2/5 An effective global response to a pandemic requires investment in 2 major public goods:
Shared knowledge – on surveillance, research, evaluation
Population immunity – no-one is safe until everyone is
See also: euro.who.int/en/health-topi…
3/5 Multilateral collaboration:
Indivisible - all parties treated equally
Diffuse reciprocity – even if one party gains benefit in one transaction, these even out over time.
Dispute resolution should ensure compliance with what was agreed.
I've been citing @SebastianEPayne all week in discussions with other journalists - England's new COVID policy is political, pure and simple. Let's not pretend there is a scientific basis
I know some (very) senior colleagues believe health and politics should be kept separate. I disagree strongly (for avoidance of doubt I don’t mean party politics - I’ve never been a member of a party)
My inspiration is Rudolf Virchow, perhaps the greatest pathologist of his era. Everyone in public health should read his account of typhus in Silesia
Struggling to understand what is happening in Cornwall? So am I.
As Mr Johnson says, "the EU "misunderstand that the UK is a single country and a single territory" and the EU " just need to get that into their heads" news.sky.com/story/brexit-b…
Except it isn't, and hasn't been for a long time, as Northern Ireland has been different from GB since it was created and the NI Protocol clearly placed NI & GB in separate markets, as was obvious to anyone who read it davidallengreen.com/2021/06/the-go…
... which may not have included the UK Prime Minister
My personal and academic background mean I have a particular interest in the intersection between Brexit and Good Friday Agreement so I listened to #Marr exchanges with Edwin Poots & @MarosSefcovic with some interest. Some reflections (thread)
From the beginning it was obvious that if UK left Customs Union/ Single Market there had to be a border in Irish Sea or on island of Ireland. Good Friday Agreement ruled out latter ... unless ...
... as many English Brexiteers explained to me, Ireland would "see sense" and rejoin UK (recall, this was 2016 and as I pointed out Ireland was celebrating 100 years since Easter Rising and EU was more popular than ever, but then what do I know?)
Much talk on @BBCWorldatOne about "acceptable level of COVID deaths". Can someone explain how you maintain a level of anything when it changes exponentially and you are always dealing with data (on becoming infected) ~10 days out of date? Do we need Mk 1 crystal ball?
And please don't use comparison with tolerance of deaths on roads. They don't change exponentially. With COVID, if rates are not going down they are going up. And if they keep going up (R>1) they soon get very high