Norway has become the first country to break ranks with the lockdown zealot consensus, releasing an official government report declaring lockdown to be unnecessary to end the coronavirus epidemic. Here’s a key excerpt: ‘It looks as if the effective reproduction rate had already dropped to around 1.1 when the most comprehensive measures were implemented on... Continue Reading →

One third of Stockholm’s population will have coronavirus antibodies by early May, and half by the middle of June. These were the predictions of the Swedish health authorities based on their mathematical models. Yet official survey results released this week revealed that only 7.3 per cent of Stockholmers had developed antibodies in late April. Tom Britton, a maths... Continue Reading →

The number of deaths in hospitals in England and Wales registered in the week ending May 8 was below average, figures revealed yesterday. And the overall number of deaths (12,657 – down from 17,953 the previous week) was close to and fast heading into the normal range, according to the weekly Office for National Statistics report. Deaths in... Continue Reading →

Social distancing, even when voluntary and though less oppressive than enforced stay-at-home lockdown, remains extremely costly in terms of economic activity and productivity, basic liberties and health outcomes. This is why the question of whether it really helps prevent or slow the spread of the coronavirus is in urgent need of examination. Most people tend to assume it does. Indeed,... Continue Reading →

How long will it take our political masters, do you think, to admit the lockdown was a colossal over-reaction? What level of evidence will such an admission require? Will they ever accept it or will they always find a weasel way of claiming it was somehow worth it, no matter the scale of economic devastation?... Continue Reading →

The latest ONS death statistics, published yesterday, reveal a startling truth: In the week ending May 1 (week 18), there were nearly 2,000 additional deaths recorded as unrelated to Covid-19. Of those, more than three-quarters, or over 1,500, were in care homes. This suggests that many people are dying of causes unrelated to Covid-19, but presumably... Continue Reading →

The evidence is beginning to mount that even voluntary social distancing (as well as lockdowns) may only have a limited effect against the coronavirus, challenging previous assumptions about the virus’s transmission and raising more questions about the point of some policy interventions. In my last post I noted how infections had grown exponentially in Manchester... Continue Reading →

Does social distancing stop a Covid-19 epidemic? It seems pretty obvious to most people that the answer is yes, and many experts including those sceptical of lockdowns see voluntary social distancing as the real key to bringing outbreaks under control and preventing a deadly second wave (see for example here and here). The difficulty in testing this... Continue Reading →

The Sun reports that the Prime Minister is aiming to get the UK back to work by Tuesday May 26, the day after the Whitsun bank holiday, while the Telegraph says schools will start to reopen on June 1. This long slow road back towards normality means at least another three weeks of lockdown and puts... Continue Reading →

So there it is. It’s going to be a long slow easing of lockdown as the government tries to suppress the virus to as low a level as possible before using testing and tracking to try to keep it contained. These latter are the standard infection control containment methods which, along with quarantine and travel restrictions,... Continue Reading →