Grant Shapps has claimed he had to do his own research and bring his spreadsheets to Cabinet meetings to counter the skewed information being supplied by SAGE and block plans for a Covid lockdown last Christmas.
A new study from Cedars-Sinai found that a minority of people suffering from Omicron even realised they had it – and, bizarrely, the researchers interpret this as a cause for alarm, not a reason to relax.
Danny Altmann, Professor of Immunology at Imperial, writes that rather than sliding into a comfortable relationship with Covid, it's "more like being trapped on a rollercoaster in a horror film". But is this true?
It's hard to reconcile the vaccines being 90% effective against death with the numerous highly vaccinated countries which have experienced large waves of excess deaths since mid-2021.
Covid levels continued to drop in England last week, falling to their lowest levels since the start of December before Omicron took off. ONS data also suggest BA.2 may be half as deadly as BA.1.
Daily Covid infections in the U.K. have fallen by a third since last week, while deaths have plunged by a fifth. Turns out, last week's NHS warnings of armageddon if we didn't lock down again were a false alarm. Shock!
UK Covid infections have climbed by a million in a week, ONS data suggest – but deaths remain below average for the time of year, and there are no calls for the return of restrictions.
Thirty million people are in lockdown in China following an outbreak of Omicron. Yet further evidence, if any were needed, that China's zero-Covid policy is a complete disaster.
This week's data from the UKHSA show infection risk still much higher in the vaccinated, and while deaths have been declining sharply in the unvaccinated, this isn't the case in the vaccinated.
HRH the Queen has tested positive for COVID-19, yet in spite of her advanced age she is experiencing nothing more serious than mild, cold-like symptoms.
