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 […]
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 […]
This is interesting. I came across this 2016 Guardian article pushing a report that said “ultra-rich” philanthropists, in particular Bill Gates, are using their money to set their own agendas in poor countries and undermining governments and UN and its agencies. Study identifies Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller foundations among rich donors that are […]
This is an article by Dan C, whose Twitter page is @SirDanofC. For over a century now, every generation has grown slightly more fearful of life, with innate levels of courage having been salami-sliced from birth as a result of the efforts of the nanny state. Until recently, I had wearily considered this an unfortunate […]
This is an article by Dene Bebbington, who is a freelance writer. Catastrophism is ever popular, especially in the last few years. Particularly since the EU referendum campaign our society has been suffering a malaise of constant worry about potential catastrophic events such as Brexit, climate change, and now the Covid-19 pandemic. What all three […]
I’ve written a longish article called ‘The Real Problem With Epidemiological Models’, which Toby Young has published at his Lockdown Sceptics site. You can read it here. (This link won’t be clickable from the front page of Hector Drummond Magazine, you need to click on this post first, then the link will be clickable.) Social […]
This is an article by Peter Forsythe, who lives in Hong Kong. This article was originally published on Peter’s blog here. For some lovely photos of Peter’s garden and the nature surrounding his place, go here. If lockdowns were effective, you would expect a correlation between the stringency of the lockdown and the number of […]
This is an article by Thaddeus Michaels (not his real name), who is a data scientist. Neil Ferguson’s critics see him as a doom-monger, whose death forecasts have far exceeded reality. His defenders tend to counter with two points. First, that his models made the best of the available data at the time. Second, that […]
It turns out that Neil Ferguson isn’t only long-time scaremonger to have reached a high position of power. Michael Fumento takes up the story: In this writer’s 1990 book, “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS,” he is mentioned on 24 pages. A sample: “Dr. Redfield, amazingly, has declared [the chances of] male-to-female vaginal HIV to be 50 […]
Sad to say, but almost unnoticed a new ‘divide’ is opening up as a result of lockdown, between those of us who live singly, and our married friends. Don’t get me wrong, I have been married twice and have nothing against the institution, particularly as I have some wonderful and supportive kids from both unions, […]
This is a guest post 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. I have been inspired by some of the information I have read on this site pertaining to some hard numbers and hard number […]