Our paper on Foresight approaches for future health shocks: integration into policy making and accompanying research priorities has been published in the British Medical Journal BMJ 2024; 387 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-078647 (Published 07 October 2024)BMJ 2024;387:e078647 The paper is accessible here
The UK Covid Inquiry First Report on Resilience and Preparedness
This post was also published on Duncan Robertson's Substack The UK Covid Public Inquiry has published its first Report, on Resilience and Preparedness. It is the most urgent report, as we are still ill-prepared for the next pandemic. This is the first of many reports, each reviewing a specific area, including healthcare systems; test, trace, …
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Following the Science and Handling the Scientists
Originally published on Substack on 21 November 2023 As the Covid Inquiry continues, we have heard evidence from the former Chief Scientific Adviser. He was questioned on his Almost-But-Not-Quite contemporaneous diary entries that are displayed as excerpts. But this raises questions about the role of science and scientists. Following the Science? The government was very …
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Organizational Misbehaviour and the Control of Information
This week at the Covid Public Inquiry included descriptions of misbehaviour in Number 10 and the flow of information to the Prime Minister. Originally published on Substack on 3 November 2023 This week’s evidence session at the Covid Public Inquiry continued its investigation into the UK decision-making and political governance, hearing from witnesses including civil servants in Number …
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Models and Policy Paper
Our paper 'Challenges on the interaction of models and policy for pandemic control' has been published in the journal Epidemics. ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has seen infectious disease modelling at the forefront of government decision-making. Models have been widely used throughout the pandemic to estimate pathogen spread and explore the potential impact of different intervention …
Herd Immunity
I've built a model to show the concept of herd immunity. It shows why we need to not leave hard-to-reach parts of the population unvaccinated. Herd immunity, also called population immunity, is the protection for the population that comes from when a proportion have been vaccinated. With more vaccinations, we move towards this herd immunity …
The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave.
This was originally published on Twitter on 9 January 2021. The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave. Except with knowledge. The Government's strategy at the beginning of the pandemic was to 'cocoon' the vulnerable (e.g. those in care homes). This was a 'herd immunity' strategy. This interview is …
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In Defence of Models. And Modellers
This article originally appeared in The Telegraph We would all like to be able to predict the future, but in order to understand the future, you have to understand the past. So is the quandary facing modellers, data analysts, and policy makers. At the heart of the decisions facing politicians are an epidemic that is …
A review of where we are with UK Covid restrictions. With apologies to Nandos.
It wasn't meant to be like this. Remember the Alert Levels (the 'Nandos chart')? The whole idea of that was to set some sort of policy - a roadmap if you will - of how we get out of a national lockdown. Introducing... Covid Alert Levels. 12 May 2020. And remember this? The gentle ski …
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Media Roundup week ending 12 October 2020
Letter in the Financial Times The failure of the government’s testing strategy (Report, September 22) is a lesson in confusing resources with capabilities. Commercial NHS test and trace has resources but not capabilities. NHS labs and local authority directors of public health supported by Public Health England have capabilities but not resources. In order to …
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