Coronavirus

Tuesday

Stuart Ritchie

The Lancet, China and the origins of coronavirus

Right from its first issue in 1823, the Lancet was more than just an ordinary medical journal. Its founding editor, the dyspeptic surgeon and coroner Thomas Wakley, purposefully gave the journal the name of a sharp scalpel that could cut away useless, diseased tissue: he used it as a campaigning organ, to push back against injustice, bad ideas and bad practice. What bothered Wakley most was the establishment. Not only did the Royal College of Surgeons care little about quacks and snake-oil salesmen, but its members were also engaged in corruption and nepotism, ensuring that their cronies got the best positions and filling their pockets with lecture fees. Wakley wrote

Sunday

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron’s dangerous infantilisation of the French

From St Tropez to La Rochelle to Deauville, there is a familiar sight this summer in many of France’s most popular coastal resorts. A year after the wearing of masks outside was made mandatory they are back, and French and foreign sunseekers are forced to muzzle under a broiling sun. It was only a month ago that the government relaxed the rule on the wearing of masks outdoors, but that was before a rise in cases caused by the Delta variant. Most of the infected are the young and unvaccinated, hospitalisations are stable and deaths remain minimal: there were 11 in the last 24 hours, compared to ten last Saturday.

Friday

Samantha Smith

Vaccine passports are a betrayal of young people

The government denied it for months. Michael Gove said there were no plans for them. Backbenchers professed that the idea was unethical, unthinkable and unenforceable. The vaccines minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said the public could hold him to his promise that vaccine passports were never going to become a reality. Yet in a rather predictable turn of events, the Prime Minister has this week announced that all over-18s will need to demonstrate that they have received both doses of a vaccine in order to enter nightclubs, venues and other large gatherings. From now on, ‘proof of a negative test will no longer be enough.’ Perhaps it’s our fault for continuing to

Thursday

Kate Andrews

The right to party depends on following the party line

For most of this year, Boris Johnson’s proudest boast has been that Britain had the fastest vaccine rollout of almost any country in the world. The jabs were seen as our passport to freedom and the end of restrictions. Early indications among both old and young suggested similar excitement to get vaccinated. When Twickenham stadium opened a pop-up vaccine centre in May to offer 15,000 jabs to the over-18s it drew longer queues than the rugby. Ministers were delighted with the enthusiasm. If this was any sign of what was to come from youth uptake, they thought, the rest of the rollout would be plain sailing. But now there’s a

Sajid Javid

Sajid Javid: My isolation diary

You always remember when a prime minister calls you to ask you to take on a new role, and you remember the reaction of your loved ones, too. My mum was delighted — like many Asian mothers she wanted at least one of her five sons to be a doctor and she was thrilled that I would be, as she put it, ‘working in healthcare’ after all these years. My wife was concerned about the pressures of the role and what it might mean for our family. And my daughter was worried that I might not look the pinnacle of health walking through the famous Downing Street door, due to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Now what? The government’s Covid optimism is fading fast

When the news broke on Sunday morning that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak planned to skip self-isolation — availing themselves of a loophole — the reaction was as much disbelief as fury. Could the Prime Minister and Chancellor, even for a second, think it right to excuse themselves from the Test and Trace regime that they have imposed on millions? They changed their minds (after just a few hours) but it raised wider concerns in the party: what on earth were they thinking? And is this typical of the quality of decision-making we can expect ahead of a tricky few weeks? Of course they both had other plans in mind

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Covid in cabinet, pingdemic pandemonium and Ben & Jerry’s boycott

Home On the eve of the day that most coronavirus restrictions were to be lifted, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer had to react to having been in close contact with Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, who, despite being doubly vaccinated, had contracted Covid. At first Boris Johnson said that under a pilot scheme he would continue to work at Downing Street. Within hours, during which Labour exploited the idea of privilege, he backtracked, declaring it was ‘far more important that everybody sticks to the same rules’. So he would isolate himself (at Chequers) until 26 July. In a trend called by the press a ‘pingdemic’, enterprises found

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Could the third wave be running out of steam?

Will we get to 100,000 new Covid infections a day, as Sajid Javid has suggested, or even to 200,000 a day as Professor Neil Ferguson has floated? Until Saturday, new cases were galloping upwards at such a rate that such an outcome seemed assured. But in the last couple of days there has been a dramatic falling off in new cases: from 54,674 reported on Saturday, to 48,161 on Sunday and 39,950 on Monday. Those are for the UK – for England the corresponding figures are 50,955, 44,777 and 34,657. Each of these figures were higher than the same day the week before. And of course, we also have to be wary of

Monday

Ross Clark

The depressing spectacle of ‘freedom day’

It was billed as ‘freedom day’. Yet few people, it seems, either want to enjoy their new-found freedom or are able to enjoy it. The Prime Minister won’t be going clubbing; he is one of several hundred thousand people – it was 336,000 in the week to 7 July – who have been ordered to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace in the past few days. These are in addition to the half a million people ‘pinged’ by the NHS contract tracing app who have been asked to self-isolate, although in their case it is not a legal requirement. For these people, it is no freedom day – it is

Robert Peston Robert Peston

How ‘freedom day’ became ‘chaos day’

Welcome to ‘freedom day’, or more properly ‘chaos day’ – with businesses warning they can’t operate because too many employees are being ‘pinged’ and told to isolate, and the clinically extremely vulnerable terrified to leave their homes for fear no one will be wearing a mask. The funny thing is that all this madness was foreseeable. Because, as the PM himself said only a week ago, the surge in infections is almost exactly what his epidemiological advisers on Sage have been forecasting. But the government is behaving as though all this mess is just an accident, one of those things. It wasn’t. It was the choice of Boris Johnson and

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s vaccine passports are a betrayal of French values

What a celebration of diversity I witnessed in Paris on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital. Organisers put the figure at 50,000, the government at 18,000; I’d say the former is the more accurate estimation. It took two hours to walk the one and three-quarter miles between the start of the march, in the Place du Palais Royal, to its terminus at the Place Pierre Laroque outside the Ministry of Health. In total, and again depending on your source, between 114,000 and 150,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday to protest against the planned introduction of the ‘Pass Sanitaire’, France’s vaccine passport. All ages, sexes,

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: clubbers celebrate the beginning of ‘freedom day’

It’s been a long pandemic for young people – who’ve had their lives put on hold to prevent the spread of a disease which mainly affects the elderly. So one can certainly sympathise with those wanting to let their hair down as Covid restrictions were lifted last night for ‘freedom day’. That certainly seemed the case in London, where one nightclub even featured a count-down timer to the end of the restrictions, with balloons being released as freedom day began. Clubs, which had been decimated by the lockdown restrictions, were finally able to open legally for the first time last night. Mr S can only wish those young people all

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Has Boris got cold feet over ‘freedom day’?

A very strange ‘freedom day’ greets us on Monday. Legally, almost all restrictions will be lifted. But practically, ministers are deeply worried by the surge of the Indian variant and the rise of hospitalisations to around 600 a day — a figure that will probably double according to the Bristol University PCCF project (which we at The Spectator find to be the most reliable). Hence this massive fudge: the government abolishing the mask mandate but saying it ‘expects’ people to wear them in shops and crowded spaces nonetheless. The NHS will continue to mandate them in hospitals. Then perhaps the biggest surprise: the vaccine passport U-turn whereby companies are told

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Mixed messages on masks, protests in Cuba and good news for pandas

Home England expects everyone to wear masks in crowded places, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said in a televised address, even though the law requiring it was to be dropped on 19 July. He said: ‘We’re removing the government instruction to work from home where you can but we don’t expect that the whole country will return to their desk as one from Monday.’ He added that the ‘single most crucial thing’ people could do was to get vaccinated. He declared it ‘a matter of social responsibility’ for nightclubs and other venues to demand a Covid pass, proving vaccination or a recent negative test, to allow entry. The Night Time

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why Israel is rolling-out third vaccine doses

It’s time to think about your third Covid vaccine dose. That might sound like a premature suggestion when many people are still waiting for their second dose, and millions have not even received one. But Israel has just become the first place in the world to start giving a third, booster dose of the vaccine, and we should watch carefully to see if we can do the same. There is growing concern that those who received the vaccine earliest in Israel could be the ones who are currently getting infected with the delta variant. Might that indicate their immunity has dropped to a lower level, and that the vaccine’s efficacy

Monday

James Forsyth

Sajid Javid says restrictions could return after ‘freedom day’

In another sign of the government’s more cautious approach to the July 19 unlocking, Sajid Javid has just told the Commons that government guidance will encourage large venues to use ‘certification’ – in other words, proof of vaccination or a negative test – to determine who is admitted, that those working from home should return to their offices gradually and that masks will be expected to be worn on public transport. This guidance is, obviously, not the same as law but it is a clear sign that the government wants people to carry on behaving cautiously after July 19. It is a long way away from any kind of ‘freedom

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Are ministers prepared for ‘freedom day’?

Is the government having a wobble over ‘Freedom Day’ on 19 July? Well, for one thing you won’t hear ministers talking about ‘Freedom Day’ over the next week. Instead, they are preferring to focus on the need for people to be very cautious, given the soaring numbers of cases and hospitalisations. When he appeared on Times Radio this morning, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi talked far more about what would still be ‘expected’ of people after 19 July than about how the roadmap was working and how nice it was for life to be returning to normal. For him, this date seems to be more ‘Be very careful day’. For Nadhim

Thursday

James Forsyth

The long list of problems waiting for the Tories after 19 July

The long-awaited easing of restrictions will not be the triumphant moment that many expected back in May. The Delta variant has seen to that. Increasing infection numbers have made the government nervous about the reopening. From 19 July, ministers will be busy trying to look responsible — consciously putting on their masks in crowded spaces — instead of being photographed gleefully enjoying the return of various freedoms. If case numbers are, as Boris Johnson has predicted they might be, at 50,000 a day and rising on 19 July — and even the double-vaccinated still have to isolate for ten days if they come into contact with an infected person (which

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Masks to be dropped, John Lewis builds houses and Russia lays claim to champagne

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, said that if a review of coronavirus restrictions on 12 July allowed, then on 19 July he expected an end in England to compulsory masks (except in hospitals), working from home, the ban on ordering drinks at the bar, on nightclubs and on singing in church. ‘If we don’t go ahead now,’ he said, ‘then the question is, when would we go ahead?’ Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, told the Commons: ‘If you’re on public transport, let’s say a very crowded Tube, I think it would be sensible to wear a mask — not least for respect for others.’ In separate provisions, the system

The Spectator

Boris Johnson must hold his nerve over lifting restrictions

A charge repeatedly made against Boris Johnson over the past 16 months is that he has ‘ignored scientific advice’. But unless he has been in the habit of drumming his fingers on the table and looking out of the window while Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance have made their presentations, it is a silly accusation. We do not live in a technocracy where scientific advisers have absolute power. In handling the pandemic, it has been the Prime Minister’s job to weigh up advice from many quarters — medical, scientific, economic, legal and political — and then make decisions. If the decisions do not always match what scientific advisers