Spectator: recent publications

All articles where Spectator is mentioned

My article for Spectator:The coronavirus is spreading through Hong Kong, Shenzhen and other cities in China like a bush fire; tens of millions of Chinese have been ordered to stay at home yet again. Shanghai, a city of 26 million souls, has been split in two.

Britain China Hong Kong city Shanghai city Hong Kong city Shenzhen area West Bank Coronavirus Spectator

The universal appeal of the African savanna

My article for Spectator:My wife and I were lucky to escape for a long-delayed birdwatching holiday in Kenya over Christmas. To have been warm, sunlit and free while so many in Britain were not won’t endear me to most readers, I realise.

Chris Thouless Francis Lenyakopiro Lawrence Ngugi Britain Kenya city Nairobi Spectator Environment Africa

How respiratory viruses evolve to become milder

My article for Spectator:The Queen has suffered ‘mild, cold-like symptoms’ from her Covid-19 infection, according to Buckingham Palace. The wording reminds us that, except in the very vulnerable, the common cold is always and everywhere a mild disease.

Paul Ewald Coronavirus Spectator Omicron

The Covid lab leak theory just got even stronger

My article for Spectator:Two years in, there is no doubt the Covid pandemic began in the Chinese city of Wuhan. But there is also little doubt that the bat carrying the progenitor of the virus lived somewhere else.Central to the mystery of Covid’s origin is how a virus normally found in horseshoe bats in caves in the far south of China or south-east Asia turned up in a city a thousand miles north.

France city Wuhan China Japan Thailand Laos Cambodia city Vientiane, Laos Coronavirus Spectator biology

China is using the climate as a bargaining chip

My article for Spectator:China’s President Xi Jinping has apparently not yet decided whether to travel to Glasgow next month for the big climate conference known as COP26. That is no doubt partly because he’s heard about the weather in Glasgow in November, and partly because he knows the whole thing will be a waste of his time.

Xi Jinping China Energy Spectator

Dismantling the environmental theory for Covid’s origins

My article for Spectator:With a laboratory leak in Wuhan looking more and more likely as the source of the pandemic, the Chinese authorities are not the only ones dismayed. Western environmentalists had been hoping to turn the pandemic into a fable about humankind’s brutal rape of Gaia.

city Wuhan China Coronavirus Spectator Environment

A volte face over what caused the pandemic needs explaining

My article for Spectator:Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, writes that ‘the last year has been an eye-opener for me. I thought, probably like most people, that the world works through official or formal channels, but much of it operates through private phone calls or messaging apps’.

Jeremy Farrar Anjana Ahuja people Coronavirus Spectator

Organic food isn’t better for us – or the environment

My article for Spectator:It is mystifying to me that organic food is still widely seen as healthier, more sustainable and, most absurdly, safer than non-organic food.Following the publication of part two of Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy last week, the organic movement was quick to suggest that organic food and farming offer a way to achieve the strategy’s vision. ‘The recommendations of the National Food Strategy offer genuine hope that by embracing agroecological and organic farming, and adopting a healthier and more sustainable diet, we can address the climate, nature and health crises,’ said Helen Browning, chief executive of the Soil Association, Britain’s most vocal organic lobbying organisation.

Henry Dimbleby Helen Browning Britain liking Spectator Food

The Covid lab leak theory is looking increasingly plausible

My article for Spectator:In March last year, it was widely agreed by everybody sensible, me included, that talk of the pandemic originating in a laboratory was pseudoscientific nonsense almost on a par with UFOs and the Loch Ness monster. My own reasoning was that Mother Nature is a better genetic engineer than we will ever be, so something as accomplished at infection and spread could not possibly have been put together in a lab.Today, the mood has changed.

Anthony Fauci Usa city Wuhan liking Coronavirus Spectator

Why mRNA vaccines could revolutionise medicine

My article for Spectator:Almost 60 years ago, in February 1961, two teams of scientists stumbled on a discovery at the same time. Sydney Brenner in Cambridge and Jim Watson at Harvard independently spotted that genes send short-lived RNA copies of themselves to little machines called ribosomes where they are translated into proteins.

Sydney Brenner Jim Watson city Cambridge Coronavirus Spectator recipe

Temper your excitement about the Covid vaccine

My article for The Spectator:Ever since Giacomo Pylarini, a physician working in the Ottoman Empire, sent a report to the Royal Society in 1701 that Turkish women believed pus from a smallpox survivor could induce immunity in a healthy person – and was dismissed as a dangerous quack – inoculation has been as much an art as a science. But it has proven to be the greatest life-saver of all time, eliminating smallpox and suppressing many other diseases.

Giacomo Pylarini Turkey Ottoman people personality Coronavirus Spectator vaccine

Students who catch COVID may be saving lives

My article for Spectator:It is counterintuitive but the current spread of Covid may on balance be the least worst thing that could happen now. In the absence of a vaccine, and with no real prospect of eradicating the disease, the virus spreading among younger people, mostly without hitting the vulnerable, is creating immunity that will eventually slow the epidemic.

people positive Coronavirus Spectator

Could the key to Covid be found in the Russian pandemic?

My article for Spectator:The killer came from the east in winter: fever, cough, sore throat, aching muscles, headache and sometimes death. It spread quickly to all parts of the globe, from city to city, using new transport networks.

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We know everything – and nothing – about Covid

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Britain’s coronavirus testing is bogged down in bureaucracy

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Britain needs to rediscover failure if it wants to prosper

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The curious age discrimination of coronavirus

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