The real Covid conspiracy

The departing director of the world’s second biggest philanthropic donor and one of the most influential funders of scientific research was doing his best to sound noble. In an interview marking his departure from the Wellcome Trust, Sir Jeremy Farrar …

Is the Government spying on you?

“Government cracks down on spread of false coronavirus information online,” announced a UK Government press release on March 30, 2020. “Specialist units” are tackling dangerous misinformation, disinformation, criminal fraudsters, and “false and misleading narratives”, we were told.

But, as Big …

Why are excess deaths still so high?

Around the middle of last year, researchers in several countries started noticing something disturbing: despite the fall in Covid deaths everywhere, excess deaths (compared to the pre-pandemic five-year average) were actually rising. Even more worryingly, a disproportionate number of those …

Xi’s plan to take back control

For a country that prides itself on 5,000 years of unbroken history, it is remarkable how often China has reinvented itself. Since Mao established the People’s Republic in 1949, there has been war, famine, isolation, brutality, communism and state capitalism. …