pandemic
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How to Avoid Catching Covid – July 2025 update
The vast majority of the population of the UK have had at least one confirmed or suspected Covid infection but some people, including myself and my husband have never had Covid and many people have only had it once. In some cases this will be down to luck, or to some little understood aspect of Continue reading
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Achieving Change via a Multistage Strategy
As we enter the second third of 2025 many people feel powerless to carry on the fight for policies such as clean air in healthcare against a backdrop of the world around us continuing to pretend to move on from the pandemic. Indeed it sometimes feels as though all our campaigning has been to no Continue reading
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‘Calm mongering’ : Constructing False Narratives about Covid-19
The ways in which the UK government, the health services and general public seem to be in complete denial about the continuing dangers posed by Covid-19 and its impacts on health, the economy and society is a key theme discussed across this website. This blog discusses a recent paper from the US which coins the Continue reading
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Missed Opportunities: The First Eighty Three Days of 2020
Analysis of what witnesses said at the Covid-19 inquiry and other sources suggest that Britain was ill prepared for the pandemic, and went into the first lockdown far too late, and as a result many lives were lost, the NHS more or less collapsed in the sense that staff were subjected to intolerable pressures from Continue reading
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Happy 2025?
The approach of the five year anniversary of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the new. In my blog post Happy 2024 I called for far more proactive public health communication about the dangers posed by Covid-19 and better preparedness for the Continue reading
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Summer Wave 2024
Whilst politicians, the media and the UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) continue to pretend that Covid-19 is now a seasonal illness that strikes in late Autumn and Winter, the UK, in common with many other countries, now seems to be entering the second significant wave of infections of spring/early summer 2024. This blog provides Continue reading
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Preparing for the Next Pandemic
Earlier this year the World Economic Forum at Davos held a discussion about ‘Disease x’ and how to prepare for it. This blog discusses the issues focusing on the UK context in terms of preparedness for another pandemic. I am fully aware that we are still in the current pandemic as confirmed by the World Continue reading
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WHO – Covid-19 is airborne!
Yes, we have known for years that Covid-19 is airborne (SARsCoV2) and indeed, individual officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) have been admitting it for years. Yet a powerful body within the WHO has clung onto their original line that it is transmitted by droplets. This all changed on 28 March when the WHO Continue reading
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Longer Term Economic Impacts of Covid – the Labour Market
The pandemic had a serious impact on the economy during the lockdowns of 2020 and early 2021, but it has continued to cast a long shadow over the economic performance of the UK and far more so than many other western economies. So what is going on? This blog focuses on the labour market impacts, Continue reading
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Measuring Excess Deaths
Summary The way the Office for National Statistics (ONS) measures the number of excess deaths has never attracted much controversy before. The current method is relatively simple to understand and although far from perfect, it is a very easy task to explain the potential problems. It has proved particularly useful during the pandemic as a Continue reading
GILLIAN SMITH About Me
I am a semi retired social researcher and have previously held a number of senior social research positions in Whitehall Departments. See an interview with me here. I live in a London suburb with my husband who has suffered multiple serious illnesses over the last few years. I myself am living with MND.
This series of blogs represent a personal, evidence based perspective based on living in the UK at a time when we are all meant to be ‘living with COVID’. Although I am a social scientist by training, I have worked closely with people from different disciplines throughout my career in order to present a complete picture of the evidence on specific policy issues. I am therefore scientifically literate but where I quote evidence based on research beyond my particular expertise it is always validated with relevant experts. I am a member of the Clinically Vulnerable Families group, though please note that the information presented here and any views expressed are my own. We are a friendly, supportive group and can be found via Facebook in private mode or in public mode via X (formerly twitter) Or BlueSky.Social
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Living on Plague Island 