Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Cambridge professor of the public understanding of risk David Spiegelhalter recently made the point that, given the uncertainties over exactly what constitutes a death from coronavirus, the number we should we watching is the ONS’s figure for deaths from all causes. That, he argued, will give us the surest indication as to the progress of
Today, the cabinet has to decide where to go next with the lockdown – although the decision will not be announced until Sunday. Boris Johnson has talked of a ‘menu of options’ for relaxing some of the measures, but we have been warned not to expect too much. The government has also distanced itself from
The Israeli government is reporting this morning that the country’s Institute for Biological Research has made a breakthrough in the development of a potential treatment against SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19. Scientists there have isolated a ‘monoclonal neutralising antibody’ which could potentially neutralise the virus after infection. The antibody was obtained from the blood
Since mid-March there has been an assumption that herd immunity against Covid-19 would not be achieved until around 60 per cent of the population has been infected. It is a figure which gave rise to the now-famous paper by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, which claimed that a herd immunity policy (which the government
One of the great mysteries of coronavirus is how the epidemic has become much more severe in Europe and North America than in the Far East. A disease which appeared to be on the wane in China, South Korea and elsewhere in mid-February suddenly erupted with a vengeance in Europe in March, with death tolls
A week ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a warning which, if it were true, would constitute the most depressing-yet development in the story of Covid-19. It said that there was ‘no evidence’ that people who have already been infected with the disease, and who have developed antibodies as a result, have gained any
Over the past few weeks the government’s scientific advisers have indicated that the only real way out of the coronavirus crisis is a vaccine – until then a high degree of social distancing will have to remain. Given that no-one expects a vaccine to be ready for deployment for another year at the very earliest,
A milestone was reached today when New Zealand became the first country to declare that all community transmission of coronavirus has effectively ceased. We have previously seen China (whose figures are not universally trusted), South Korea and Vietnam wrestle their figures for new cases of the disease down to very low levels, but New Zealand’s
Six weeks ago Britain stood as a bit of an outlier among western countries in that our government seemed set to manage, rather than suppress, coronavirus. It rejected the idea that it was pursuing ‘herd immunity,’ but seemed to do just that. Now we stand out for a different reason: we are the only country
Finally, the government is to start antibody tests to see how prevalent infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus – which causes Covid-19 – is among the general population. Over the next few days, testing kits are being sent to 20,000 randomly-selected households. The results will be crucial because it will inform us how effective lockdown has
What joy it has been to have some cash over the past two months. For gamblers, to be sure, there have been opportunities to take advantage of a volatile stock market (and even more opportunities to get it wrong and lose a packet). But cash is cash – it just sits there holding its value,
Over the next few weeks we are likely to start hearing more and more about a growing death toll – not the one from Covid-19 but the one from other conditions. Disturbingly, it appears to be rising, and we are going to have to start asking what role the lockdown has played in this. In
Last week I reported here a Stanford University study which found that infection with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – could be over 50 times as widespread in one Californian county than official figures suggested. Now comes yet another piece of evidence suggesting similarly huge under-reporting of cases. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital
The science of epidemiology relies a lot on modelling because, for obvious reasons, controlled experimentation would be unethical. But in the case of Covid-19 we do have something approaching a real-life experiment – in that Sweden has declined to follow other European countries into lockdown. Instead, it has followed a policy which might be summed
Another day, and yet more evidence has appeared that could indicate the number of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, might be vastly higher than official figures suggest. This time a Californian study suggests the figure in one county could be more than 50 times the number who knew they had had the
Have we been vastly underestimating the number of people who have been infected with Covid-19 and correspondingly overestimating its mortality? No one knows because we don’t know just how widespread this infection is in the population at large. But a leaked document from the US Department of Homeland Security suggests that the US government, at least,
I was never in favour of HS2, but if we are going to build it we might as well get on with it, so, yes, the government is right to order the bulldozers into action in spite of Covid-19 – as long as rules are enforced to ensure physical distancing between construction workers. But if
It just keeps on getting worse. Like the death toll from Covid-19 itself, forecasts for the economy in the wake of the crisis keep on creeping upwards. Today, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that UK GDP could contract by 35 per cent by June if the lockdown continues until then, before ‘bouncing back
This morning we have some data giving a little more insight into the great unknown of the coronavirus pandemic: just how widely among the population has SARS-CoV-2 – the virus which causes Covid-19 – spread among the general population. A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomised sample of 1,000 residents of
When EU finance ministers ended their crisis meeting this morning, they had spent 16 hours trying to establish what collective help, if any, they wish to offer to the countries most affected by the epidemic: Spain and Italy. They agreed on not a thing. Instead, the meeting broke up acrimoniously with Italy, Spain and France
