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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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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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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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 …
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 …
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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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 …
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.”
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 …
Continue reading “Media Roundup week ending 12 October 2020”
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”
