Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Have we been vastly underestimating the number of people who have been infected with Covid-19 and correspondingly overestimating its mortality? No one knows because we don’t know just how widespread this infection is in the population at large. But a leaked document from the US Department of Homeland Security suggests that the US government, at least,
I was never in favour of HS2, but if we are going to build it we might as well get on with it, so, yes, the government is right to order the bulldozers into action in spite of Covid-19 – as long as rules are enforced to ensure physical distancing between construction workers. But if
It just keeps on getting worse. Like the death toll from Covid-19 itself, forecasts for the economy in the wake of the crisis keep on creeping upwards. Today, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that UK GDP could contract by 35 per cent by June if the lockdown continues until then, before ‘bouncing back
This morning we have some data giving a little more insight into the great unknown of the coronavirus pandemic: just how widely among the population has SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – spread among the general population. A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomised sample of 1,000 residents of
When EU finance ministers ended their crisis meeting this morning, they had spent 16 hours trying to establish what collective help, if any, they wish to offer to the countries most affected by the epidemic: Spain and Italy. They agreed on not a thing. Instead, the meeting broke up acrimoniously with Italy, Spain and France
Asked at Tuesday’s evening briefing why Germany appears to have a lower coronavirus death rate than Britain, the Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty said: ‘We all know that Germany got ahead in terms of its ability to do testing for the virus, and there’s a lot to learn from that.’ Germany has the capacity for
Just how many of us have Covid-19 and are not even aware of it? It’s a question at the heart of this crisis. Epidemiologists are deeply divided, and no-one truly knows. Yesterday came news from China that 130 of the 166 people most recently found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 there have proved to be
If ever there was a time for the EU to show the benefit of belonging to an economic bloc with coherent cross-border cooperation you would think it would be now. But that is not quite how things are working out. On the contrary, the EU has erupted into open warfare between north and south. The
Is there anything more ridiculous, when we have hundreds of thousands of workers sat idly at home to avoid spreading coronavirus, to be flying in fruit and vegetable-pickers from Eastern Europe? Yet that is exactly what is about to happen. Concordia, which supplies seasonal labour to UK farms from overseas, says it is looking to
Britain is now locked down for at least three weeks, but could the government’s original policy of relying on herd immunity have been right all along? That is the inference of a team of epidemiologists from Oxford university, whose modelling produces remarkably different results from that of Professor Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial
Is there something about being Germany which protects the body against coronavirus Covid-19? Probably not, I would guess. In which case why do the latest figures from the Robert Koch Institute show that the country has a case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.3 per cent, while the World Health Organisation (WHO) figures from Italy seem to
We have, of course, been transformed into a nation of hoarders and panic buyers. We know this because everyone keeps telling us. There are the queues around the block, waiting for Asda to open; the tearful nurse on Twitter who couldn’t get any food after a 48-hour shift; anecdotes galore about people loading loo rolls
Perspective is a bit in short supply at the moment but if you want a brief respite from the onslaught of bad news, take a look at these statistics. They are Office for National Statistics figures for the total numbers of deaths from respiratory diseases in England and Wales for February this year, compared with
It has become a received wisdom that coronavirus has forced Boris Johnson to morph into Jeremy Corbyn. Vast handouts to business, surging borrowing, open-ended commitments to NHS spending: there’s certainly a whiff of Labour policy in there. Some Conservative ministers even appear to see it that way; ‘We’ll find ourselves implementing most of Jeremy Corbyn’s
All governments are going to have to come up with vast stimulus packages over the next few weeks or face mass bankruptcies and job losses as the economy is paralysed by measures to combat the coronavirus. But was it really wise for President Macron to announce on Monday evening that no business will go bankrupt
What’s new in the world of coronavirus research this week? The most eye-catching study comes from the University of Maryland School of Medicine revealing a possible relationship between coronavirus outbreaks and meteorology. While the paper is not yet peer-reviewed and its authors admit that it’s ‘speculative’ and must be read with extreme caution, it notes
So are we all going to die or is it going to fizzle out? In Naples the police drive along streets with loudhailers, warning everyone to keep indoors; in Britain the government declines to close schools, call off sporting fixtures and persuade people out of the pub. Something feels not quite right: either there is
Boris Johnson, according to a large Twitter mob this morning, is a reckless libertarian – ignoring the drastic but effective measures being taken against coronavirus in other countries – in the same spirit he once praised the mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open in spite of swimmers being eaten. A large body of
Yes, of course Donald Trump’s ban on travel between the US and the Schengen zone is an over-reaction to coronavirus, which will do far more harm to the economy than it will to protect the health of Americans. But it is pretty rich for the EU to be bleating about others banning things without scientific
There may be no vaccine yet for Covid-19, but the Bank of England yesterday morning gave us a full dose of what it hopes will be the financial equivalent; slashing interest rates from 0.75 per cent to 0.25 per cent. It has also relaxed the capital buffer requirements for banks — the amount of capital