Panic in the City and on Wall Street underlines the need for governments to do (and spend) whatever it takes in dealing with the coronavirus crisisAs coronavirus has spread globally since February, a tenuous balancing act has been attempted in Britain and much of the rest of the world. Governments have assured populations that necessary precautions and preparations are being undertaken to deal with the potential pandemic. The media has, by and large, resisted the temptation to sensationalise and overdramatise the crisis. Most of the rites of early spring have been observed: at the weekend, London train stations thronged with English and Welsh rugby supporters. A dachshund called Maisie won Crufts.This approach has been understandable, as efforts and hopes are concentrated on containing the virus. But this strange state of pseudo-normality was shattered on Monday. Following a Cobra meeting – chaired for the first time by Boris Johnson – the government’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, said that coronavirus in Britain will soon spread “really quite fast”. Meanwhile, global stock markets collapsed at a rate that recalled Black Monday in 1987. Increasingly, the sense is one of queasily living on the brink of a crisis that will be both lethal and transformative. Monday’s market meltdown suggested it will shine a pitiless light on some of the economic assumptions and complacencies of the post-crash decade. Continue reading...

A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak

Chief medical officer says new regime for minor illnesses likely to start in next fortnight

Britons unknowingly passed on virus after contracting it on flight from London to Vietnam

Move will double number of tests that can be done every day in UK from 2,000 to 4,000

As UK remains at ‘contain’ stage, epidemiologist warns of need to reduce infections spike

Lombardy health system under pressure amid highest daily rise in deaths in country

The truth about how easy it is to catch coronavirus, who is most vulnerable and what you can do to avoid infection

World is looking at Beijing to see what lessons can be learned as new cases of infections fall

What is Covid-19, how does it spread, what are the symptoms, and at what point should you call a doctor?

The number of international tourist arrivals is expected to drop sharply this year, the World Tourism Organization has said, reversing a previous forecast of a substantial increase. The UN body says arrivals are now projected to fall by 1-3% in 2020, instead of the previous forecast of 3-4% growth, with losses of $30bn-50bn (£23bn-£38bn) in international tourism receipts anticipatedTourist hubs in Asia before and after the spread of Covid-19. Continue reading...

Wildfires are ravaging California and Australia – and local fire departments are alarmingly underfunded and underprepared

A colourful puzzle for squaresFelt tips at the ready! Today’s puzzle involves colouring in.The image below shows a square divided into eight segments, and the four ‘mirror lines’ of that square. In other words, when you reflect the square across each of these axes, the square looks exactly the same. Continue reading...

Schools are first line of defence against hunger, Feeding Britain says, with up to 3m pupils at riskA charity led by the archbishop of Canterbury is preparing to help feed children if schools are closed by coronavirus, amid fears the withdrawal of free school dinners could leave up to 3 million children at risk of hunger.Feeding Britain, which runs food poverty schemes in 12 areas of England including Cornwall, Leicester, Barnsley and South Shields, is exploring how to set up emergency programmes similar to those used to feed the poorest children during the summer holidays. Continue reading...

DCMS-based unit aims to identify disinformation about virus and establish its scopeA special cross-Whitehall unit has been set up to counter coronavirus-related disinformation, including from Russia and China, working closely with social media companies to rebut false and inaccurate claims about the disease.Housed in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the unit will aim to identify false information being deliberately spread online and to establish its scope, impact and whether it needs to be actively countered. Continue reading...

Excavation to begin at Richborough, one of England’s most important Roman sitesArchaeologists hope to unlock the story of an ancient amphitheatre by embarking on an excavation at one of England’s most important Roman sites.The amphitheatre at Richborough, Kent, is part of Roman Britain’s longest-occupied site. Continue reading...

This week will offer an opportunity to see the giant star that is 750 times the diameter of the sunEarly risers should look south this week for a nice view of blood-red Antares above the horizon. Often referred to as the heart of the scorpion, Antares is the brightest star in the constellation Scorpio, the scorpion.The star is a red supergiant about 12 times the mass of the sun, 750 times the diameter of the sun, and more than 75,000 more luminous than the sun. Despite being 550 light years away from the sun, its huge luminosity still makes it the 15th brightest star in the night sky. Continue reading...

FCO updates advice after saying travel to Lombardy largely safe despite mass quarantine

Readers are pragmatic in the face of growing panic over the spread of Covid-19Simon Jenkins gives a list of “scares” that have not reached the predicted body count (Let them wash your hands, but not your brain, Journal, 7 March). He does not discuss HIV/Aids and the 1918 flu epidemic, which had devastating consequences. All the medical experts he speaks to are “calm”. Yet the World Health Organization is demanding immediate dramatic action. It cites the actual experience of China moving from 40 cases on 1 January to 3,000 a day in February. Its government was only able to limit this spread by the imposition of a quite astonishing level of social control, including closing all schools and universities, the strict quarantining of whole populations and the use of mass surveillance to track those infected. As the WHO says, this is not a drill and the “carry on as normal” approach is inviting catastrophe.

A scientific theory aims to understand the world. It is only when nature reveals an error that it can be refinedAlbert Einstein once remarked that God is subtle, but not malicious. The material world, he thought, was unpredictable. This made the world interesting but not impenetrable. Einstein, who brought lucidity to the deeply hidden, reasoned that “nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse”. Seen like this, science advances as much through what thinkers get right as what they get wrong. A scientific theory aims to understand the world. But it is only when nature reveals an error that it can be refined.Few understood this better than Freeman Dyson, an insightful and brilliant theoretical physicist, who died last week. His cosmic genius roamed freely. Dyson wrote about religion, biology and the future of human society. He was a cheerful heretic – for example, calling work on nuclear fusion a “welfare programme” for engineers. He was also absurdly wrong about global warming. But his refusal to conform was essential to his view of a scientist as someone who produced theories that were right and wrong but believed in them with equal conviction. Continue reading...

The Pale Blue Dot | Misheard interview question | Breakdown coach | Marmalade gin | Tahini chicken schnitzelYour report (6 March) suggests that astronauts have seen the Earth “as a pale blue dot”. The Earth will have appeared large to any human spacefarers, as none have travelled beyond the moon. The famous image known as Pale Blue Dot was taken, at the instigation of Carl Sagan, by one of the Voyager probes, looking back through rings of Saturn. No one was on that spacecraft at the time.

Government officials to discuss plans for staging sporting events without fans if crisis worsensSports bodies and broadcasters have been summoned by the government to discuss plans for staging sporting events without fans if the coronavirus crisis worsens.Officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will host the meeting on Monday to look at how to handle events if mass gatherings are banned. Continue reading...

You’re washing your hands 10 times a day and have stopped touching your face. What else can you do to improve your health and avoid bugs?It’s been a long, wet winter. Everybody has got colds, and now we are braced for a coronavirus epidemic. Boosting our immune system has rarely felt more urgent, but, beyond eating more tangerines and hoping for the best, what else can we do?Sheena Cruickshank, a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester, has a “shocking cold” when we speak at a safe distance, over the phone. To know how to take care of your immune system, she says, first you need to understand the weapons in your armoury – a cheeringly impressive collection, it turns out. Continue reading...

How do our clothes affect our mood? Sharon Walker delves into her wardrobe with fashion psychologist Dawnn Karen and finds a poignant explanation for her love of party dressesFriday night, 11pm. I am snapping a selfie in the bedroom mirror. Not for Instagram I hasten to add – no one over 40 should do that – but for my “Best Dressed” folder of outfits. Next to me on a chair is a mountain of clothes that have been lying fallow in my wardrobe for more than a year. Some haven’t seen the light of day for as much as a decade. I must wear them all within a week or drag them kicking and screaming to the charity shop. This is all part of a Radical Wardrobe Edit that I’m racing to complete, as decreed by Dawnn Karen, a fashion psychologist, whose new book Dress Your Best Life promises to “harness the power of clothes to transform your life”.The “new” outfits I’ve unearthed from this growing pile are pinging me pleasing little hits of dopamine, delivering the kind of euphoric high I might ordinarily experience on the Ganni website, but the thought of jettisoning a silver vintage dress brings me out in a cold sweat, even though I know there’s no chance I’ll ever again fit into it and would, in any case, rarely have an occasion to wear it. Continue reading...

Chancellor indicates he is willing to write blank cheque to cope with a pandemic

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor?

I’ve always had loads of friends but recently decided that many of them had to go. It has simplified and enriched my lifeOne night about six months ago, as I was tidying up for the babysitter at the same time as battling to put the kids to bed, all while trying to answer a multitude of suddenly-urgent questions they’d had all day to ask, and put lipstick on, I caught sight of my frantic-looking face in the mirror. What, I wondered, was I doing all this for? Was it worth it simply to spend the evening with a couple we didn’t really like, drink insipid wine and make shallow small-talk about other people we don’t really know or want to spend time with?I’ve always been a more-the-merrier type person and someone who prided herself on being a good friend. I have friends from all areas of my life – school, university, work – but as I got older and the demands of raising three young children and work have grown, I’ve realised that something had to give. And that something has ended up being my friendships. Not all of them, but I’ve certainly had something of a reassessment. Continue reading...

Advisers such as chief medical officer Chris Whitty have restored the public’s faith in officialdomThe public has relied on a number of key individuals to keep them informed of developments in the spread of the coronavirus, including doctors, epidemiologists, researchers and health officials. Here are five of the main players who have helped to restore British faith in the value of experts.• Chris Whitty. England’s chief medical officer, took up his post only a few months ago but has acted with calm authority throughout his public appearances since coronavirus emerged as a global health threat. A former epidemiologist, Whitty was appointed professor of public and international health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), the post he held before becoming chief medical officer. He has warned the country that it should prepare to face disruption to many normal activities “for quite a long period”. Continue reading...

An unregulated world can be blamed for its spread, but collective action based on evidence could be the best way to stop itIn 2008, the world successfully pulled together – with Britain playing a catalytic role – when faced with the threat of financial collapse. In 2020, confronted with the threat of a global pandemic, it is every country for itself. There has been no international health summit of national leaders supported by the World Health Organization – although the World Bank has announced a $12bn package of assistance. There are frantic national efforts to create a vaccine and no effort to ensure that, when found and produced in sufficient scale, it will go to the places of need – in all our interests. Britain, with no vaccine production capacity of its own, is especially vulnerable.Instead there are national bans on exports of key products such as medical supplies, with countries falling back on their own analysis of the crisis amid localised shortages and haphazard, primitive approaches to containment. The standards on isolation, quarantine and contact tracing – medieval approaches to disease control in any case, according to Prof Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – vary hugely between countries. Continue reading...

In a week when the UK’s defences were ramped up, five workers describe coping with a climate of fearHeadteacher of a primary school in Nottingham

School closures could force parents to call on older relatives for help – perhaps exposing them to infectionGrandparents are expected to come under pressure to step in to provide childcare if schools shut as a result of the coronavirus, but this could increase their already heightened risk of contracting the illness.Boris Johnson last week played down the prospect of widespread school closures, saying they should stay open “if possible”. But Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has warned that in the event of a major epidemic, schools may have to shut – and if they do it will be “for quite a long period of time, probably more than two months”. Continue reading...

We review the grim statistics from the week that infections passed the 100,000 markThe coronavirus outbreak continued its remorseless spread around the globe with authorities reporting major variations in the disease’s impact in different countries. The figures revealed by doctors included:• 105,820 The total number of people infected by the coronavirus passed a grim milestone last week when it reached six figures. From these there have been 3,558 deaths. Continue reading...

Why did it take so long for the government to summon its emergency committee? Perhaps it should be renamedExactly how powerful is a cobra? I only ask because it seems the species is getting something of a bad name. It can move at up to 12mph, a damn sight quicker than I can run, and the amount of venom it can deliver in a single bite is enough to kill 20 people, or even an elephant. So not to be sniffed at.So why is the government’s emergency committee known as Cobra? You would have thought that the coronavirus crisis would have seen it summoned earlier than the beginning of last week to produce a robust response. I feel it should be renamed the slow loris committee. Continue reading...

The Covid-19 outbreak means Johnson and Cummings now need the help of the government machine they have attackedWhen Harold Macmillan, British prime minister 1957-63, was asked what worried him most, his celebrated reply was “the opposition of events”. This somehow got revised, as such quotes tend to, to “events, dear boy, events”.The beauty of the original reply was that, with his characteristic sardonic wit, Macmillan was also having a crack at the supposed feebleness of the official opposition – Labour – at the time. But that opposition contained some political giants, such as Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell and his opponent in chief, Aneurin Bevan. The two were the titular leaders of the Gaitskellites and the Bevanites. Then, as now, the Labour party was at war with itself; but things were nowhere near as desperate then as they are now. Continue reading...

Proposals include four-week job guarantee, banning over-70s from big gatherings and stadium closures in battle against Covid-19A range of drastic new measures, including emergency legislation allowing people to switch jobs and volunteer to work in the NHS or care homes, are being drawn up by ministers in an attempt to tackle the coronavirus crisis.The measures – which also include plans for courts to use telephone and video links to avoid people having to attend in person – are likely to be included in a special Covid-19 emergency bill, as the government prepares to move to the next phase – delay – of its response to the spread of the virus. Continue reading...

The prime minister washes his hands of more than germs•You can buy your own print of this cartoon Continue reading...

A colour-coded contagion-risk app being rolled out across China doubles as a means of social controlWhen Barack Obama was US president, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had a useful motto: “Never let a serious crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” The Chinese authorities have clearly taken this to heart – as evidenced by the unprecedented scale of their geographical lockdowns and quarantining, restrictions on movement, industrial slowdowns and heightened surveillance.At this distance, it’s impossible to judge how effective these measures really are. But all the experienced China-watchers of my acquaintance tell me that one should never underestimate the gap between realities on the ground and the story as told from Beijing. An instructive illustration of this is provided by a fascinating dispatch from Wuhan in the London Review of Books. It’s by Wang Xiuying (who describes himself as “a pessimist who’s trying hard to stay positive in self-quarantine”). He tells of a good deal of local chaos and serious tensions between the provincial authorities and the big cheeses in Beijing. He also describes great local heroism (particularly among health workers) and self-sacrifice. All of which sounds more plausible to me. Continue reading...

What are the symptoms caused by the virus from Wuhan in China, how does it spread, and when should you call a doctor?

When it comes to containing the outbreak, small mistakes will have big consequences for our healthIn a time of coronavirus, small mistakes can have outsize consequences.In the small southern Italian town of San Marco in Lamis, a man who died before it was known that he was carrying the virus infected his wife and daughter, who then came into contact with dozens of relatives and friends at his funeral – 70 of whom are now in quarantine. Continue reading...

Doctor likely fell ill in the US before flying back to Melbourne and treating 70 patients, says Victoria’s health minister

My father, Arnold Bodmer, who has died aged 90, fled Nazi Germany as a child refugee. In Britain and later in the US he was a scientist renowned for formulating many innovations in nuclear physics, notably through his work on the behaviours of nuclei.His pioneering work, which he completed while on sabbatical at Oxford University in 1970-71, suggested the possibility of collapsed nuclei – a crucial part of the study of quark matter, known as the “strange matter hypothesis”. His ideas continue to have relevance in theoretical physics and are used to explain the behaviours of neutron stars. Continue reading...

Experts hail identification of St Eanswythe, granddaughter of King Ethelbert

Scarves, friends, the example of the US president, can any of them help you follow the latest health advice?“I haven’t touched my face in weeks,” said Donald Trump, at a meeting with airline CEOs about the coronavirus crisis on Wednesday. “I miss it.”Twitter users promptly found recent photos of the president with his hands all over his chops, claiming to have caught him in a lie. But in this case, Trump may have revealed a fundamental truth of life in the time of Covid-19: it is really, really hard to resist touching your face. Continue reading...

Labour may have lost the election but we are still a movement that can fight for change, and that starts at Cop26We are on the threshold of an extraordinary decade. Before now the effects of climate and environmental breakdown were mapped on to the future, but today we can see them all around us.Across England and Wales, towns and villages are under floodwater; fires have raged from Australia to the Amazon; and globally we’re in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, in which we stand to lose up to a million species. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tackling this crisis will require “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” for which “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”. Continue reading...

Researchers say brain pathways begin to erode in late 40s, but can be repaired through dietary changesA low carbohydrate diet may prevent and even reverse age-related damage to the brain, research has found.By examining brain scans, researchers found that brain pathways begin to deteriorate in our late 40s – earlier than was believed. Continue reading...

Have you seen his inbox? It’s all pandemic and Brexit blowback. Don’t tell me he doesn’t want his old life backFace it: “Matt Hancock stars as Pandemic Minister” is one of the all-time WTF pieces of science-adjacent casting. Not since the Bond movie where Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist disabling warheads will you have felt quite so unconvinced. “What do I need to defuse this nuclear bomb?” wonders Bond, only for Denise to answer: “Me.” Oh dear. Well, I guess humans had a good innings.Richards would go on to take the Golden Raspberry for her performance as Dr Christmas Jones (a fine addition to the pantheon of fictional scientists with radioactively silly names, placing her alongside the likes of Bernard Quatermass and The Muppets’ Bunsen Honeydew). Continue reading...

Covid-19 essential guide: can it be caught on public transport, how is it different from the flu, and how sick will I get?

Other high-profile casualties that rely on the travel sector may follow – but smaller businesses will take the biggest hitAs the infection and death toll from coronavirus continues to creep higher, sending ripples of panic through communities and financial markets, the first high-profile corporate casualties are starting to emerge.Related: We don’t need another Flybe – we need a radical plan for regional transport | Christian Wolmar Continue reading...

We’ve been here before, and the direst predictions have not come to passNever, ever, should a government use war as a metaphor in a time of peace. Britain is not at war with coronavirus. The phrase and its cognates should be banned. Those who exploit them to heighten panic and win obedience to authority should be dismissed from public office.Related: No, you won't get the coronavirus from Chinese food. And don't drink bleach | Ranjana Srivastava Continue reading...