Coronavirus

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: What Hong Kong really needs from Britain

Hong Kong’s future Sir: So we have a moral duty to protect the people of Hong Kong and guide them back to the golden world which existed before 1997 under British rule (‘Let them come’, 6 June)? Come off it. It is true that the hope behind the 1984 Joint Declaration was for HK to move gradually to stronger democratic forms, although under the direct authority of the government of the PRC, as it had been with the UK. What has destabilised Hong Kong and alarmed Beijing is digital grass-roots empowerment — the same thing that half the world’s governments are facing. In Hong Kong it appears in a particularly

Jeremy Clarke

My hairdresser cured my depression

I walked to the salon in fiery sunshine. Gorgeous, zaftig Elody was wearing a short satin dressing gown of silver and gold. She was alone. ‘Ça va?’ she said, helping me into the gown. ‘Black dog,’ I said. ‘What is black dog?’ she said. ‘Cafard,’ I said. ‘A black ox trod on my foot.’ I sat in the chair, removed my glasses and stared in the mirror. The straps of my black face mask made my ears stick out. And strewth, the hair. ‘Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren,’ I said. Elody speaks no English and my French is rudimentary. ‘What?’ she said. I had a

Rana Mitter

The secret behind South Korea’s Covid success

At the start of the pandemic, the situation in care homes looked particularly grim. One report on 19 March said: ‘Experts warn that hundreds of substandard long-term care facilities could serve as hotbeds for the contagious coronavirus.’ The alert came not from Wiltshire or Manchester, but from Park Chan-kyong, Seoul correspondent of the South China Morning Post. There was real fear that the residents of the city’s care homes would become victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet three months on, South Korea as a whole — let alone its care homes — has suffered fewer than 300 deaths nationwide. The world is asking: how? Things have looked slightly worse recently

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Who would want to come to Britain for a holiday now?

All logic suggests that the 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad really is, as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair put it, ‘a political stunt’. The best explanation is that it was conceived in Downing Street — with minimal consultation, unless someone rang Armando Iannucci, writer of The Thick of It — as a sop to focus-group xenophobia and parental anxiety, as well as a show of grip after the Dominic Cummings debacle. Its absurdity is highlighted by news that the West Indies cricket squad is now quarantined, while 122 high-goal polo players were reported to have beaten the deadline by slipping in last Saturday on a charter flight from Buenos Aires

Robin Oakley

Horse-racing has made a triumphant return

Horse racing, it turns out, wasn’t the first sport back in post-lockdown action: that distinction went to pigeon racing when some 4,400 birds took to the air and raced from Kettering to Barnsley. Nor did the first Classic, the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, provide the hoped-for tonic headlines about a new super-horse to succeed the great Frankel. Pinatubo, a scintillating winner of all his six races as a juvenile and the highest-rated two-year-old since 1994, ran a perfectly respectable race to finish third, but the high hopes that the hot favourite was going to prove to be something truly special were dashed. It seems that the bigger, rangier types caught

Mark Palmer

The quarantine debacle could cripple Britain’s travel industry

The government’s battle cry in the fight against the pandemic is ‘Follow the science’. But it is hard to see the science behind the disastrous and potentially crippling 14-day quarantine rule which came into effect on Monday — or, rather, failed to come into effect in any meaningful sense of the word. It’s not been made available or published anywhere, and even the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, politely refrained from giving the ruling his endorsement, saying it was a matter for the politicians: ‘They make the policy, and they make the timing decisions.’ There’s nothing remotely logical about closing the door on visitors to Britain when it’s

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Normality won’t return until schools do

From Monday, you will be required by law to wear a face covering on public transport. Paradoxically, this is a sign that the government wants life to return to being as normal as possible. Ever since the start of the pandemic, there has been debate about whether the government should tell people to wear masks in public. The argument in favour was that it would help stop the spread of the virus by making it harder for people to pass on the disease. There were two main arguments against it. The first was that urging people to wear one could lead to a shortage of the medical-grade masks that health

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Is Britain set to be the sick man of Europe?

The global lockdown has seen economies shrink and unemployment soar across the world, pushing governments to borrow at rates never seen in peacetime. On Wednesday, the OECD published country-by-country estimates for the economic hit – and its projections for the UK are some of the worst. Under the scenario of no second wave (that is, assuming countries won’t need to lockdown again this year), Britain’s economic downturn is forecast to be the worst in the G7, and fourth-worst in the OECD, with an 11 per cent fall in annual GDP. In the case of a second wave, prospects still aren’t great: in the G7, Britain’s 14 per cent downturn is on

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Bergamo and the enigma of Covid-19

There seems to be only one certainty with Covid-19: that every day we will be bombarded with fresh evidence and scientific opinion that is contradictory and leaves us a long, long way from understanding this disease. Just when it seemed that antibody tests were indicating infection rates of no more than 10 per cent in the worst-affected countries and no greater than 20 per cent in the worst-affected cities, along comes a study which points to vast numbers of infections. This morning, the public health agency in the Northern Italian city of Bergamo – the epicentre of the Italian outbreak in March – reports that a random sample of 9,965

Saturday

Robert Peston

Can Britain avoid a second lockdown?

What comes next, now that the transmission rate and prevalence of Covid-19 have fallen significantly? (Before you shout at me, yes I know there is frustration and some bemusement among scientists that illness incidence and numbers of deaths have not dropped faster in the UK, but they have nonetheless reduced significantly, if not uniformly, everywhere). There are detailed plans from the government for when and how to restart certain businesses and social activities in the coming six weeks. But there is not a clearly articulated strategy for how we are expected to live and work between now and the end of the year (and beyond). So I’ve tried to piece

Friday

John Connolly

Andy Burnham sets out his stall against local lockdowns

On Friday, researchers at the University of Cambridge working with Public Health England estimated that the R number – Covid’s rate of transmission – has risen above 1 in the North West, meaning the virus may be starting to spread in the region. In every other region of England, the study suggested, the R number is either at 1 or below. In response, Matt Hancock confirmed at the Downing Street press conference that the government’s strategy, if the virus begins to spread in a particular region, is to introduce local lockdowns (although the Health Secretary believes the R number is still below 1 in the North West at this stage).

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can America’s 2.5 million jobs miracle be replicated in Britain?

The US economy created 2.5 million jobs last month – the biggest monthly jobs gain since records began a century ago, albeit only a partial recovery from the 22 million jobs lost during lockdown. These figures have blown expectations out of the water. Economists were predicting yet more unemployment: the consensus was unemployment reaching 8.3 million, or 20 per cent in May, up from 14.7 per cent in April. Defying the odds, unemployment actually fell to 13 per cent, signalling an unexpectedly early start in the rebounding of the American economy. The biggest winners were workers in hospitality, who made up almost half of the new jobs, followed by construction. ‘This is

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

New study suggests Covid infections were falling before lockdown

When lockdown was first imposed, there was little science to base it on. The virus was assumed to be growing at an exponential rate, with each infected person passing it on to about four others. The controversial assumption: only mandatory lockdown could stop this. Graphs were drawn, showing the infection rate barely dented by voluntary measures (like handwashing, keeping socially distanced etc.) but lockdown making things safe instantly. Imperial College’s cliff-edge graph had huge traction (the below is a BBC reproduction) and made an open-and-shut case for lockdown. The above assumptions were the basis of a recent Sunday Times investigation entitled ‘UK’s lockdown dithering led to worst death toll in Europe.’

Thursday

James Forsyth

In many ways, the Covid inquiry has already begun

It is inevitable that there will be a public inquiry into the government’s handling of coronavirus at the end of all this – the death toll demands it. There is, as I say in the magazine this week, an interesting question about what kind of person should chair the inquiry. Leveson was a judge, Chilcot a former civil servant—and this showed in the kind of inquiries they led. There’s a view in government that, in the words of one secretary of state, ‘a lawyer would be the worst person to chair it as they will take it down the blame route’. In many ways, the government is conducting a rolling

Susan Hill Susan Hill

There’s no point in bishops – Covid has shown us so

It is a relief to parents that young children are allowed out a bit now as the length of the lockdown has wreaked havoc with tempers. Birthdays have been particularly difficult. Zoom parties, with every guest in their little on-screen box like stamps in an album, are a poor substitute for a roomful of overexcited kids eating jelly. My granddaughter was eight last week and at last could meet her best friend, who lives next door, in the new paddling pool. They have managed uncomplainingly via walkie-talkies through a window so this was a joyful reunion. But what about the other would-be dressed-up party guests, not to mention gift-bearers? Allow

Aidan Hartley

The intense pleasures of lockdown

I used to live in Mogadishu for months at a time, cooped up in compounds behind fortified walls. Venturing on to the streets meant a flak jacket, escort vehicle bristling with guns, chain-smoking as we zoomed through smashed districts, militias, ambushes and roadside bombs. Despite the incarceration, Somalia gave me some of my happiest memories. At home on the ranch in Kenya we often make a point of staying away from town for as long as possible. Our record is three months of no shops, offices, crowds or traffic — just cattle, pasture, birdsong and the rarest of visitors dropping by for a beer. And as a child in north

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Can the government deliver apprenticeship guarantees?

What exactly is an apprenticeship guarantee? That’s the major question to come out of Wednesday night’s Covid press conference after Boris Johnson committed to offering an apprenticeship to all young people:   I think it is going to be vital that we guarantee apprenticeships for young people. We will have to look after people across the board, but young people in particular, I think, should be guaranteed an apprenticeship. While the commitment was there, the detail was not. Is this really a guarantee for all young people? In the first quarter of this year, over 350,000 people aged 16 to 24 were unemployed (excluding those in full-time education); another 1.5 million aged 18 to 24-year-olds were

Toby Young Toby Young

Ofcom shouldn’t be allowed to censor ‘harmful’ opinions

In my capacity as the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, I wrote to the chief executive of Ofcom, Dame Melanie Dawes, on 24 April to complain about its reprimand of Eamonn Holmes. According to the regulator, the breakfast television presenter had said something that ‘could have undermined people’s trust in the views being expressed by the authorities on the Coronavirus and the advice of mainstream sources of public health information’. Holmes’s sin, in Ofcom’s eyes, was to say on ITV’s This Morning that any theory running counter to the official government line – such as the one linking 5G masts and Covid-19 – deserved to be discussed in

John Keiger John Keiger

Inside the final act of the Brexit drama

The fourth round of official Brexit negotiations resumed on Tuesday, screen-to-screen. They will determine whether the stalemate can be broken and a trade deal sealed by the end of the transition date of 31 December. By mid-June, a high-level ‘stock-take’ between Boris Johnson and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will assess whether sufficient progress has been made to continue negotiations.  Such is not the case thus far, according to recent public utterances from Michel Barnier and David Frost, who has claimed ‘very little progress’. Just like in Endgame, Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, a sense of hopelessness pervades the final scene of the drama. In the play – as with Brexit – the

Tuesday

James Ball

The UK isn’t taking the risk of contact tracing fraud seriously

Experts have a get-out clause of which politicians can only dream when they are speaking from the podium at press briefings. While ministers are expected to be able to answer questions on any matter, there and then, and have details at their fingertips, advisors can escape most tricky questions with a simple few words: that’s outside my area of expertise. That makes it all the more baffling that when asked by journalists about the risk of fraudsters exploiting the government’s new track and trace system, not one, but two deputy chief medical officers decided to comment and belittle the risks involved. Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries was particularly sanguine.