Chilling new research from the Lancet Planetary Health has revealed just how dangerous cold weather really is: between 2010 and 2019, there were nearly 60,500 annual excess deaths associated with low temperatures across England and Wales, compared to 800 from extreme heat. Particularly in the North East, which typically experiences the coolest temperatures in the country, residents are advised to wrap up warm this winter to stave off howling winds and the bite of ice cold temperatures. The cold can kill…

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has more:

“cold-related mortality is evidently a considerable health burden, particularly in deprived areas, and should be addressed with targeted public health interventions.”

Guido’s done his own research to help those feeling the chill. The NHS has a few helpful suggestions, including using electric blankets and having plenty of hot drinks. In the event of extreme heat, Guido recommends drinking lots of water, staying in the shade, and performatively convening COBRA meetings to stress the danger. Weather reports should include scary heat maps so people know for sure that the sun is out. With 60,000 annual deaths due to the cold compared to 800 resulting from extreme heat, Guido can only hope that rising average temperatures will save more lives in the future, as a real demonstration of climate justice in action. Always see the sunny side…

A Lancet study has revealed Britain’s Covid death rate is much better than previous statistics have suggested. A new analysis of global excess deaths – a measure the Office for Statistics Regulation told MPs last week is a more accurate count than total deaths – finds the UK is actually a middle-ranking country with an excess death rate of 126.8 per 100,000, almost identical to France’s 124.4 and just ahead of Germany’s 120.5. Anti-lockdown Sweden? 91.2…

The news is set to deal a crushing blow to political point-scoring lovers on social media who enjoy claiming the UK had a particularly awful pandemic compared to similar western countries.

The global average excess death rate from the pandemic has now been calculated at 120 per 100,000, putting Britain only slightly ahead and roughly in the middle of the 191 countries included in the study, placing 102^nd. This is much more positive than if measured by total deaths, which suggests Britain had the 24^th worst pandemic of any country. The Lancet also finds that many countries have been under-reporting deaths to a mass extent, meaning the global death toll may be three times higher than the official figure…

Now we have passed the 14 day point after July 19 we can review if Freedom Day has been the disaster that so many media-amplified experts warned us about. Predicting the future is a sport best reserved for the bookies, though the Covid data continues to disprove yet more prophesies of doom and gloom from these so-called experts. Two weeks ago, 1,200 “international experts” came out with the prediction that Boris’s plan to end lockdown in July was a “threat to the world”. And the left still think Gove must regret his anti-experts moment during the referendum…

Among those ringing the alarm bell included government advisors in New Zealand, Israel and Italy, along with 1,200 signatories to a letter in The Lancet. The piece – pompously entitled “The Declaration” – claimed that Freedom Day was “dangerous and premature”, and cited the 100,000 cases a day figure.

“We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.”

They must have been really sure to make such a bombastic statement…

And who was behind this letter? None other than Carole Cadwalladr. A week after it was published she took to Substack to boast about the effort:

“For weeks, they were seen as fringe voices. At the Citizens we have done everything we can to amplify them. This week, we finally succeeded. It’s just far, far too late.”

Carole’s The Citizens group then went on to host an “emergency summit”, broadcast three days before freedom day. Again she was delighted at the raft of international ‘experts’ lining up to slam the government’s strategy. She described the epidemiological circle-jerk as “an intervention: Britain is the reckless addict endangering not only its own health but that of the world”

“This summit was the equivalent of friends and family coming together to tell us that we can’t run away from this virus. That our denial is only making it worse. That this is “murderous”, “diabolical”, “reckless”.”

As she accurately observed, the press – i, Guardian, Independent and FT – lapped it up…

Yesterday’s Covid stats saw yet another fall, now down to below 22,000 – a 12% drop on last Monday.

Guido can’t remember a time 1,200 so-called experts were proven so wrong in one fell swoop…

The front pages of the Guardian and the Mail could lead readers to believe there have been two new competing studies on the merits of one verses two metres of social distancing. In fact, both stories are reporting on the same study published yesterday in the Lancet. The research shows that infection risk is reduced by 82% with one-metre social distancing, and two metres of social distancing halves the risk again. The difference is a reduction of 82% vs one of 91%…

The WHO states that one metre is enough, advice followed by France. Germany on the other hand, opts for a compromise position of 1.5 metres. The UK is currently one of only two European countries to enforce the two-metre rule. The study broadly concludes the obvious: the more metres the less risk. It’s up to politicians to decide when the law of diminishing returns kicks in…

A Question Time rant from Lancet editor Richard Horton is doing the rounds this morning after he savaged the “national scandal” of “being in this position. We knew in the last week of January that this was coming – the message from China was absolutely clear that a new virus with pandemic potential was hitting cities.” Hindsight is a wonderful thing…

Richard claims the message by the end of January from China was absolutely clear – why then, in late January, did he Tweet:

A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.

— richard horton (@richardhorton1) January 24, 2020

The WHO at the time downplayed the possibility of Coronavirus becoming a global pandemic, and parroted the Chinese authorities ‘findings’ that there was no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission. Something Horton called “clear and confident”…

And, when one examines the global response to 2019-nCoV, Chinese authorities have acted quickly and decisively to control the outbreak. They have shared information rapidly and transparently. Meanwhile, WHO has been impressive: clear and confident decisions and communication.

— richard horton (@richardhorton1) January 24, 2020

Richard’s own journal, The Lancet, included a report on the effects of Coronavirus in China published weeks later in the February edition, which said “2019-nCoV still needs to be studied deeply in case it becomes a global health threat” – implying they did not, at the time, see the virus as a global health threat. Richard is arguing that governments around the world should have seen what he, the editor of one of the world’s premier medical journals, only sees in retrospect…