A Closer Look: Jody Paterson

Sixteen faces of COVID-19 “personalities” are emerging around the world as people react to unprecedented weirdness in very different ways. In work published at Nature.com last month,  Norwegian researcher Mimi Lam identifies 16 COVID-19 personality types that are in evidence across the globe as the pandemic grinds on. She argues that countries need to understand these "viral identities" and strive to educate people in ways that unite people rather than drive them farther apart, and to use the personality types to improve modelling of how the virus will spread in a specific region or country. "The global COVID-19 pandemic unites us with a common virus, but divides us with emergent viral identities," she notes. “These emergent viral identities are influencing individual behavioural and government policy responses to the heightened uncertainty posed by COVID-19. Individuals often respond to policies by protecting their values and identities, so for some, COVID-19 h...

Up until getting caught this week flying into a tiny Indigenous community in the Yukon to fake his way into an early COVID-19 vaccine, Rod Baker was primarily known for being a very, very wealthy Vancouver man presiding over a casino empire.  What was going through his head when he chartered a plane into a hamlet of fewer than 100 people and made up a pack of lies so that he and his wife Ekaterina could jump the queue for their vaccinations? We may never know. Baker appears to have kept a low profile before the Beaver Creek scandal, and is certainly keeping one now.  But poking around in the information that is available on Baker is intriguing, if only to gain a little more understanding of the kind of guy who launches quite an elaborate plot to get himself into a vaccine lineup intended for vulnerable Indigenous elders.  Baker was president and CEO of the Great Canadian Gaming Corporation up until his abrupt resignation this week after the Beaver Creek story hit the he...