COVID-19 (Page 57)

The most important measure on the state of the pandemic is the R number. Also known as the reproduction rate, this is the average number of people an infected person will pass the virus on to. The R number guides government decisions, and there is no doubt it is a very intuitive way to measure the state of the pandemic. However, the R number has come in for much criticism because it is an average, meaning it ignores useful information about individuals and therefore does not account for uncertainty. This includes the fact that there is a sizeable variation in the incubation time of the virus and a large number of infected but asymptomatic people who are hard to detect,Continue Reading

Bogdan Sonjachnyj/Shutterstock Lockdown shrank many of our physical worlds to our homes and their immediate neighbourhoods. However, the roles we needed to perform there expanded. Homes became offices, classrooms and gyms. Technology filled gaps and allowed homes to become remote social spaces. Lockdown provided a unique opportunity to stress-test our homes and their immediate environments, and to gauge whether or not they have supported our everyday needs. Exploring this was the purpose of the Home Comforts survey, conducted by the Place Alliance, a not-for-profit initiative at UCL. The survey was completed by 2,500 households across the UK during the early summer of 2020. A key finding from this research was that the least comfortable dwellings, least supportive neighbourhoods for everydayContinue Reading

Siam Stock / Shutterstock.com As the days get shorter and the second wave of coronavirus sets in, the UK is switching to a new winter economy plan. The package of measures marks a shift in government rhetoric from “jobs retention” to “jobs support” as the new plan focuses on so-called “viable” jobs, rather than protecting jobs in general. For those that previously made their living in the creative industries, this is worrying news. With many sectors of the creative economy unable to resume activity due to the pandemic, many creative jobs may not be seen as viable under the rules of the new scheme. An even greater crisis faces the many creative freelancers who have been excluded from all formsContinue Reading

Cineworld also operates Picturehouse's independent cinemas. Meantime Media/Shutterstock To add an additional shade of darkness to the current cloud of gloom over the country, cinema operator Cineworld announced that it would be temporarily closing all of its cinemas in the UK. Close on the heels of this came a decision by Odeon cinemas that it would only open its doors at weekends. Some commentators have already predicted that this presages the death of cinema. According to the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Statistical Yearbook, Odeon and Cineworld operate just under half of UK cinema screens and account for 48.8% of box office takings. So by any account, this is a significant move. Both operators cite two linked reasons for their decision:Continue Reading

Don't be fooled. They don't really have super powers. nazarovsergey/Shutterstock Having young children in your home may lower your risk of being hospitalised with COVID-19, according to a new study of NHS workers in Scotland. Children often catch coughs and colds, and this includes seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold. Being of the same virus family, many have assumed the immune response to these common cold coronaviruses may provide some protection from COVID-19. Previous studies, however, have shown that the immune response to seasonal coronaviruses doesn’t last long and that reinfections are common. The latest study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that adults in households with young children (aged up to 11 years) had a modestly reducedContinue Reading

PixieMe/Shutterstock Public Health England has admitted that 16,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK were missed from daily figures being reported between September 25 and October 2. The missing figures were subsequently added to the daily totals, but given the importance of these numbers for monitoring the outbreak and making key decisions, the results of the error are far-reaching. Not only does it lead to underestimating the scale of coronavirus in the UK, but perhaps more important is the subsequent delay in entering the details of positive cases into the NHS Test and Trace system which is used by a team of contact tracers. Although all those who tested positive had been informed of their results, other people in closeContinue Reading

In 1968, at the height of the last great influenza pandemic, at least a million people worldwide died, including 100,000 Americans. That year A.M.M. Payne, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, wrote: In the conquest of Mount Everest anything less than 100% success is failure, but in most communicable diseases we are not faced with the attainment of such absolute goals, but rather with trying to reduce the problem to tolerable levels, as quickly as possible, within the limits of available resources… That message is worth repeating because the schism between those seeking “absolute goals” versus those seeking “tolerable levels” is very much evident in the current pandemic. On September 21, the BMJ reported that opinion among UK scientistsContinue Reading

The temporary loss of data relating to 16,000 positive cases of COVID-19 has raised serious concerns about the operation of the UK’s test and trace system. The NHS body responsible, Public Health England, blamed a technical glitch and said cases were added to the system immediately after the problem was spotted. Despite this quick action, many thousands of people have been affected because they were not warned about their contact with an infected person as soon as they could have been. Most of us would agree that human life is sacred and that COVID-19 deaths should be minimised, if not eradicated. On this basis, we could argue that the Test and Trace system has, until now, shown some serious flaws.Continue Reading

People have sought more security and safety in their reading. Andrii Kobryn/Shutterstock During times of crisis, people find themselves faced with lifestyle changes. One of the earliest and most noticeable changes seen during the COVID-19 lockdown was how we consume media — and especially how we read. People tend to find comfort in certain books, and reading habits and genre preferences can change during periods of stress. This helps to explain why much genre fiction has roots in times of significant social, political or economic upheaval. Gothic literature is, in part, a British Protestant response to the French Revolution (1789-99). Science fiction, which emerged as a genre around the fin de siècle, was galvanised by both the industrial revolution andContinue Reading

With the US president, Donald Trump, testing positive for coronavirus, speculation has begun regarding possible outcomes. The reality is, it’s impossible to say for certain what will happen to an individual once they’ve contracted COVID. Some people may have no symptoms at all, while others may have far worse outcomes. It’s one of the many mysteries of the virus that scientists worldwide are working around the clock to untangle. When it comes to risk, there are some things we do know, but many that remain uncertain. There are also some things we can change and some that we’re stuck with. It’s now common knowledge that age is the most important factor driving the risk of worse outcomes from COVID. BeingContinue Reading