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Patrick Vallance was our head of department of medicine at UCL about fifteen years ago.

Yes. I am hoping that some of the reasons why they shouldn't be doing this will filter through to the science teams involved (at least I got through to nephew Al who is working on these viruses) and the media (Newlan is BBC). The key reason revolves around the difficulty getting a serological...

Yes, and for good reason. I know one of the advisers

It is no longer important to know how many people in Sweden are infected with the corona virus, says the Public Health Authority. The public health authority's new guidelines mean that it will no longer be possible to follow the spread in the same way as before. Now the focus will be on...

The problem is that to keep things 'manageable' you need to keep the current infection rate down such that it will take about ten years for everyone to be infected. Higher than that and there will be masses of unnecessary deaths. And it will be impossible to balance the infection rate to order...

An explosive bout of coughing is really quite possibly coronavirus just now. It seems to be the hallmark. I hope not, but I don't think you were overreacting.

The current rate of notified infected people is about 1 in 100,000. If that is only a tenth then the real rate is 1 in 10,000. If you aren't in an obvious hotspot like Hertfordshire I would personally take a risk for the time being as long as carers are feeling well and have no known contacts...

I agree. I cannot see that it can be worse than no mask. I am using a scarf, bandit style.

Absolutely. Nobody knows exactly what the pattern of transmission is for this one and it is perfectly possible that it can be spread by mass gathering. After all, in South Korea thousands of people were infected at a church - isn't that a mass gathering?

Some time back I suggested cleaning your hands with meths. Now you can discover the opinions of my much more famous nephew Al - at least on mixing meths (surgical spirit) with aloe vera. I think he is toeing the party line here though...

It seems to be generally agreed that disposable masks are useful at least in some ways and situations - thousands of professionals are wearing them. If you cannot access disposable masks then homemade ones that maybe can be washed with soap or dunked in bleach would seem a reasonable second...

I don't think the evidence points t that. As far as I know even the cluster of cases that came from the French chalet were all traced and the spread stopped. It is not that difficult to stop spread in most cases it seems. The problem comes with certain individuals who for some reason spread...

It sounds a perfectly sensible idea to me.

What I mean roughly is that it ought to be possible to limit infection to perhaps a total of twice the current number of cases - say 1000 people in the UK. That would be one in 60,000 of the population - rarer than most really rare diseases. I think the situation in Wuhan is something like one...

I do not think it is too late to deal with this crisis. Some countries in the east are doing very well. The rate of new cases in the UK has flattened in the last few days and it may be that the great majority are people coming back from Italy directly or indirectly. That may at least tail off...

I don't like to be constantly critical but I am afraid that to me this looks like a muddle of half-formed and unsubstantiated ideas involving collaborators who seem to have little idea of science. I do not think any formal funding body would fund it. I agree with @InitialConditions that...

I agree but even 'getting through the initial epidemic' is going to need a complete ban on air travel as far as I can see, as judged by the fact that Italy has already run out of hospital beds and the fatality rate there is around 5-6% probably at least in part as a result. Without closing down...

Yes. It may be important that the whole of Italy is now in lockdown. The ridiculous business of Italy infecting the rest of the world after China has got itself sorted out may now stop. With luck Spain, Germany and France will follow suit and we will be free of the second hand cases too. In the...

"One person in a 70,000 seater stadium is not going to infect the stadium, they'll infect potentially a few people they've got very close contact with" Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance on risk factors within crowds of people#COVID2019 latest: http://bbc.in/2TAXmE1 I know Patrick...

There are two different issues. One is the time from picking up infection to being infectious. That tends to go along with the incubation period, which for Covid-19 is around 4-14 days. The virus has to replicate in cells and for there to be a significant excretion that is going to mean several...