly rights to a new Covid-19 vaccine. Even if the current administration eventually changes tack and comes up with a global plan of action, few would follow a leader who never takes responsibility, who never admits mistakes, and who routinely takes all the credit for himself while leaving all the blame to others.

If the void left by the US isn't filled by other countries, not only will it be much harder to stop the current epidemic, but its legacy will continue to poison international relations for years to come. Yet every crisis is also an opportunity. We must hope that the current epidemic will help humankind realise the acute danger posed by global disunity.

Humanity needs to make a choice. Will we travel down the route of disunity, or will we adopt the path of global solidarity? If we choose disunity, this will not only prolong the crisis, but will probably result in even worse catastrophes in the future. If we choose global solidarity, it will be a victory not only against the coronavirus, but against all future epidemics and crises that might assail humankind in the 21st century.
Yuval Noah Harari is author of 'Sapiens', 'Homo Deus' and '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2020 Follow @FTLifeArts on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first. Listen to our culture podcast, Culture Call, where editors Gris and Lilah dig into the trends shaping life in the 2020s, interview the people breaking new ground and bring you behind the scenes of FT Life & Arts journalism. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Letters in response to this article:
So, Prof Harari, who am I supposed to trust? / From Justin Evans Let's be the good ancestors our descendants deserve / From Lord Bird (Crossbench) and others

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Yuval Noah Harari: the world after coronavirus | Free to read

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Humankind is now facing a global crisis. Perhaps the biggest crisis of our generation. The decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture.

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AnswerGarden " Any movies or shows to recommend for quarantine?

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AnswerGarden is a new minimalistic brainstorm tool for online brainstorming, real time audience participation and classroom feedback.

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share one in the comments

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Play these online games to test your knowledge of phrasal verbs in English. These are matching games where you match one phrasal verb with a one-word verb.

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We'll talk about our travels

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AnswerGarden " Who are your favorite musical artists?

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Countries where Coronavirus has spread - Worldometer

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Where is Coronavirus in the world? List of countries with confirmed cases and deaths (total cumulative number) due to the novel coronavirus COVID-19

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El nuevo coronavirus COVID-19 ha infectado a más de 1,9 millones de personas en todo el mundo, de ellas más de medio millón solo Estados Unidos, el país más afectado y con mayor número de muertes contabilizadas, más de 23.000. España, con más de 170.000 casos, es el segundo país con más contagiados, seguido de Italia, con más de 159.000; tras ellos se sitúan Francia y Alemania con más de 130.000. Los cinco países han adelantadoa China, el epicentro original de la pandemia, que registra por encima de 82.000 casos, la gran mayoría ya recuperados, mientras que la cifra de decesos en todo el mundo supera los 121.000 y la de los recuperados, los 462.000.

Italia y España han superado las muertes de China este mes de marzo y entre ambos países suman más de 38.000 fallecidos. La enfermedad tuvo gran incidencia en Corea del Sur en febrero, pero logró contener la propagación a mediados de marzo.

La rapidez con la que se extiende el virus ha llevado a varios países a cerrar sus fronteras. La Unión Europea ha cerrado sus fronteras exteriores hasta el 17 de abril y más de 85 países han prohibido la entrada de viajeros países con una gran incidencia, como Italia o España. Es el caso de Estados Unidos, que ha prohibido la entrada de vuelos europeos durante un mes o Israel, Arabia Saudí, Malasia, Nepal, Italia o El Salvador. Otros ciudadanos viven confinados o deben hacer cuarentena al viajar a otro país mientras miles de vuelos en todo el mundo han sido cancelados, los negocios se paralizan y la economía mundial se ralentiza.

España (172.672 casos, 18.151 muertes). Es el segundo país del mundo en contagios. El primer fallecimiento en España tuvo lugar en la Comunidad Valenciana el 13 de febrero y fue descubierto en la autopsia posterior. Una a una se han ido registrando contagios en todas las comunidades españolas, y también en las ciudades autónomas de Ceuta y Melilla. Más de 70 países han impuesto restricciones a los viajes de ciudadanos procedentes de España.

Italia (159.516 casos, 20.465 muertes). Fue el foco del brote en Europa cuando empezó a detectar casos en la última semana de febrero y es el segundo país del mundo con más víctimas mortales con coronavirus. El Gobierno italiano ha cerrado escuelas y todos los comercios excepto farmacias y tiendas de alimentación y ha prohibido entrar y salir del país.

Francia ya está entre los países del mundo con más muertos con coronavirus, al registrar 14.986 fallecidos con 137.877 casos, mientras que Alemania ha registrado 3.215 muertos con 130.383 positivos de COVID-19. Suiza, donde se tuvo que suspender el Salón del Automóvil de Ginebra, acumula más de 25.000 casos y 1.155 muertes.

Mención aparte merece la situación en el Reino Unido, que a diferencia de sus vecinos, tardó días en decretar el confinamiento. Ya hay 93.873 contagiados, entre ellos el príncipe Carlos, que ha superado la enfermedad,y el primer ministro Boris Johnson, que ha llegado a estar ingresado en una unidad de cuidados intensivos, además de 12.107 muertes.

Países Bajos tiene 27.580 casos y 2.955 muertes. Portugal ha detectado 17.448 casos y 567 muertes, ha declarado el estado de alarma y su presidente, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, llegó a aislarse en su residencia tras haber visitado una escuela donde se registró un positivo.

La incidencia es elevada, aunque de menor magnitud, en otros países europeos como Noruega, con 6.605 positivos y 134 muertes; Suecia, con 11.445 y 1.033 muertes; Bélgica (31.119 y 4.157 fallecidos); Austria (14.159 y 384 muertes), República Checa (6.059 y 147 muertes); Irlanda, con 10.647 casos y 365 muertes y Dinamarca, con 6.691 casos confirmados y 299 fallecidos.

Rusia ha dado cuenta de 21.102 contagiados y 170 muertes y su presidente, Vladimir Putin, que el 28 de marzo decretó nueve días de vacaciones obligadas en el país, ha dado vía libre a su gobierno para declarar el estado de emergencia por la pandemia. El alcalde de Moscú ha decretado el confinamiento de sus doce millones de habitantes. Turquía, por su parte, registra 61.049 contagios y 1.296 defunciones.

La situación es más leve en el resto de Europa: en Polonia hay 7.049 y 251 muertes; en Rumanía, 6.879 casos y 346 muertes; Grecia (2.145 y 99 defunciones), Islandia (1.711 y ocho muertes), Finlandia (3.161 y 64 muertes), Croacia (1.704 y 31 muertes); Estonia (1.373 y 31 muertes) o Albania, que con 475 casos ya ha registrado 24 muertes. Bulgaria, con 695 casos y 35 muertes, ha declarado el estado de emergencia.

Algunos de los países más pequeños del Viejo Continente también registran casos y no pocos fallecimientos: Luxemburgo (3.292 casos, 69 muertes), Andorra (646 casos, 29 fallecidos), San Marino (371 casos diagosticados y 36 fallecidos), Malta (393 casos, tres muertes), Liechtenstein (79 casos y una muerte), Mónaco (93 casos, entre ellos el príncipe Alberto II, y una muerte) y el Vaticano (ocho casos).
[Globalización y nacionalismos en tiempos de coronavirus]
Estados Unidos, con más de 582.000 casos y más de 23.000 muertes se ha convertido en el país más afectado del mundo. La Administración Trump ha suspendido los vuelos procedentes de Europa durante un mes. El presidente ha declarado la emergencia nacional para combatir el virus y ha ampliado hasta el 30 de abril las medidas contra el Covid-19. Además, Estados Unidos se convirtió el 10 de abril en el primer país del mundo en registrar un aumento de más de 2.000 muertes por coronavirus en un solo día.

Canadá es el segundo país con mayor número de casos: 25.680 y 780 muertes. Su primer ministro, Justin Trudeau, se ha aislado y se ha sometido a la prueba porque su esposa ha dado positivo.

El COVID-19 también se ha propagado por América Latina. El país más extenso del subcontinente, Brasil, tiene 23.830 casos y 1.355 muertes. Chile, con 7.525 casos y 82 fallecidos, ha declarado el estado de excepción ante el virus, y Ecuador registra 7.529 y 355 muertes.

México tiene 5.014 pacientes y 332 muertes y el Gobierno ha declarado la emergencia sanitaria y alargado hasta el 30 de abril la suspensión de actividades no esenciales. Perú registra 9.784 casos y 216 muertes. Colombia tiene 2.852 casos y 112 muertos, Venezuela, 189 y nueve muertes. Argentina, que decretó el confinamiento de su población y lo ha ampliado hasta el final de Semana Santa, suma 2.277 casos y 101 muertes. Uruguay acumula 580 casos confirmados y ocho muertes. En Paraguay se han registrado 159 casos y siete fallecidos.

En América Central, destacan los 3.167 casos y 177 fallecidos en la República Dominicana; Panamá tiene 3.472 casos y 94 muertes (incluyendo los nueve casos y dos fallecidos del crucero Zaandam). Costa Rica tiene 612 casos y tres muertes. Puerto Rico alcanza los 923 casos y 45 muertes; Honduras, 407 y 26 decesos.

Cuba tiene 726 casos y 21 muertos; Jamaica, 73 y cuatro muertos, y El Salvador, 149 casos y seis muertes.

China (82.249 casos, 3.341 muertes). El país epicentro del brote, especialmente en la provincia de Hubei, ya no es el primero del mundo ni en contagiados ni en fallecimientos. De hecho, ya ha comenzado a detectar más casos importados que de contagio local, lo que ha llevado a las autoridades a prohibir la entrada de extranjeros, a excepción de personal diplomático.

Irán (74.877 casos, 4.683 muertes). Es el país con mayor número de víctimas mortales en Asia, después de China. La mayoría de los casos se concentran en la provincia de Teherán, pero también hay en Markazí y el norte del país. La situación es "grave" para las autoridades, que han cerrado escuelas y universidades y han suspendido eventos deportivos, culturales, religiosos y reuniones políticas.

Corea del Sur (10.564 casos, 222 muertes). Su vecina del norte, que hasta la fecha no ha reconocido un solo caso, ha logrado contener la expansión de la enfermedad a base de análisis masivos y responsabilidad ciudadana.

En Japón se han contabilizado 8.357 contagios y 154 muertes, incluidos los 712 casos confirmados del crucero Diamond Princess, donde se han producido 11 fallecimientos. India, sometido a un confinamiento de tres semanas desde el 25 de marzo, registra por ahora 10.541 casos confirmados y 358 defunciones.

En Malasia (4.987 casos, 82 muertes) las autoridades han cerrado temporalmente sus fronteras a los pasajeros procedentes de China y Corea del Sur. Filipinas fue el primer país en registrar una muerte con Covid-19 fuera de China a principios de febrero y por ahora ha diagnosticado 5.223 casos y 335 muertes, mientras que Tailandia tiene 2.613 casos y 41 muertes. En Indonesia hay 4.839 positivos y 459 muertes. Singapur tiene 2.918 casos y nueve muertes. Y destacan también los 5.837 casos y 96 muertes en Pakistán.

La enfermedad tiene una concentración más dispar en el resto del continente. En Asia occidental, Israel acumula 11.868 casos y 117 muertes, ha ordenado el confinamiento y prohibió la entrada a viajeros de España. Especialmente relevantes son las medidas tomadas por Arabia Saudí (5.369 y 73 muertes), que ha prohibido la entrada a la Meca de peregrinos y ha cancelado el rezo diario en las mezquitas. En Qatar, con 3.428casos y siete fallecidos, se suspendió el primer Gran Premo de MotoGP de la temporada de motociclismo. Los Emiratos Árabes Unidos cuentan hasta el momento con 4.521 casos y 25 muertes.

Egipto (2.190 casos y 164 muertes) y Sudáfrica (2.272 y 27 muertes) son los países con más contagios. El Gobierno egipcio fue el primero en reportar el Covid-19 en el continente africano.

Argelia ha informado de 1.983 casos y 313 muertes, mientras que Marruecos -que ordenó el confinamiento domiciliario durante un mes, hasta el 20 de abril- ha registrado 1.838 infecciones y 126 decesos. Túnez tiene 726 casos y 34 muertes. Libia, un país deshecho por la guerra, de momento solo ha dado cuenta de 26 casos y una muerte.

En el resto del continente, el último en el que el Covid-19 ha penetrado, apenas hay lugares donde la pandemia no se haya hecho presente, aunque el registro de casos aún no es alarmante. Destacan Burkina Faso (515 casos y 27 muertos), Camerún (848 y 14 muertes), Ghana (566, ocho muertos), Senegal (299 y dos muertes), Nigeria (343 y diez muertes), Costa de Marfil (626 y seis muertes), Mauricio (324 y nueve muertes), República Democrática del Congo (235 casos, 20 fallecidos), Kenia (208 y nueve muertes), Níger (548 casos y 13 muertes), Ruanda (127), Guinea (363) y Madagascar (108).
[África, el continente donde la expansión del coronavirus no ha hecho más que empezar]
Australia (6.494 casos, 61 muertes). El primer ministro de Australia, Scott Morrison, ha anunciado que impondrá el aislamiento obligatorio durante 14 días para todos aquellos pasajeros que lleguen al país desde el extranjero.

Nueva Zelanda registra 1.366 casos y nueve muertes; Guam, 133 y cinco muertes.

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El mapa mundial del coronavirus: más de 1,9 millones de casos y más de 121.000 muertos en todo el mundo - RTVE.es

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El nuevo coronavirus COVID-19 ha infectado a más de 1,9 millones de personas en todo el mundo, de ellas más de medio millón solo Estados Unidos, el país más afectado y con mayor número de muertes contabilizadas, más de 23.000.