This is an article by Martin Sewell. Martin is a quantitative researcher and developer in the financial industry. He can be contacted on martin@martinsewell.com. When a pandemic such as COVID-19 strikes, there are benefits to reducing the rate of infection. Doing so allows us to reduce the total number of people who get infected (minimise […]
This is an article by Stephen Jackson, principal at Jackson Osborne Employment Lawyers. Stephen is a solicitor with more than 20 years’ experience acting for employers and employees. I happened to speak to two small business owners last weekend, hoping to reopen soon and call their staff back from furlough. Both were surprised but grateful […]
This is an article by Sam Case (not his real name), a former police officer now working in sport and health. I’m no expert. There I said it, open and honest from the get go, how refreshing. The concept of groupthink has foundations laid out by the psychologist Irving L. Janis, it seeks to discover […]
This is an article by Chris Larkin. Public health must not, and cannot, become an alibi for infringing on the rights of millions of people around the world, let alone for depriving the civil authority of its duty to act wisely for the common good. Many authoritative voices in the world of science and medicine […]
This is an article by John Church. John is an oil and gas professional and has spent some 30 years working for one of the biggest oil companies in the world. A few weeks ago, I created an age-dependent mortality model.This was a top-down approach, trying to make a predictive model that honoured various observations […]
This is an article by Jodie Simpson (not her real name), who has gone through the minutes of the meetings held by the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group of Emergencies (SAGE). I’ve read through the SAGE minutes, from March to the present date. Below are selected quotes, with very little input from me. This is just […]
This is an article by Jeremy Harris. Jeremy is a businessman and investor in New Zealand, one of the few whose businesses seems to have profited from Covid madness thus far – the advantage of being well hedged. Background from Hector: A New Zealand professor, Rod Jackson, published a scaremongering article in the NZ Herald, […]
Reader Christopher Bowyer has once again at the digital coalface making graphs, which he has sent to me. Some are based on NHS England data, and some on the ONS week 21 release. (Bear in mind that ‘with Covid-19’ deaths includes any death where the deceased was suspected of having Covid-19, even if it was […]
This is an article by Charlie Spedding, whose blog can be found here. Charlie is a former pharmacist. He was also a champion long-distance runner in his younger days. He was the winner of the 1984 London Marathon, and he is an Olympic bronze medallist. Media attention has been focussed firmly on the misdemeanours of […]
This is an article by Dominey Jenner. It was hard to get through that last hymn on 15th March having just been told that, because of the impending coronavirus epidemic, our church would no longer be able to meet for the foreseeable future. The enormity of it all, both spiritually and emotionally was like a […]
For quite a while I’ve been trying to find the US all-cause death stats for the recent years, but I always assumed that before too long someone more knowledgeable about the US figures would get them and make a graph. But if anyone did, I never saw it. The CDC website is pretty awful, and […]
This is an article by Sam Case (not his real name). I write as a former police officer now working in sport and health. Policed during the 80’s HIV epidemic and wasn’t even given a pair of rubber gloves. Justifying legislation to place healthy people into forced quarantine is something that should be resisted if […]
Reader Christopher Bowyer has been busy again, and has sent me some more graphs, some based on NHS England data, and some on the ONS week 20 release. First, NHS England deaths with Covid-19 by absence (yellow) or presence (green) of a pre-existing condition. Next, percentage of deaths with Covid-19 by pre-existing condition. (94.8% […]
Dominic Cummings has made a terrible mistake. I don’t mean going to Durham, or Barnard Castle. Which may have been mistakes, but they are very minor compared to the real mistake he has made. The real mistake he has made is that he trusted the chattering classes, and their pet scientists, on the Covid-19 and […]
This is an article by Thaddeus Michaels (not his real name), who is a data scientist. As a data scientist, I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who takes a quantitative approach to tackling a problem. Statistics, data analysis – even forecasting and modelling – are there to bring a sense of scale […]
This is an article by Chris Larkin, a professional filmmaker. I think I have always voted Tory; I can well remember how pleased I was at John Major’s surprise victory in 1992, and have occasionally campaigned for the party locally. I make films for a living, and I’m one of the few people working in […]
This is an article by Simon Anthony, a one-time theoretical physicist. Hector adds: I don’t agree with all of Simon’s analysis here, but you don’t have to write something I agree with to get published here. If you’re thinking of submitting a piece, see the details here. There’s been some disagreement about the justification for […]
This is an article by Andrew Mahon. Andrew is a writer based in London, who has written for the Spectator, the Daily Wire, Human Life Review, New English Review, Brexit Central, Catholic Journal, Conservative Woman and others. The NHS is so ours. But why is it that we never hear of ‘our police’ or ‘our […]
This is an interview conducted in 2035 by music journalist Jason Holmes with the artist called Tone. Jason can be found at @JasonAHolmes. It’s a bright cold day in April, and the clocks are striking thirteen. “It’s good to be alive in the year of our Lord, 2035,” says TONE as he sits down outside […]
Someone has made good spot with this paper, and has let me know. It’s called ‘When to release the lockdown: A wellbeing framework for analysing costs and benefits‘, and the lead author is Professor Richard Layard, an extremely distinguished economist at the LSE. It was published in April 2020 by the LSE’s Centre for Economic […]