Covid-19

Sunday

Johan Norberg

Why 2020 was the fourth best year in history

The Spectator has a long and proud history of fact-based optimism, sometimes represented by an end-of-the-year article explaining that statistics bear out that this was the best year ever, even if you didn’t get that impression when following the news. Well, 2020 is not a good candidate for such an article. ‘The worst year ever’, according to a Time Magazine cover story. We all share that sentiment to some extent. We will remember 2020 as a year of disease and death, and lockdowns that separated friends and relatives, and businesses from customers, causing depressions of both the economic and clinical sort. But if we were to take it literally –

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Hancock urges fed-up Brits to ‘just hold on’

As expected, the government has just announced more areas of England are to move to Tier 4 from Boxing Day in an attempt to slow the spread of the new variant of coronavirus. But rather more unexpectedly, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told this afternoon’s Downing Street press conference that a second, highly transmissible, new strain which ‘appears to have mutated further’ has been found in two people who were contacts of cases who had travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks. Hancock was at pains to seem apologetic to those affected by the new restrictions, telling people in those areas that the government was ‘truly sorry’. He also

Anthony Browne

Britain is leading the world in the fight against Covid. Seriously

How is Britain doing in the battle against coronavirus? Many have repeatedly declared we have the worst track record of any country, with both the highest death rate in Europe and suffering the highest economic hit. Newspaper headlines have constantly loud-hailed our alleged failings, from the shortage of ventilators to putting ourselves at the back of the vaccine queue by not joining the EU’s programme. The only trouble is that this is just not true. In many ways, the UK’s response to coronavirus is quite literally, dare I say it, world-beating. Clearly there have been many setbacks and hiccups. Clearly there are many lessons to be learned. But just as

Philip Thomas

Could 30 per cent of Brits have some Covid immunity?

How big is the job of vaccination? The aim is herd immunity, to protect enough people so that the virus starts to run out of people to infect and rates fall. This is expected to happen when between 60 to 80 per cent of the population is protected, so quite a job for the NHS. Until this is achieved, ministers seek to use lockdown as a tool to keep the R below 1. This means the cycle of lockdown and release could be with us for some time, especially in light of the new ‘mutant’ strain of the virus. But are ministers seeing the whole picture? As a professor of

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Is the new Covid strain more deadly?

The new variant of Sars-CoV-2 is, according to government experts, 71 per cent more transmissible than the previous dominant form, increasing the reproductive rate by between 0.39 and 0.93. But is it any more or less deadly than the older version? All Nervtag has revealed is that there have been 4 deaths recorded among 1,000 cases of the new variant. A rough estimate of the infection fatality rate based on those figures would not be out of line with estimates for the virus as a whole — although the advisory group adds there is not yet enough data to draw any conclusions. If there were a dramatic difference between the

Monday

Jamie Njoku-Goodwin

Why a spring return to normal might still be possible

The new mutant strain of Covid-19 is concerning and is likely to make the next few months particularly difficult. But here’s the good news: its emergence doesn’t necessarily mean that the government’s previous optimism about a spring return to normal is off the cards During this Covid-19 outbreak, a common mistake has been to adopt a binary outlook: things are either good or bad, ‘getting better’ or ‘getting worse’. But pandemics are not linear – they are curves. Things can be getting better in the long term, but worse in the immediate short term. The events of the last few days are a good example. It’s worth then seeing the decision to ‘cancel Christmas’ and the

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why Boris Johnson can’t solve the UK’s crisis

The Brexit and Covid crises have merged into one. As of today, 21 December, France has blocked trucks from crossing the Channel as fears about a new strain of Covid — ‘the Kent virus’ to coin a phrase — sweep the continent. Perishable food was rotting, approach roads were jammed… it was as if we were living under a wartime blockade. By the time you read this, the French may have shifted from an outright ban to stringent health checks on exports and imports, but the pressure will still be on. In less than a fortnight, on 1 January, we will have the real Brexit. It will be either without

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Could disruption in Dover lead to empty supermarket shelves?

The Port of Dover has been closed, with freight as well as passengers unable to cross the Channel, due to the new strain of Covid concentrated in London and the South East. So how long before supermarket shelves are empty? A lot depends on the behaviour of British consumers.  As has been proved on a number of occasions, such as with lavatory paper at the beginning of the spring lockdown and with petrol during the fuel protests in 2000, you don’t need an actual shortage of goods to result in apparent shortages – panic-buying can lead to empty shelves within hours, if people are minded to stock up their freezers

Simon Clarke

What the new strain means for our fight against Covid

‘What’s going on in Swale?’, asked a health journalist who I often speak to. This was back in November. I responded that I didn’t know where Swale is, let alone what its problem was, although I guessed it was most likely something to do with Covid-19. But now, we’re all looking at places like Swale — and much of Kent — and wondering what’s going on.  Back in the summer, the UK government would put countries on the quarantine list when their infections hit 20 per 100,000 residents. In Swale, at the last count, it was 2,600 per 100,000 residents. Kent’s MPs were furious that their constituencies were placed in Tier 3 when the November lockdown ended

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Smarmy Starmer is not making himself popular with anyone

The verdict of the Twitter jury is in, articulated in a single, now viral tweet by broadcaster Matthew Stadlen:  ‘Keir Starmer would have been – and would be – a far better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson during this pandemic.’ It is a theme that Starmer has naturally been keen to develop, leading him to make excoriating criticisms of Boris Johnson in a press conference at the weekend. The Starmer thesis is that Johnson is so anxious to be liked that he ducks out of taking tough decisions until it is too late. The Labour leader cites examples that include the lateness of the original lockdown, an allegedly late-in-the-day decision

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Covid and Brexit are about to collide

We are back in a full-scale economic crisis. In London and the south east, the richest part of the UK and engine of the economy, normal commerce has been suspended by the imposition of Tier 4. And the decision of much of the EU and a growing number of rich countries to put the whole UK into quarantine is devastating for trade. What are the immediate priorities? Probably the most important one is basic: the creation of a facility to give rapid Covid-19 tests to all lorry drivers leaving the UK so that the transport of freight can be restarted as quickly as possible. Second, to end the cancerous uncertainty for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain faces a crisis over the coming weeks

This country faces a crisis over the next few weeks. Covid cases are rising rapidly in the UK — there were more than 35,000 new cases yesterday, the largest number recorded during the pandemic and almost double the number a week ago. It seems likely that this rapid rise is, in part, a result of the new variation of the virus which does seem to be more transmissible. It is hard not to think that more of the country will be put into Tier 4 restrictions at the next review. It’ll be surprising if England gets through January without another lockdown. Concern over this new variant of the virus has

Friday

Steerpike

Who’s to blame for the latest Covid test shambles?

When schools returned in September, the sudden spike in demand for Covid-19 tests caught the test and trace programme out. Dido Harding, head of NHS test and trace, told MPs back then that demand was ‘significantly outstripping the capacity we have’. It was a predictable situation – but has the government learned its lesson? Sadly, it appears not.  With Christmas only a week away, Brits have taken heed of the warnings not to give anything nasty to granny when they sit down for lunch on the big day. Unsurprisingly, many are keen to get tested as a result. University students are also returning home in their droves, adding extra demand for tests. And the recent

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Rishi Sunak’s definition of a ‘sustainable’ deficit

Last week, Katy Balls and I interviewed Rishi Sunak for the Christmas issue of The Spectator (out today) and his comments on debt have caused some interest in today’s newspapers. As ever with such interviews, there’s only so much you can squeeze into two pages but I thought it worth elaborating on his position today. I suspect it will come to define the political debate next year: yes, 2020 was a year of almighty splurge. Sunak has borrowed more in ten months than Gordon Brown did in ten years: but there was a pandemic. The question is how you get that back to normal. For a surprising number of Tories,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Can any country dodge the Covid bullet?

The government is yet again under fire for its handling of Covid-19, as cases rise across parts of the country. But what about the global context? Is it still possible to argue that Britain has done especially badly in handling the pandemic? Possibly, but it is becoming increasingly hard to do so, as many countries which appeared to handle the virus best the first time around are now suffering second waves much larger than what they experienced in the spring. Germany, which this week announced a hard lockdown over Christmas, is a prime example. In the spring it was held up as an example of how the rest of Europe

Constantin Eckner

Germany is in the grip of a Covid crisis

Germany’s ‘lockdown light’ strategy has failed: the country, which has been widely-praised for its response to the pandemic, recorded a daily record of 952 coronavirus-related deaths last night. After experiencing relatively low numbers of infections and fatalities compared with other European countries in the spring, Germany has plunged into a crisis. It’s true that Wednesday’s number was artificially inflated by delayed reporting of data from the state of Saxony, one of the coronavirus hotspots in Germany. But even without the 153 coronavirus-related deaths recorded in that region, the grim tally marks a new peak. The Robert Koch Institute, the national disease control agency, also reported 27,728 new infections on Wednesday, a 33 per

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Macron start an EU Covid chain reaction?

The Elysée palace has just confirmed that French President Emmanuel Macron has tested positive for Covid-19, after developing symptoms this week. In a statement, the palace said the President had been tested ‘as soon as the first symptoms appeared’ and will now be self-isolating for the next seven days. It’s not yet clear how badly Macron has been affected by the disease, nor when he was infected. One can only wish him the best of health in the coming days. But Mr Steerpike couldn’t also help noticing, while looking through recent photos of EU meetings, that Macron’s positive test may pose some practical difficulties for EU leaders… In recent weeks

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s Christmas Covid gamble

Boris Johnson is taking a gamble with his decision to stick with the easing of Covid restrictions for Christmas. The gamble is that people will suddenly start adhering to government guidance and severely restrict their contact with their families, even though the law does not force them to do so. Although, as the Prime Minister argued at this afternoon’s press conference, the government’s current level of involvement in people’s lives is probably the strictest since Cromwell, it remains the case that it has repeatedly concluded this year that it has to force people to restrict their social contact, rather than ask them – whether that’s nicely or in the current

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs are anxious about a post-Christmas lockdown

Boris Johnson told Prime Minister’s Questions today that the meeting of the four nations of the UK ended with the leaders agreeing to keep the relaxation of rules over Christmas. He said there had been ‘unanimous agreement’ at the meeting that ‘we should proceed in principle with the existing regulations because we don’t want to criminalise people’s long-made plans’. But not long after the meeting broke up, the Welsh and Scottish governments announced they would be producing their own much tougher guidance. In Wales, the number of households who can mix will be cut to two rather than three, and the country will then go back into lockdown from 28

Tuesday

Katy Balls

Four-nations Christmas Covid truce hangs in balance

It’s become a regular refrain to hear that Brexit talks have been extended. Now the same applies to negotiations over the Christmas Covid rule relaxation. After various scientific advisers warned the UK government against going ahead with its planned five day relaxation of the rules (which would see three household permitted to gather together), representatives for the four nations discussed the policy on a call this evening. The result? No decision as of yet. As things stand, there has been no agreed change to the rules. Instead one source on the call tells the BBC:  ‘There was broad recognition commitment has been made to people and they will expect us to