Mike Clark

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

@Jean__Fisch Thus when France locked down on 17/3/20 we were not surprised and indeed were relieved that we hadn’t travelled. Of course the UK decided to follow that example a week later on 23/3/20.

@Jean__Fisch We both understood exponential growth of infectious diseases and as a lecturer on the Cambridge undergraduate medical courses I was familiar with the lectures on pandemic viruses. We both came to the conclusion that the situation looked serious and thus took individual action./2

Let me show how useless the conclusion of UK's covid inquiry is that "UK should have locked down 1 wk earlier" Here the report of GOV UK of 10/3/20: - 373 cases, flat - 6 deaths Is that the threshold to close 5d later next time (and take the full societal and economic hit)? 1/

At a guess, the next step after this "users’ location revealed" thing for the big ragebait accounts will be to get a VPN that surfaces in their desired country, and set up an App Store account in that country, download the app from there, voila. They’re "from America".

@Jean__Fisch @BXLOlivier @whippletom It’s an infectious airborne disease so of course lockdowns work as a means of limiting that spread. The critical things to learn is how to speed up development and delivery of a vaccine whilst limiting the spread of the virus in the meantime.

@BXLOlivier @whippletom So (in a way unfortunately if you see what I mean :-), lockdowns "work" But as someone said, it's like chemotherapy It would be great if we could avoid it or at least limit its implementation because we know better how they work

Instead of trying to clarify my thoughts, I should have simply waited for @whippletom's view who, as always, puts the finger on the wound Without better data, the downside risks of massive deaths will invariably make lockdowns unavoidable thetimes.com/article/3c7c89…

This is wild. Remember the NJ crytic lineage? I posted 18 months ago that the Spike was too divergent to predict ACE2 binding, and asked if someone else could figure it out. Some colleagues took me up on it. Guess what they found? 1/ twitter.com/SolidEvidence/…

I've written about my thoughts, tangentially to the inquiry, on covid post-mortems. About confident maths, lack of confidence, and whether we should experiment on kids (we should). If I ever write about covid again, assume it's a hostage situation. thetimes.com/article/3c7c89…

"Boris Johnson took four days off from official government business during a key period in the UK’s Covid preparation when the NHS was bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the virus." When we most needed a leader we, instead, had this guy. theguardian.com/politics/2025/…

Excellent report. It was obvious to me at the time -we isolated on 12 March, 11 days before it was mandated. Of course, if lockdown had happened earlier, there would have been fewer deaths, and uneducated politicians would have claimed that the lockdown was unnecessary.

T-regs for the win! Love to see immunologists win the Nobel prize. The discovery of Foxp3 expressing T-regulatory cells has transformed our understanding of how the immune system does not attack itself. It used to be thought that the thymus was the gate keeper. in the late 90's / early 2000's a subset of T cells were identified that help the body not attack itself. Foxp3 is the name of the gene that was discovered that controls this lineage of T cells T regulatory cells, today, are part of immunology's common lexicon and a frequent cell type to figure out how to harness to treat or prevent autoimmune disease. A well deserved prize!

29 missing Hen Harriers & nearly 40 birds of prey poisoned, trapped or shot in Yorkshire Dales National Park since 2015. New blog ⬇️ raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/10/04/29-…

the more i think about it, the more i absolutely love this

'From 2000 to 2024, annual measles cases in the US averaged less than 200. In 2025, more measles cases have been reported than any year in more than 3 decades, with 1356 cases confirmed as of August 12, 2025. The surge in measles cases since 2020 coincides with declining vaccination coverage, increasing the risk of measles outbreaks'. jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

More than just a race 💛 The yellow jerseys will bring with them a transformational social impact programme to inspire cyclists, tackle health inequalities and promote sustainability. @LeTour | @LeTourFemmes | @BritishCycling

If Trump was President in 1940