Coronavirus

Tuesday

Steerpike

Stanley Johnson: ‘Of course I’ll go to a pub’

Oh dear. It seems the Prime Minister needs to have a quiet word with his father.  Stanley Johnson, 79, has decided to wade into yet another national debate, this time telling ITV’s Phillip Schofield: ‘Of course I’ll go to a pub if I need to go to a pub.’  Given that his son has warned against all but essential travel, explicitly singling out both pubs and the over-70s in the process, Mr S has got to wonder why on earth Johnson Snr still wants a trip down his local boozer? 

Andrew Willshire

Brexit won’t stop a coronavirus vaccine reaching the UK

The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.’ As usual with such pieces, the words ‘if’ and ‘could’ do more heavy lifting than Atlas. The gist of the article’s argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA) means the UK will no longer be able to benefit from processes that expedite the authorisation of pharmaceuticals for use. This is because manufacturers may decide to meet the approval process for the much larger EU market first before applying to the UK regulator for approval here. That might be true, but only if the

Daniel DePetris

How coronavirus is changing America

The coronavirus is altering American life as we have never seen before. New York City’s restaurants and bars can now only offer take-out and delivery service. Night clubs, movie theatres, and gyms in Los Angeles are closed until further notice. The same orders are being issued by the authorities in Chicago and Washington, DC. The Centers for Disease Control have recommended Americans cancel any social gatherings of more than 50 people over the next eight weeks, a measure that will hit social butterflies across the nation hard. Dr Anthony Fauci, a leading authority on infectious diseases and a member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, would like far more self-isolation from individuals than he’s seeing to date.

Patrick Vallance

Why we haven’t shut the schools

When we look at all of the interventions, we looked at the ones that had the biggest impact first. School closures is definitely a bit lower down the list than some of the ones that we’ve announced. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t do anything, it would have an effect.  But it has all sorts of complicated effects as well, including potentially leading to children being with grandparents and so on. And, of course, also causing an enormous problem, not just for the workforce generally, but for the workforce in the NHS as well. So it’s a complicated one and all I can do is give this sort of scientific advice

Monday

Ross Clark

Could the weather affect coronavirus?

What’s new in the world of coronavirus research this week? The most eye-catching study comes from the University of Maryland School of Medicine revealing a possible relationship between coronavirus outbreaks and meteorology.  While the paper is not yet peer-reviewed and its authors admit that it’s ‘speculative’ and must be read with extreme caution, it notes that so far the worst outbreaks of the disease have occurred where the average temperature is between 5 and 11 Celsius and the relative humidity is between 50 and 80 per cent. Wuhan in January fell into this zone as did Northern Italy – and most of western Europe in February. South Korea and Japan

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The madness of #ToryGenocide

The hashtag #torygenocide was trending on Twitter all day Sunday. This is because seemingly rational people have got it into their heads that Boris Johnson is using the Covid-19 outbreak to orchestrate a social cull in the UK. There is a debate over the wisdom of the strategy the government has been advised to take by the chief scientific adviser. Robert Peston asks a question about testing that, if I’m honest, makes me wonder about the wisdom of how we’re going about this. Still, I am not a scientist. I don’t know whether Downing Street has taken the right or the wrong approach. I’m happy for others to have that

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why isn’t the government ramping up coronavirus testing?

When the government announced that anyone with a cough or a temperature had to stay home for a week, it was framed by the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser as a policy designed to slow the peak of the coming coronavirus epidemic. And it should help to do that. But there was another decision taken that many doctors tell me was more important, and was in their view retrograde – which was that anyone with mild symptoms who does not require hospitalisation would not be tested for it. Those with symptoms are not even being asked to voluntarily click on a button on a website or send

Sunday

Charles Moore

Coronavirus might not be all bad news for the stock market

There cannot be many positive aspects to the coronavirus outbreak, but I wonder if it carries one for stock markets.  We had been told repeatedly, before all this, that the markets badly needed a ‘correction’ after their uniquely long bull run. If they were now sliding because of a banking or commercial event, confidence might collapse. If, however, they are falling because of a disease, will it also mean that confidence will recover more quickly once the disease is contained? This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Spectator Notes, available in this week’s magazine.

Saturday

Robert Peston

Government to quarantine elderly and tell over-70s: stay at home

People over 70 will be instructed by the government to stay in strict isolation at home or in care homes for four months, under a ‘wartime-style’ mobilisation effort by the government likely to be enforced within the next 20 days. It is part of a series of measures being prepared by the prime minister, health secretary, chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser to prevent the health service from ‘falling over’ and to save lives as coronavirus, Covid-19, becomes an epidemic in the UK. Other measures already being planned include: the forced requisitioning of hotels and other buildings as temporary hospitals; the requisitioning of private hospitals as emergency hospitals; temporary

Douglas Murray

Will the NHS drop its trans obsession when peak coronavirus hits?

As coronavirus sweeps across the country, I am sure people will be reassured to know that the NHS is doing everything it can to address the pandemic, at such times when a health service’s resources are likely to be overstretched. So it must come as exactly no comfort to see what one section of the NHS was highlighting this Friday: Ensuring pregnant trans men get equal quality care. There may be some lucky people who had to read that twice. Or read it more than once and are still labouring under the impression that the headline includes a glaring misprint. Others, alive to the absurdities of the age, will know

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Boris Johnson knows the risk he is taking with his coronavirus strategy

As more and more other countries go into lockdown or opt for mass school closures, there is going to be political controversy over this government’s approach to coronavirus. The political consensus on the handling of the virus is already beginning to fray. But it is worth trying to understand why the UK isn’t doing what so many other countries are doing. I write in the Sun this morning that the government isn’t behaving in this manner because it doesn’t think the virus can be stopped. One of those at the heart of the government’s efforts says, ‘A lot of the international response is, how do we stop coronavirus? But that cannot happen:

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my family scoffing our coronavirus chocolate stockpile?

Q. How can I stop a member of the household from glutting out on the chocolate supply I have stockpiled? A glance into the larder would suggest we are more than adequately catered for in the event of a lockdown, but we are an unusually large family (which includes in-laws and staff) and while most of us are on board with an ethical siege spirit, two large bars of Fruit & Nut went missing over the weekend. You don’t have to be Agatha Christie to guess the culprit’s identity. My problem is: how can I catch him in the act? People are in and out of the larder at all

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Coronavirus is a metaphor for our vulnerability over Huawei

Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate. The problem for the government is not just the actual danger of our security being breached by Huawei, real though that is. It is also strategic. The government is not treating the subject this way, but sees it as merely a matter for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This is a bad mistake. We have achieved Brexit. We are making our own way in the world. Our closest allies in terms of trust, language, cultural links, democratic values and shared interests are our four partner nations in

The Spectator

Letters: The BBC licence fee is an anachronism

Coronavirus predictions Sir: While precautionary advice regarding the coronavirus should be followed, Ross Clark is right (‘Feverish imaginations’, 29 February) to urge an open mind on the doomsday predictions which are edging us towards panic. In 1996 the then government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Kenneth Calman, predicted that 500,000 people could die within a few years from the human form of BSE. Another official adviser, Professor Richard Lacey, described the disease as ‘the time bomb of the 20th century, equivalent to the bubonic plague’. In the event, the reported death toll was 177, while the scare cost the UK an estimated £7 billion. In 2005 the then government’s chief medical

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Panic buying, Budget announcements and farewell to Harry and Meghan

Home At the beginning of the week 319 people in the United Kingdom had been found to be suffering from the coronavirus Covid-19, with five deaths by Monday evening; by the next day there were another 54 cases and another death. Of the total, 91 were in London. Testing was extended to anyone hospitalised with a respiratory tract infection. Nadine Dorries, a health minister, caught the virus. Shares in London fell by 7.8 per cent on Monday, like those in other European exchanges, then bounced back a little. Supermarkets were allowed to receive deliveries in the dead of night to avoid shortages. There was a curious tendency to panic-buy lavatory

Peter Jones

Coronavirus and the lessons of the Athenian plague

The plague that struck Athens in the summer of 430 bc was a killer: it lasted for two years, returned after a year, and carried off a third of Athens’ manpower, including Pericles. From the historian Thucydides’ famous description, the plague — he caught it but recovered — bore certain resemblances to Covid-19 (allowing for differences in severity), but also invites reflection. He is the first Greek to mention two common illness-related phenomena: contagion — he says that, because of their exposure, there was a high death-rate among doctors and among those with the courage and sense of duty to try to care for the sick — and some immunity

Taki

America has turned into a bad joke

Gstaad     Rumours about the virus are flying around this village. First there was talk of a hotel being temporarily quarantined, then a shindig given by a fat social climber where one of the guests was said to be infected. So far these seem to have been false alarms but still the fat old rich who don’t ski are panicking, staying indoors and incommunicado. This is good news. Even better news is that I’ve been skiing with my son and have never had a better time, although he did have to wait for me at times. The snow was unexpectedly good and there was plenty of it. My trouble

Ross Clark Ross Clark

How worried should we be about coronavirus?

So are we all going to die or is it going to fizzle out? In Naples the police drive along streets with loudhailers, warning everyone to keep indoors; in Britain the government declines to close schools, call off sporting fixtures and persuade people out of the pub. Something feels not quite right: either there is huge overreaction or under-reaction to Covid-19. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has not helped calm fears by announcing that the government has been working on a worst-case scenario of 80 per cent of the population catching the virus and 500,000 dying from it. It isn’t easy for the scientists, either. In a fast-developing disease there is,

Nicholas Farrell

Life under lockdown: Italy is being consumed by panic

Ravenna The whole of Italy is now in quarantine and infected by the kind of panic I imagine an invaded people feels as it waits for the enemy to knock on the door. I work from home and suppose I must be thankful at least for that. I have just heard the youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, who is four, ask Carla, his mother: ‘Mamma, do you know why it’s called coronavirus?’ ‘No, bello, I don’t, tell me’ she replied. ‘Because it’s the king of tutti i virus!’ he crowed which caused Carla to smother him with kisses. ‘Bravissimo! Amore mio! Bravissimo!’ The word ‘corona’, in case you didn’t

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Billy the kid, football’s star of the future

Sadly it looks as though the 2020 Six Nations may have to go down with an asterisk and an explanation that might baffle future scholars — ‘Aborted due to the coronavirus’. Still, after the Wales game we can look back with affection on Owen Farrell at his horribly gobby worst, endlessly getting at Kiwi referee Ben O’Keeffe while dishing out a series of nasty niggly fouls: why does he do it? Then there was Eddie Jones in inimitable fashion blasting away at the laws and of course the ref. You lost a couple of men to foul play, Eddie, I’d keep quiet while the going’s good. I had my ref