Caprice the Covid seer

Today marks a special anniversary for those who have been following the course of the coronavirus since it first reared its ugly head in Wuhan. Exactly one year ago, arguably the UK’s finest scientific mind managed to predict how the UK would end up responding to the disease – weeks and months ahead of the scientists on Sage. This person wasn’t an academic or expert, however, but the businesswoman and model, Caprice.

Speaking on the Jeremy Vine show, Caprice argued that we should close the borders and quarantine arrivals, wear masks and have a short, sharp lockdown to stop the disease before the outbreak got any worse. Caprice cited the experience of Taiwan and Singapore, who had used similar methods at the beginning of the pandemic. For this, she was widely pilloried by both the on-air expert (a GP), scientists and on social media. Fast forward one year, and the government has belatedly adopted nearly all of those methods, while Taiwan has still only had ten deaths in total from coronavirus.