Five years ago, economists prophesied a prosperous future for Nigeria, and the rest of the continent. Yet today, the country is facing what one leading Nigerian academic recently told me is its “biggest crisis since independence”. The devaluation of the …
The false prophets who doomed Nigeria
Five years ago, economists prophesied a prosperous future for Nigeria, and the rest of the continent. Yet today, the country is facing what one leading Nigerian academic recently told me is its “biggest crisis since independence”. The devaluation of the …
Revisiting China: Did a Pandemic really start in Wuhan?
Nearly four years ago, on 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that “Covid-19 could be characterised as a pandemic.”[1] The series of events leading up to this remarkable statement began only ten weeks earlier (December 31, …
Why children are skipping school
Lily was among the growing number of so-called ghost children — the ones who aren’t in school. I never met her; I only met her mother, Jane, because Lily didn’t feel ready to talk to me. Lily had been off …
Anders Tegnell’s lesson for the Covid Inquiry
After thousands of hours of political inquisition and motivated reasoning, the UK Covid Inquiry has finally allowed mention of the single most important control group in the global lockdown experiment: Sweden. A written submission by former State Epidemiologist of Sweden …
Jonathan Sumption on Gaza, lockdown and the ECHR
Jonathan Sumption is a difficult man to define: revered historian, esteemed lawyer and one of Britain’s greatest public intellectuals. He came to greatest popular prominence during the Covid pandemic as one of the most lucid opponents of the Government’s lockdown …
The sex coach is killing intimacy
There’s a scene in the movie Demolition Man where two characters have sex — or rather, what passes for sex in the futuristic utopia where the film takes place. The act itself has been replaced by a cybernetic facsimile thereof: …
Did lockdowns save the world from Covid doom?
Reviewed by Todd Kenyon and Jonathan Engler
This article is working document and is open to queries and corrections. Email panda@pandata.org
In a previous article in this series we looked at whether or not the SARS-CoV-2 virus was either entirely …
The California militia ready for civil war
Redding, the capital of Shasta County in the far north of California, spreads out in thin strips of suburbia, its freeways reaching up into mountainous upcountry. Here, 19th-century gold-mining settlements crouch in the valleys among snow-ridged glaciers and lines of …
Why did USAID fund the Wuhan lab?
Dwight Eisenhower’s final public address as president is best-remembered for his warning about the rise of the military-industrial complex. But contained within his speech was another stark prophecy, one which has largely been forgotten yet remains just as significant. The …
The collapse of the Leicester dream
On 2 May 2016, in a bad-tempered game that became known as the Battle of the Bridge, Tottenham were held to a 2-2 draw by Chelsea. As the final whistle sounded, a city more than 100 miles away started to …
The false lesson of lockdown scepticism
Now that the US and WHO have both declared an end to the Covid health emergency, one might be tempted to think the pandemic nightmare is finally over. Indeed, for most people, it had already been overtaken by more pressing …
How egg politics failed Britain
We’re still eating a glut of chocolate from the Easter egg-hunt. But we also have a glut of real eggs: over two dozen, from our six back-garden chickens. As my house struggles with an egg surfeit, though, Britain’s shops have …
We must become barbarians
Call me a cynic or an anarchist, but these days I find it impossible to trust anything which comes to me with a seal of authority stamped upon it. I’m not defending this as a healthy response. But it is …
India’s lost lockdown generation
All his life, 15-year-old Rehan Shaikh was known as a quiet, respectful, promising boy. His teachers praised him, frequently telling his mother how bright his future was going to be. In his hometown of Anjangaon, in central India’s Wardha district, …