Climate Etc.

By Nic Lewis

The course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is of great interest, as it is one of very few advanced nations where no lockdown order that heavily restricted people’s movements and other basic freedoms was imposed. As there has been much comment, some of it ill-informed, on how the COVID-19 epidemic has developed in Sweden, but relatively little detailed analysis published in English, it is worth exploring what their excellent publicly-available data reveal. Continue reading →

By Nic Lewis

Key points about the recent Nature paper by Flaxman and other Imperial College modellers

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by Roland Hirsch

Mass spectrometry is essential for research in climate science.

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by Judith Curry

Interesting papers that I’ve recently spotted

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By Nic Lewis

Introduction

I showed in my last article that inhomogeneity within a population in the susceptibility and infectivity of individuals would reduce the herd immunity threshold, in my view probably very substantially, and that evidence from Stockholm County appeared to support that view. In this article I will first provide other evidence pointing to such population inhomogeneity being very considerable. I will then go on to consider how the overshoot of infections beyond the herd immunity threshold could be reduced. Continue reading →

By Nic Lewis

The current approach

A study by the COVID-19 Response Team from Imperial College (Ferguson et al. 2020[i]) appears to be largely responsible for driving UK government policy actions. The lockdown imposed in the UK appears, unsurprisingly, to have slowed the growth of COVID-19 infections, and may well soon lead to total active cases declining. However, it comes at huge economic and social costs, and substantial COVID-19-unrelated health costs.

Worse, the lockdown is merely a holding strategy, which offers no long term solution to the COVID-19 problem. The eventual total number of deaths for COVID-19 are not reduced relative to any less restrictive policy that likewise avoided the health system being overwhelmed. Deaths are merely spread over a longer period, assuming that eventually restrictions are lifted and people’s lives return to normal. Continue reading →

By Judith Curry

My latest selection of interesting articles.

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