Coronavirus

Saturday

Debbie Hayton

We must never abandon children during lockdown again

From our UK edition

Schools are far more than mere exam factories. Across the UK, teachers in 32,000 schools and colleges care for children on over half the days in any given year. Or we did until the lockdown in March 2020. Since then, children have missed the best part of two full terms. And while they were out of our sight, some were at risk. Six year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, for example, may have been rescued from the terrible abuse he suffered had his teachers been able to see him every day. But while most children have returned to class now that Covid restrictions are ending, some are still absent. News of anecdotal cases circulate within the profession. A colleague tells me that two sisters in her school never returned.

Friday

Amber Duke

I did everything wrong and still haven’t caught Covid

"I am vaccinated — two Moderna shots, then boosted with a Pfizer booster," Fox News's Geraldo Rivera said as he announced he tested positive for Covid two weeks ago. "I thought for sure that I was immune...I ate some humble pie." The View's Whoopi Goldberg expressed similar surprise when she caught the virus, saying, "It was a shock, because I'm triple vaxxed, I haven't been anywhere, I haven't done anything." "It's one of those things where you think, I've done everything I was supposed to do... Yeah, it doesn't stop Omicron," she added. There have been scores of high-profile people admitting over the past month that you can "do everything right" and still catch Covid-19.

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Thursday

Matt Purple

Our puritanical left-wing elect

Some cross-magazine skirmishing to contend with this week. Over at Commentary, Christine Rosen has written an essay in which she accuses the Atlantic of having a “nervous breakdown.” Per Rosen, one of America’s oldest and most trumpeted periodicals has turned into a ward of left-wing neurotics, quaking in fear over the pandemic, climate change, attractive color schemes, you name it. “The Higher Perspective of the Atlantic," she writes, “is an elite species of panic.” Call it the great Atlantic panic — it's kind of like the Satanic panic except instead of devil worshippers there’s just David Frum muttering as he checks his WiFi router for evidence of Kremlin interference. Anyone who’s read the Atlantic lately knows Rosen is exactly right.

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Rory Sutherland

Is it really such a shock that some people drink at work?

From our UK edition

Thirteen years ago we shared an office building with a large international bank. A common lift connected both businesses to the underground car park. Here I once overheard one of the bank employees describing our offices: ‘And you know what else they have up there…’ He spoke in the kind of wide-eyed, aghast tone you might have expected if he were about to reveal an opium den or a branch of Stringfellows: ‘They’ve got a bar.’ This was true. In the evenings after work, while the bankers downstairs were soberly hard at work destroying the world economy, there were people only yards above them shamelessly chatting over a beer. If some nurses or doctors got a bit sloshed together after work, good luck to them Some people drink at work.

The Spectator

After Omicron: there’s no longer a case for restrictions on liberty

From our UK edition

Covid-19 is in decline in Britain, with Omicron cases now falling as fast as they rose. The booster programme — which covers 95 per cent of pensioners — has helped fend off the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed. This gives Boris Johnson the chance to say that his plan worked, that Britain benefited from having the highest booster protection in Europe and that we can now repair the damage of a two-year crisis. The great recovery can begin — or it could if Johnson were able to lead. His bizarre decision to self-isolate last week — he was under no obligation to do so — gave the impression that he was hiding from questions about his parties and staff misbehaviour during lockdown.

Toby Young

I got Covid (again) – is it time I got jabbed?

From our UK edition

I got Covid a couple of weeks ago. Second time for me, which was annoying because I’d told Caroline that natural immunity provided better protection than the vaccines. She’s the only member of our household who’s been jabbed and began to feel quite smug as we all tested positive, one after another. It didn’t matter how much data I presented her with showing how quickly vaccine effectiveness against Omicron wanes, not least because I couldn’t prove I’d got Omicron. As far as she was concerned, I’d lost the argument.

Wednesday

Michael Simmons

Omicron is on its way out

From our UK edition

Omicron peaked in England in early January, according to figures just released by the ONS. The estimates from the weekly infection survey show that cases in the UK peaked at around four million before falling. In the week ending 15 January, 1 in 20 had Covid in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and 1 in 25 in Wales. We shouldn't be surprised by this We shouldn't be surprised by this — this is how Omicron seems to go world over. As in Gauteng, as in South Africa, as in Lambeth, as in London and now in the UK: it falls almost as fast as it rises. Quite simply, the variant is so infectious that it quickly reaches levels of prevalence that are unsustainable because so many people have been vaccinated, infected and become immune.

Tuesday

Terry and Katie Schilling

Why we pulled our kids out of public school

Public schools have had a rough few years. Since the start of the pandemic, parents have pulled more than one and a half million kids out of the public education system and turned elsewhere. Anecdotally, Catholic and other private schools in our area have wait-lists miles long now, filled with public school refugees. By some estimates, too, homeschooling rates doubled between spring and fall of 2020, and haven’t dropped significantly since. We were part of the public-school-to-homeschool exodus in early 2020 — and in our opinion, a lot of the public commentary attempting to explain the phenomenon misses the mark. Most theories focus almost exclusively on Covid lockdowns. There’s certainly a lot there to be angry about.

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omicron
Dominic Green

Crossing the Omicron Rubicon

We volunteered to serve in the biggest medical experiment in human history. We accepted the biggest peacetime suspension of civil liberties in American history. And we agreed not to ask difficult questions about the origins of the virus. Now it’s time we recovered our freedom — and exercised the responsibility that sustains it. The Omicron variant isn’t the end of the world. It looks more like the beginning of the end. The case numbers are rising even faster than the rate of inflation, but the ICUs aren’t overflowing and the death rate remains low. Covid-19 seems to be becoming endemic, like all the other bugs we might catch in a normal winter. If you’re elderly or obese, or if you have another co-morbidity, then you have a way to go yet.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

I tempted fate – and got Covid

From our UK edition

Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said I knew that I was tempting fate. The main fear I had in mind was that the moment the magazine hit the newsstands some wild new strain of the virus would break out, wipe out half of humanity and lead to quite a cross letters page the following week. Fate had a more minimalist plan. Having dodged Covid for two years, it took me writing a column predicting the end of the virus for the fates to eye me up and snicker: ‘Now we’ve got him.’ The day after I filed, I developed a sore throat and a blocked nose. By the time the magazine was on the stands, I was wondering whether Betty White had chosen to strike me down from beyond the grave.

Rod Liddle

The truth about that No. 10 party

From our UK edition

People seem surprised and a little doubting that the Prime Minister is incapable of remembering if he attended a party in his own back garden in May 2020. It does not come as much of a shock to me, seeing as he has difficulty remembering how many children he has. Beneath that albino mop resides a brain comprising plasma in a perpetual turbulent flux, like you get in one of those tokamaks used in the pursuit of nuclear fusion energy. Except Boris’s brain does not have the correct-strength magnets to hold it all in place, just a skull. As a consequence he possesses no judgment and nothing in the way of principle, no capability for strategic vision and scarcely enough competence to get himself dressed of a morning.

Steve James

Why should I be sacked for refusing the Covid vaccine?

From our UK edition

A few months ago, Sajid Javid was asked how he could justify sacking unvaccinated care home workers if they had been infected with Covid and had natural immunity. The Health Secretary replied as if such people were plainly idiots. ‘If they haven’t taken a vaccine — despite all the effort that’s been made to persuade them, encourage them, provide them with information, introduce them to trusted voices — then at some point you have to move on.’ By ‘move on’ he meant thousands of them should be fired. NHS staff are next in line: we have until 1 April to get jabbed or get out. On a recent visit to King’s College Hospital, Javid asked some of us what we thought of this.

The Spectator

Now Boris must make another admission: lockdown was a mistake

From our UK edition

On 20 May 2020, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement on social media which summed up the conditions in the country. ‘Have you been enjoying the hottest day of the year so far?’ it asked. ‘You can relax, have a picnic, exercise or play sport, as long as you are: on your own, with people you live with or just you and one other person.’ To do otherwise, it didn’t have to say, would be a criminal offence. In 10 Downing Street, however, Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary sent out a very different message to more than 100 staff members. ‘Make the most of the lovely weather,’ it said, and ‘bring your own booze’ for a party in the back garden.

The Spectator

Letters: Unfair care costs will turn the red wall blue

From our UK edition

Take care Sir: Your editorial (‘Counting the costs’, 8 January) makes valid points regarding the funding of social care. The good people of the north in the red-wall seats will be rightly appalled. A couple who have worked hard and made their own way onto the property ladder must wonder what they have voted for. They sit on a property worth £100,000 to £200,000. If they need a care home, they will see their children’s legacy disappear into the hole of care costs while knowing that they are subsidising the same care costs of millionaires. This is deeply unfair and, I daresay, anti-Conservative. There should be no care costs on a modest legacy of, say, less than £250,000.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: No. 10’s garden party, Djokovic’s visa row and France’s vaccine protests

From our UK edition

Home Boris Johnson admitted to attending evening drinks for about 40 staff in the garden of 10 Downing Street on 20 May 2020, when lockdown regulations made social gatherings illegal. ‘We thought it would be nice to make the most of the lovely weather and have some socially distanced drinks in the No. 10 garden this evening,’ said an email from the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds. ‘Please join us from 6 p.m. and bring your own booze!’ Mr Johnson said that he had been talking to Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, about how people could be helped with soaring energy bills.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

I’m a Covid conspiracy theorist

It's official — I am a Covid conspiracy theorist. Aren't we all, at this point? When I used to share my forbidden opinions about the virus and the vaccines, acquaintances called me crazy and friends thought I was joking. They'd cry that surely I don't really believe that the vaccines could affect my fertility, or that government officials wouldn't just allow us to return to normal if we all got the vaccine, or that Covid hospitalization and death numbers could be artificially inflated. But with every new admission from the CDC, every study and piece of reportage, we "conspiracy theorists" are vindicated. And everyone who mocked our distrust of public health officials is eating crow. I wasn't always so obstinate about the pandemic.

conspiracy vaccine mandates
James Forsyth

It’s getting worse for Boris

From our UK edition

Talking to Tory MPs this morning, it is clear that the mood today is even worse than yesterday. Even one of those MPs closest to Boris Johnson thinks that it is now 50/50 whether enough letters go in to force a no confidence vote. Ironically, the improving Covid numbers are changing the calculus for some Tory MPs about a contest. A few weeks ago, even the most ardent Boris critics didn’t think you could have a no confidence vote, given the situation with the soaring Omicron variant. But now it is somewhat in retreat, and that restrictions are likely to go on 26 January giving hostile MPs the chance to do so. PMQs today is, obviously, an important moment. Lots of Tory MPs are holding off on replying to angry constituents until after it.

Tuesday

Alex Perez

AOC and the Florida freedom virus

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like many a New York progressive, headed down to the Sunshine State recently. First she was photographed having a drink with her ginger boyfriend. The youngish lovebirds were having a grand old time, and to that, as a Miami native and a lover of all things 305, I say, good for them. That’s what Miami’s here for, even for the haters. AOC is a hater, no doubt, what with her DeSantis-bashing and insufferable histrionics, but a moron she is not. She may be a ditz, but like Trump, she has a preternatural understanding of the social media political ecosystem and how to manipulate it. That's why she decided to come to Miami and decided to be photographed, smiling and maskless. AOC was not caught.

aoc florida
Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is running out of road

From our UK edition

There has been no good news for Boris Johnson today. After an email leaked on Monday evening showing that the Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary Martin Reynolds invited over 100 staff to a drinks party in the No. 10 garden in May 2020, the Prime Minister has come under fire from his own side. Downing Street has refused to deny reports that both Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie were present at the event. Instead, all No. 10 will say is that Sue Gray's inquiry into alleged Covid rule breaking at various Downing Street parties is ongoing.  The atmosphere in the Commons has been notably muted. The Tory benches were rather quiet when Michael Ellis — Paymaster General — was sent to field an Urgent Question on the issue.

Saturday

Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson

Masks in schools: how convincing is the government’s evidence?

From our UK edition

Why has the government changed its mind and asked children to wear masks in school? When Plan B was announced last month, there was no requirement. But that has changed. Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, was asked why on Monday. He replied that ‘we conducted a small observational study with 123 schools who had followed mask-wearing in classrooms before and saw that they made a difference'. He suggested it was quite a significant study. 'If you just think it through, with a respiratory disease that is aerosol-transmitted, if you are asymptomatic but wearing a mask, you're much, much less likely to infect other people.' The government has now published an ‘Evidence Summary' for the use of face coverings in education settings.