Coronavirus

Thursday

Peter Jones

The Socratic approach to Covid

Organs of the press are filled with opinion pages. The sublime confidence about Covid with which commentators advance these opinions, day after day after boring day, brings to mind the way in which Socrates dealt with such people. Plato, our major source for Socrates’s life and teaching, tells us that, on trial for his life, Socrates described how his friend Chairephon had asked the Delphic oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates, and the answer came back ‘No’. Baffled, since he was conscious of his own ignorance about almost everything, Socrates decided to put the oracle to the test and find someone wiser than himself. But his efforts were in

The Spectator

Who started America’s presidential debates?

Word for word US presidential debates are often traced back to the first televised debate, between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960. But they were inspired by a series of seven debates held between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas while contesting an Illinois senatorial seat in 1858. The debates would have stretched a modern audience — they were each three hours long. It is hard to imagine, too, how modern candidates would have coped with the format: the first speaker was invited to speak for an hour, the second for 90 minutes, and then the first candidate was allowed a further half-hour. Douglas won the seat and, two

The Spectator

Letters: Lessons for Boris from the classroom

Lessons for the government Sir: James Forsyth suggests that the Prime Minister wishes to avoid sounding as if he is blaming voters for the rise in coronavirus infections (‘Lockdown breakdown’, 26 September). Mr Johnson appears to have already crossed that line. In education we recognise that a teacher has lost control of their class and of their own good judgment when they become exasperated with their pupils for not learning anything. Fortunately, we know a great deal about how to help someone stuck in this negative cycle. Good teachers are predictable and consistent; they know that it is futile to claim that a rule is vitally important if it comes

The Spectator

The lockdown battle of Marseilles is a warning for Boris

From the vantage point of Downing Street, Boris Johnson may feel reassured that the further measures against Covid-19 he imposed this week, along with the extraordinary fines with which he has decided to enforce restrictions across the country, appear to have public support. Indeed, one poll suggested that upwards of 60 per cent of the population believe the government did not go far enough last week when it ordered pubs to close at 10 p.m. But the Prime Minister should not be fooled by that apparent backing. Before he commits himself to any further action he needs to look to Marseilles, where President Emmanuel Macron has come unstuck after trying

Simon Wood

Covid, lockdown and the economics of valuing lives

How much should we pay to save life? The question is often viewed as distasteful: you can’t put a price on human life. But resources are finite. Even if the only purpose of life was to prolong it for as long as possible, there would be limits to healthcare affordability. So if resources are limited, how can their application be made fairly? And how can this logic be applied in a pandemic? One element when establishing a fair method is to consider life years saved rather than lives saved. This recognises that someone of my age (55), who has already enjoyed two-thirds of his likely life span, should be a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Prime ministers can’t pick the crises that define them

In a non-Covid world, next week would be the Tory party conference. Boris Johnson would march on to the stage in Birmingham to receive the adulation of his grassroots supporters. The biggest Tory majority since Margaret Thatcher’s final victory in 1987 would have been celebrated. There would have been cheer after cheer for the new intake of Tory MPs, elected in seats that had been Labour for generations. It would have been a triumphalist conference with much talk of how the Tories had won a two-term victory. The virus has changed everything. Tory conference is now an online only event with short speeches. Instead of attempting to set the agenda

Sophie Haigney

The rise of blocked-off design

Plexiglass bubbles hover over diners’ heads in restaurants. Plastic pods, spaced six feet apart, separate weightlifters in gyms. Partitions of all kinds are creeping up in workplaces. As offices, restaurants, bars and businesses reopened after months of lockdowns and closures, a new phenomenon emerged, one that I’ve come to think of as ‘blocked-off design’. It’s design and layout that aims to construct and enforce distancing in a somewhat makeshift way. It’s characterised by partitions, sheer walls, six-foot markers. As a visual language, it’s defined by barriers and blockage — physical reminders that spaces where we once went to mingle with others are now fraught, and that even in public, isolation

Toby Young Toby Young

Laurence Fox is a political force to be reckoned with

From the moment I started criticising the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis people have been urging me to start an anti-lockdown party. The idea would be to run candidates in the local elections in May, particularly in those areas that have been under almost permanent lock and key for the past six months, such as Leicester. They might not win, but they could bleed enough support from the Conservative candidates to make the government think twice about its ‘forever lockdown’ policy. But I’ve resisted. For one thing, I don’t have the time. Running the Free Speech Union and posting daily updates to my Lockdown Sceptics blog, as well as

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Vallance says virus is not under control

Boris Johnson announced no new restrictions in Wednesday’s coronavirus restrictions — but there was still little reason for cheer. Those ministers hoping for a change to the 10 p.m. curfew were left disappointed. Johnson and his advisers — Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Officer Patrick Vallance — offered a series of graphs and maps to show the spread of the virus. Each made the point that infections are going in the wrong direction. It was clear from the address that they all believe new restrictions are more likely than not.  It was clear from the address that they all believe new restrictions are more likely than not While Whitty

Lee Jones

Students are trapped between consumerism and safetyism

Some of our most illustrious universities now look more like juvenile detention centres, all in the name of stopping the spread of Covid-19. This last week has seen police raids and strict lockdowns on students’ lives, many of whom will have been leaving home for the first time. Young people compare their campuses to prisons, complaining of illegal detention and displaying only half-joking distress messages in their windows — which university authorities have then ordered them to remove. Even where infections are absent, students are stuck in their rooms, attending classes online, which they could have done from home. One’s heart goes out to these young people, caught as they are between the pernicious forces of

Monday

James O'Malley

Will the NHS Covid app really make a difference?

Yesterday afternoon Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed some rare good news: the new Covid-19 track and trace app, which launched last week, has already been downloaded over ten million times. Clearly, the British people are eager to use the promise of contact tracing technology to limit the spread of the virus. The app’s arrival is months late after it was revealed the government’s original ‘centralised’ approach was fatally flawed. But now the new, improved version is here, the same question hangs over it: will it actually work? So far, the answer isn’t clear. In the days since launch, two potentially significant drawbacks have been identified by users. The first is technical. Users

Friday

Ross Clark

Why the rise in Covid cases could soon flatten off

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 cases a day. Though Sir Patrick said it was ‘not a prediction’, it was widely treated as such. But are cases really doubling every seven days? The daily figures for new confirmed cases are not the best guide to this, as they do not even nearly capture all infections. Moreover, they are partly a function

Daniel French

A Covid carol concert? No, thanks

To imagine that the Church of England could contemplate effectively cancelling Christmas may sound like the stuff of Dickensian melodrama or scripted out of the Grinch. Of course, not even the Pope has the power to erase the 25 December. But this year’s church celebrations could be so muted that Christmas effectively becomes a minor feast. Just as exhausted people need their spirits lifted, toning down Christmas could be the final straw. Oliver Cromwell would be delighted. None of this might seem plausible, of course, until you consider the heavy handedness of church authorities during the initial lockdown. Parish churches were closed, even for private prayer, and vicars were banned from entering.

Carl Heneghan

The rule of four: how to make sense of Covid case numbers

Are Covid cases doubling or not? And if so, in what time frame? If you listened to Boris Johnson and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, you’d be forgiven for being confused. The Prime Minister said this week:  ‘The chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser warned that the doubling rate for new cases could be between seven and 20 days.’ In fact, Vallance had said this:  ‘At the moment we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days.” And added, “It could be a little bit longer – maybe a little bit shorter – but let’s say roughly every seven days.’ So what’s going on? In order to understand what is happening,

Thursday

Kate Andrews

Rishi Sunak prepares UK economy for ‘permanent adjustment’

The UK economy is no longer hibernating; it is ‘adjusting’. Today’s measures announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak are designed to help an economy expected to limp through the coming months, quite painfully in certain areas, hopefully on its way to recovery. But are they enough? The role of the government and the employer has switched: the six month jobs support scheme will see the state contribute to workers’ wages if needed, but now the employer will be paying over 50 per cent of the costs, with the government paying 22 per cent. The critical difference is that employees must be working in order to receive the subsidies: a minimum of a third

Peter Jones

Should a Good Citizen snitch on neighbours?

If neighbours break whatever new Covid rules might soon emerge, it has been suggested that the Good Citizen might snitch on them to the authorities. Though not perhaps our cup of tea, it was certainly the ancient Greeks’. The Athenian lawgiver Solon (594 bc) was responsible. In the absence of a police force or a state prosecutor, Solon put the responsibility for bringing criminals to justice into the hands of citizens. They brought their complaints before legal authorities who established procedures for bringing them to court. This was all very well when litigants had been personally harmed, but it raised a problem when the state’s, rather than the individual’s, interests

The Spectator

Whose bright idea was the circuit-breaker?

It’s electrifying! Who invented the circuit-breaker? Thomas Edison patented it in 1879, realising what damage could be caused to electrical equipment in the event of a surge in current created by short-circuit. However, his early electrical installations did not use them, opting instead for fuses — thin wires designed to burn out when the current flowing through them reached a critical level. The first circuit-breaker — with spring-loaded contacts designed to open when the current became too much — was not installed until 1898, at L Street Station by the Boston Electric Light Company. Vehicle recovery Has the recovery in car sales been maintained? Registrations by month: 2019 – 2020February

Richard Dobbs

Boris’s Dunkirk moment

It’s hard to deny that Boris Johnson’s government has so far had a ‘bad war’ against the pandemic. Our death toll is high compared with other countries and our economy is in worse shape. We face rising cases, increased hospital admissions and more restrictions. It’s all so bleak; yet that is why now is precisely the moment for Boris to imitate his great hero, Winston Churchill. In the coming months, Britain can play as pivotal a role in a global victory against the virus as we did in the second world war. The war analogies only go so far, of course. We are fighting a virus, not an evil ideology.

Jo Deacon

In Madagascar, more will starve than die of the virus

Earlier this month, in his weekly address to the nation, our President, the former DJ and coup leader Andry Rajoelina, announced that Madagascar would shortly produce an injectable treatment for Covid, ‘a medicinal cure not just for Madagascar but for the world’. This was no great surprise to the people of Madagascar. After all, way back in April, when Covid had barely hit our beautifully remote island, President Andry launched Covid Organics, a miracle drink that serves as both a prophylactic and a cure to the virus sweeping the world. Covid Organics, also known as CVO, is based on a herbal remedy for malaria, artemisia annua, along with extracts from

Christopher Snowdon

The true cost of coronavirus on our economy

When future historians look back on 21st-century mortality statistics, they will struggle to find anything out of the ordinary in Britain in 2020. When they look at the economic data they could be forgiven for thinking we were hit by an asteroid. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts a fall in GDP of around 12 per cent in 2020, the equivalent of having the 2008-09 recession twice in one year. The second quarter saw GDP fall by 20.4 per cent, breaking the record set during the Great Frost of 1709. The economy rallied by 6.6 per cent in July — which sounds impressive until you consider that it only took