Tracey Brown and Carl Heneghan

Tracey Brown is the director of Sense about Science and Professor Carl Heneghan is director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.

Boris Johnson needs to be more open about Covid’s risks

From our UK edition

The Prime Minister wants us back to normal by Christmas. If he is serious, then his government needs to take a big step forward in how it communicates evidence on Covid-19 with the public. Every day we get new insights about the coronavirus from research and statistics. Yet, for some reason, the government is holding its cards close to its chest about how it is assessing new scientific developments, and how this may affect policy decisions. Government communications currently seem to avoid telling people where their risks from Covid are actually low. There is a general reluctance to speak openly about how risk is assessed and the trade-offs there are with other competing health risks and economic impacts.