OPINION

Vaccinate the kids!

— Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (CEV) children are still waiting to be vaccinated, and many are being infected while they wait.

COMMENT

Do not oversimplify Long COVID.

— Dr Nisreen Alwan on the challenges of studying Long COVID.

COVID-19

England’s plan B restrictions are lifting – but are some measures here to stay?

— Control measures may be easing in England, but don’t expect the world to return to how it was in January 2020. Cases may be declining, but they are still incredibly high. Already, it’s estimated a million children were off school because of COVID last week.

COVID-19

Don’t believe the claim that only 17,371 people have died from COVID in England and Wales.

— A freedom of information request is only useful if you know how to read the data. Over 140,000 people with pre-existing conditions have died of COVID in the last two years. We should be mourning this tragic loss of life, not minimising it.

COVID-19

Where (and how) you are most likely to catch COVID.

— We have quantified how the different influences on transmission change your risk of getting COVID-19. The actual risk will depend on specific parameters.

What The Experts Say

Removing all restrictions clearly isn’t guided by the science – Experts.

— The views of experts and health professionals on the government reducing the self-isolation period, on whether the pandemic is, at last, coming to an end, and whether it is the right time to stop all COVID restrictions.

SAGE Meetings

COVID-19 SAGE update, 13 Jan 2022.

— Record of the discussion that took place at the latest SAGE meeting on 13 January 2022.

SAGE Meetings

COVID-19 SAGE update, 7 Jan 2022.

— Record of the discussion that took place at the latest SAGE meeting on 7 January 2022.

Downing Street Parties

Nobody told me this was against the rules – Boris Johnson.

— We’ve got a Prime Minister who set the rules on COVID-19, then repeatedly reminded the public what those rules were and why they had to be followed, now telling us that nobody actually told him what the very rules were.

COVID-19

Omicron: Viral load can be at its highest at day five so cutting isolation period doesn’t make sense.

— Are economic drivers the reason for the reduced isolation period in the UK? What evidence is the government using on which this reduction is based?

COMMENT

How dare scientists do something to prevent more deaths in the UK!

— Why shouldn’t we look for ways to pursue better health care in the UK? And why wouldn’t we want “to do more” to prevent deaths? Dr Deepti Gurdasani on the scale of normalisation of excess deaths in the UK media.

Downing Street Parties

Downing Street party: What the law actually said about work gatherings in May 2020.

— Boris Johnson’s arguments fall down in several key ways. A refresher on what the law and guidelines were at that time.

COVID-19

What are the symptoms of omicron?

— Omicron is continuing the trend set by delta, causing symptoms that resemble the common cold, suggesting that the current government’s guidance for PCR testing (based on only three symptoms) is woefully outdated.

COVID-19

How to make sense of the UK’s new testing rules.

— Understanding the difference between COVID tests can help explain why the rules keep changing.

COMMENT

A consultant anaesthetist who refuses to take a vaccine?

— A very informative and articulate take on the unvaccinated consultant anaesthetist who challenged Sajid Javid in a hospital, and the implications of his views.

What The Experts Say

You don’t end a pandemic simply by declaring it over.

— The views of experts and health professionals on the Omicron variant, the government’s handling of the situation, and the lack of mitigations in schools as the NHS struggles to cope with the crisis...