In the 2003 documentary the Fog of War ^[1], former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara distils the lessons from the disastrous Vietnam War into eleven basic tenets. His rule number one: Empathise with your enemy.

Without sufficient empathy, you …

This article is based on a collation initially done by twitter user @the_brumby

“there is no evidence that more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions …

Why is the US different?

In the larger countries of Western Europe the scale of death tolls has varied significantly, but …

Lockdown has strained society to the limit

Lockdowns are immensely costly. The UK Government has already planned to spend around £132 billion in the current fiscal year, which is very close to the total annual budget of the National Health Service. ^[1]

This planned financial expenditure of course does not …

Covid deaths and "Pillar One" positive tests are now very low in Leicester

Lab confirmed Covid cases for Leicester were yesterday 0 …

Many of us are wondering, "how the heck did we get here?"

Our response to a virus that is similar in lethality to previous flu epidemics resembles an attempted economic suicide. From UK politicians we hear a droning mantra of "follow the science" but to anyone paying attention, their science …

How many people died per day?

The overall shape of the curves for UK and Sweden is remarkably similar.

In deaths per million population, the daily numbers for Sweden are lower …

In May, "Tucker Carlson Tonight" remained the No. 1 cable news show among adults 25-54. With his other Fox hosts, he dominates cable news in the US. His monologues are forceful and provide a good insight into the mood of the nation - (well perhaps half of the nation, the other …

People back in the 1968/69 were much calmer about flu compared to the high levels of anxiety seen in connection with Covid-19. Perhaps they were used to dealing with illnesses like measles and mumps and perhaps it was due to the absence of social media that has arguably been …

An academic paper from 2020-04-15 models various scenarios to investigate time-dependent strategies of handling the epidemic taking into account the needs of the elderly and those with special medical conditions. Main findings include:

Very little gain, in terms of the projected hospital bed occupancy and expected numbers of death,of …