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, …
Continue reading “The UK Covid Inquiry First Report on Resilience and Preparedness”
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 …
Continue reading “Following the Science and Handling the Scientists”
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 …
Continue reading “Organizational Misbehaviour and the Control of Information”
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave.”
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 …
Continue reading “A review of where we are with UK Covid restrictions. With apologies to Nandos.”
Here is the heatmap of cases for PHE week 41 using week 40 data. Studies in Spain, France, and the US have all shown that although the second wave may start in young people, it will inevitably move to older people. The remarkable thing about this disease is that the death rate increases massively with …
Continue reading “Heatmap of Cases & Deaths in the over-80s”
We know that data on the Government Coronavirus dashboard is unreliable (see this Twitter thread). We also know that we are not doing enough testing as the positivity rate is so high (7% overall for Pillar 2 tests and up to 15% in some areas such as Liverpool) (see this thread) So, how do we …
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “New York City on Wednesday will close public schools and nonessential businesses in parts of Brooklyn and Queens that have registered a week-long spike in coronavirus cases” Let’s look at New York and then compare to a UK city, Liverpool. Cases are high in some New York boroughs. …
Sky News https://youtu.be/iN0kUXK_0Ts?t=28 BBC Radio Five Live https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTMW4lUjAGA Quoted on Sky News , Daily Express, Yahoo! News, Guardian BBC Local Radio, Independent Radio (Bauer Media syndicates) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuurDpf3sp0 Background to Financial Times, Reuters, LBC, Guardian
