pandemic
Sheila Hancock takes pride in her irascibility
This book begins with Sheila Hancock wondering why she is being offered a damehood. I must say I slightly wondered…
Travels in time and space: Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel, reviewed
It’s a bold writer who confronts a major historical moment such as a pandemic before it’s over, but Emily St.…
Murder, suicide and apocalypse: Here Goes Nothing, by Steve Toltz, reviewed
Angus Mooney is dead. Freshly murdered, he’s appalled to find himself in an Afterworld, having always rejected the possibility of…
Should we worry about the BA.2 Omicron variant?
When the Omicron variant (now categorised as BA.1) swept across the world at the end of last year it was…
Is China's zero Covid game up?
Omicron has broken through China’s Covid wall. On Tuesday, the country saw a record-high of more than 5,000 cases, the…
Covid is rising again. Should we worry?
For some time now, Covid has been rising in Scotland – there are now more Scots in hospital with Covid…
Sage admits its models were 'at variance to reality'. But why?
The Sage committee was set up as a pool of experts on tap to advise government. During the pandemic, it mutated…
Ending restrictions won't save Boris
Boris Johnson certainly managed to rally the troops on their first day back from recess this afternoon as he told…
Two years on, what's the evidence for lockdown?
Did lockdowns save lives? We will never have a definitive answer to this vital question because it was impossible to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
America is a nation divided
New York Imagine a European country today in which a newspaper in its most populous city launches a mendacious project…
Should we be scared of the Omicron variant?
Why is the government so scared of the Omicron variant? So far, most of the evidence we have for transmissibility…
Boris takes his colleagues for fools
Is Boris Johnson really deploying a ‘diversionary tactic’ in announcing vaccine passports on the day he has had to perform…
What’s the evidence for England’s vaccine passports?
The Prime Minister has just announced Plan B. Working from home has been all but mandated and large venues —…
Omicron: cause for hope?
It will be weeks before we know just how worried we should be about Omicron — but the first indications seem…
After a lifetime in nightclubs, now I party at home
New York It’s party time in the Bagel, and it’s about time, too. Good restaurants and elegant nightclubs are…
Unless Omicron changes everything, Covid is on the way out
There are good reasons to be concerned about the Omicron variant. For starters, this strain has 50 mutations, twice as…
Do masks really halve the risk of Covid? A note on the evidence
‘Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding’ as Willy Loman said in Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece An Inspector Calls.…
