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
Could a two-week ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown really ‘save’ nearly 8,000 lives, as is being widely reported this morning? Not according to one of the authors of the paper on which the claim is based. Matt Keeling, a mathematician at the University of Warwick, was questioned on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about the paper —
Does catching the SARS-CoV-2 virus give us immunity from further infection by the virus or can we catch it a second time? The question has been given extra poignancy this week following Donald Trump’s tweet on Sunday, quickly censured by Twitter, claiming that he was immune. Before that row has had a chance to die
It says much about the covid ‘traffic light’ system to be announced by the Prime Minister later that the three alert levels are expected to be labelled ‘medium’, ‘high’ and ‘very high’. It is a bit like condom sizes which start at ‘large’, move onto ‘extra large’ and ‘extra, extra large’. It is all very
It is little surprise to see the International Air Transport Association (IATA) claiming that the risk of catching Covid-19 on a plane is incredibly low. No industry has been as devastated by the pandemic as the airline industry and there is desperation to get planes flying again. But is IATA’s claim that just 44 out of
Two days ago, the Prime Minister told us we are at a critical point in the Covid-19 crisis as a second wave threatened to engulf us. He warned of a second national lockdown. Yesterday, in spite of evidence from Imperial College of a declining R number, Matt Hancock introduced new restrictions in Liverpool and Teeside.
This morning’s so-called ‘React study’ — an attempt by Imperial College to estimate the prevalence of current Covid-19 infection in Britain — has aroused much interest thanks to its suggestion of a sharp fall in the R number. Its central estimate for R is 1.06, but it applies a range of between 0.74 to 1.46,
So, the numbers of new Covid infections in the UK failed to register a fourth consecutive fall and instead rose to a new record of 7,143. This does not mean that the disease is spreading as rapidly as it did in the spring when far fewer tests were being undertaken, but the rise has nevertheless
New confirmed cases of Covid-19 have been rising now since early July — steadily at first and then sharply since early September. But is there any sign of an increase in deaths? The latest weekly figures from the Office for National Statistics for deaths in England and Wales, released this morning, do record an
We have had plenty of anecdotes about people failing to be diagnosed with serious diseases during lockdown. This is thanks to either to hospitals cancelling appointments, GP surgeries stopping face-to-face meetings or people picking up the message that they should protect the NHS by trying not to use it. It seems clear that the rush to
The tighter Covid restrictions introduced this week, along with larger fines for people who gather in groups of more than six or fail to self-isolate, followed a press presentation in which Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Chris Whitty produced a graph showing new infections doubling every seven days until mid-October, when there would be 50,000
If there is one country which has influenced the government’s toughening of Covid restrictions over the past fortnight it is Belgium. It was Sophie Wilmes’ government which, faced with a resurgence of Covid cases in late July, came up with the idea of placing a limit on the size of social gatherings – five rather
In a strategy that now appears to be one of outright suppression, the government has put huge stock in the approval of a vaccine before too long. But could the answer turn out to be not a vaccine but an anti-viral drug? Research by a team from Bristol University and published in the journal Science
Today, 32 scientists, economists and other academics have written to the Prime Minister demanding a change in policy on Covid-19, saying that attempting to suppress the virus is ‘increasingly infeasible’. They have instead demanded that vulnerable groups should be protected from the disease while younger people should be allowed to get on with their lives. Many
The chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, made a statement this morning on the latest data surrounding Covid-19, laying the groundwork for new restrictions that the government is expected to announce tomorrow. It wasn’t a press conference with questions, so they could not be challenged on what they
Back in May I wrote about a study by La Jolla Institute for Immunology, which raised the possibility that exposure to coronaviruses which cause the common cold could offer some degree of immunity to Covid-19. Scientists involved in the research had discovered a reaction to Sars-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – in the
Perhaps the most reliable test of Covid-19 levels is carried out by the Office for National Statistics, which every week releases the results of random samples. The results, just published, show a striking divergence in age. Another significant rise amongst the young but, importantly, almost no rise amongst the over-70s who are those who made
It was easy to criticise Westminster for caving into Extinction Rebellion’s demands for a ‘citizen’s assembly’ on climate change when it agreed to convene just such a body at the end of last year. By appeasing the group’s law-breaking, so the argument went, parliament was emboldening XR and other direct action groups to block streets, spraypaint buildings,
Should we be looking at confirmed cases of Covid-19 to give us a guide as to how the epidemic is progressing – or at the number of people reporting symptoms? Over the past few months attempts to track the virus have been hampered by a very inconvenient fact: the number of tests being performed has
It was only a matter of time before Covid-19 got swept up into the wider narrative of humans facing impending doom thanks to our abuse of the planet. But one might have expected better of Sir David Attenborough. His latest BBC documentary, Extinction: The Facts, broadcast on Sunday night might as well have been produced
A week after schools returned, the government was fretting about a new surge in recorded cases – and found itself moved to introduce new rules limiting us meeting with no more than five other people at a time. The timing seems remarkable. So was it a big mistake to reopen schools? Should we have kept