Ross Clark

Just how damaging has lockdown been to children’s education? An Oxford University study has tried to quantify it by analysing data from Dutch schoolchildren — who, unlike in Britain where exams were cancelled, took tests shortly before and shortly after the first lockdown last spring. The level of parental education was a big predictor of falling performance If any country’s children had managed to get through lockdown with their education unscathed, suggest the authors, it ought to be those in the Netherlands. There, schools were closed for a relatively short period — eight weeks — and the penetration of broadband in homes is higher than in any other country.

Should we be concerned about the latest React study, which claims that the fall-off in new infections began to plateau from the middle of March? The latest instalment of the monthly study, led by Imperial College, tested a randomised sample of 140,000 volunteers between 11 and 30 March, each of whom was given a PCR test. While the results showed that incidence of infections had fallen by 60 per cent compared with tests conducted between 4 and 23 February, the researchers say that their data shows a flattening-off from mid March. That is interesting because data from the Public health England test and trace system shows a similar pattern: steep falls in new infections during February, followed by a flattening-off in March.

It was the great British scientific triumph: an example of how big pharma can work altruistically for the good of the world, by making a vaccine available at cost price. But is the writing now on the wall for the AstraZeneca vaccine? This afternoon the European Medicines Agency (EMA) ruled that blood clots can be a 'very rare side effect' of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. It has encouraged health professionals to communicate that 'people receiving the vaccine to remain aware of the possibility of very rare cases of blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets occurring within two weeks of vaccination.' There may be an age factor as well: 'So far' it reports, 'most of the cases reported have occurred in women under 60 years of age within two weeks of vaccination.

I guess the authors of the Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities didn’t agree to the job for a quiet life. Even so, the sheer bitterness of the volley directed at them by the grievance industry must have taken them aback. The reaction from the left has been straight out of the Marxist playbook: don’t bother to engage with your opponents’ arguments, just try to delegitimise them by attacking those opponents’ credentials and questioning their right to speak at all. We’ve learned from Twitter and the pages of the Guardian that the panel of ten commissioners – who have all achieved success in their varied fields – are all stooges of the government.

Should we vaccinate children against Covid-19? The question is going to be increasingly asked following positive results from a US trial of the Pfizer vaccine in 12 to 15-year-olds. The trial found the vaccine to have a 100 per cent efficacy in preventing symptomatic illness — higher than on older age groups. It was, however, based on a relatively small number of participants. The trial included 2,260 children, half of whom were given the vaccine and half of whom were given a placebo. Among the control group, 18 went on to develop Covid, compared with none in the group given the vaccine. The company announced yesterday that the vaccine had been ‘well tolerated’ among the group.

The story of Covid has been one of government repeatedly ruling things out – and then coming back several weeks later and introducing them nonetheless. It happened with lockdown, compulsory wearing of masks, and now it looks as if it might be happening with vaccine passports. Remember vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi telling us of vaccine passports in February: ‘That’s not how we do things in Britain. We do them by consent.’ This week the Prime Minister seems to have changed the government’s tune, by suggesting that we might, after all, have to show some kind of proof of vaccination before being allowed into pubs or other such premises.