covid
The NHS vaccine mandate was bound to fail
Health Secretary Sajid Javid now looks set to drop his plans to sack unvaccinated NHS staff. It was almost inevitable…
Can the Czech Republic challenge Europe’s vaccine orthodoxy?
The Omicron wave has left European counties standing at a crossroads this year. Despite the relative mildness of Omicron compared…
Why Denmark has called for the end of Covid restrictions
England has been described by some as an outlier in that the government is lifting Plan B restrictions in spite…
Why Sage got Omicron wrong
Given that lockdown was very nearly ordered on the advice of Sage last month, it’s worth keeping an eye on…
We must never abandon children during lockdown again
Schools are far more than mere exam factories. Across the UK, teachers in 32,000 schools and colleges care for children…
Omicron is on its way out
Omicron peaked in England in early January, according to figures just released by the ONS. The estimates from the weekly…
The Netherlands is growing tired of lockdown restrictions
On Wednesday at De Kleine Komedie, the oldest theatre in Amsterdam, the sound of comics on stage will be interspersed…
Boris Johnson is running out of road
There has been no good news for Boris Johnson today. After an email leaked on Monday evening showing that the Prime…
Masks in schools: how convincing is the government's evidence?
Why has the government changed its mind and asked children to wear masks in school? When Plan B was announced…
Get ready to start paying the cost of Covid
Forget the desirability (or lack thereof) of tax hikes: can Britain survive them? That’s the economic question that kicked off…
Boris Johnson rejects lockdown (again)
Boris Johnson latest Covid press conference was slightly confusing. The Prime Minister spent nearly an hour saying nothing particularly new.…
The problem with 'vaccine equity'
‘A stain on our soul’. That was how Gordon Brown, in his latest missive on the subject, described the failure…
Does Warwick’s Omicron modelling make restrictions more likely?
Two weeks ago, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College both published modelling showing frightening…
Will Trump's pro-vaccine stance prove his undoing?
Donald Trump famously boasted that he could ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody’ and still not lose voters. That…
Remember panic-buying? Here's what will happen next time
It’s post-Christmas, and there are already murmurs about supermarkets with empty shelves. Just as with the petrol shortage in September and…
The churches must stay open
Hooray for Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who used the one day of the year when his pronouncements are amplified by the…
The misery of Macron’s Covid clampdown
My daughter’s Christmas won’t quite be the same this year. She and I are in England but her French mother…
Sage modellers start to accept that Omicron is milder
Public health officials in Britain and South Africa were on different planets for about a fortnight. While those in South Africa…
Sage memo makes the case for lockdown
On Monday, Covid restrictions were rejected after the cabinet debated the issue robustly for the first time since the pandemic…
Should businesses receive more Covid support?
As government considers whether to lock us down once again, should it put economic support for businesses affected back on…
It’s time to end the era of forced lockdown restrictions
Monday’s Cabinet meeting held over Zoom was a fraught affair by the sounds of it. Michael Gove and Sajid Javid…
Is Omicron now falling in South Africa?
Man makes Covid predictionsand God laughs. Yet with the stakes this high in Britain, every bit of real-world data is…
My Twitter conversation with the chairman of the Sage Covid modelling committee
The latest Sage papers have been published , envisaging anything from 200 to 6,000 deaths a day from Omicron depending on how…
Pubs and restaurants are being decimated by Covid uncertainty
The run up to Christmas is normally a merry time for the hospitality industry. Our nation’s restaurants, pubs and bars…
Omicron is now Britain’s dominant Covid strain
If you test positive for Covid now in Britain, the odds are that it’s Omicron: it’s now the dominant strain…
