The headline of the day
After the fall
If shrunk to a comparable size, the earth would be smoother than a ping pong ball. The earth’s atmosphere is thinner than the skin on a ping pong ball. Most of the time we forget how much our whole life is lived in a tiny margin and how dependent we are on its seeming stability. Life does not feel stable now. Whole countries are being quarantined, the banalities of international travel are shuddering to a halt. In War Of The…
Herd immunity. The big political risk the government is running
Amid all the panic buying, one thing that is still found in abundance is self-declared expertise. Social media is suddenly awash with new immunologists and virologists (BSc Twitter), all very ready to critique or bolster the government’s approach to the Covid-19 crisis. Is the government aiming for herd immunity? Should the government be aiming for herd immunity? What timeframe should we expect herd immunity in? Let me draw on my own area of expertise as a pensions lawyer. For if…
Compulsory house arrest for the 70+group risks causing secondary physical and mental health problems for otherwise healthy individuals
community links. You can’t just issue a 4-month quarantine order to them without explaining how they’re supposed to spend their time/get fresh air/physical and mental exercise. This risks secondary physical and mental health issues from an otherwise healthy population. Am not — Jane Merrick (@janemerrick23) March 15, 2020 becoming inadvertent spreaders? We – political class, media, society – largely don’t pay attention to social care because it’s been in the “too difficult box” for decades. Now the fragile system is…
Trump’s inadequate response to Covid-19 will doom his presidency
All the options are bad and Trump is running scared of them In some ways the world is very fortunate. It may not feel like it at the moment, never mind in a few months or – if we’re lucky – weeks, but pandemics are an inevitable if rare occurrence of nature and the best we can do is ride out the storm with good judgement and timely action. There is probably no other country on Earth that was as…
The coronavirus: Trump bans all travel to Europe for a month from tomorrow excluding the UK
In a televised statement from the Oval Office on the coronavirus crisis Trump has annouced that a ban on flights between the US and Europe from tomorrow. There is just one exception – the UK. According to the New York Times this was one of a number of “strong but necessary” actions designed to impede what he described as “horrible infection”. This was a “foreign virus” that had been “seeded” in the US because the EU had “failed to take…
In the US levels of concern about the coronavirus are dependent and whether you are a Democrat or a Republican
61% of Dems say they’re worried compared with 37% of Republicans I find the gap here qute extraordinary because it is no way replicated in the UK. That Republicans are that much less concerned suggests that Trump’s controversial apporach is being followed by many of his backers. Mike Smithson