″ The Lord Confinement ″ was caught with a lover at home and resigned

When deciding what to choose for the headlines on Wednesday’s newspapers, the English had a dilemma between two hypotheses that they were pinning today: or blaming the Government on the day that Britain became the European country with the most deaths by covid. -19 or stamped on the front page a photo of a scientist who is an executive consultant who was caught receiving his lover at home.

As was guessed, the “Daily Mail”, “Sun”, “Telegraph” and “Metro” opted for the spicy case.

What happened, anyway? This: Professor Neil Ferguson, today the most celebrated epidemiologist in the country, because he is the model of confinement that helped Boris Johnson to shape the English strategy of blocking the coronavirus, he was forced to leave the post of consultant after breaking the rules that helped to define. As? He received his lover at home.

Ferguson, 51, a renowned researcher, “workaholic”, heads the group of scientists at Imperial College whose projections (500,000 dead if there were no confinement) helped to persuade the government of the need to impose strict rules of physical distance.

The researcher resigned from his position at Sage, the emergency scientific advisory group, for making “an error of judgment”. “It was a wrong decision. I acted on the belief that I was immune. I deeply regret any weakening of the messages surrounding the continuing need for social distance to control the devastating epidemic. The Government’s guidance is unequivocal and exists to protect us all. I apologize. that is why”.

The Daily Telegraph revealed that Antonia Staats, her 38-year-old lover, had crossed London to visit him at least twice since the blockade was imposed. The tabloids did not forgive him – and hit him, whom they called “Mr. Confinement”, on the front page. This happened, it is repeated, on the same day that the United Kingdom reached a terrible historical mark that throws the country into the depth of the world list of cases of the pandemic.

Deaths of twins under study

The deaths of at least two pairs of twins and two pairs of British siblings over the span of hours or days are being looked at as an indicator of the influence of a genetic factor on the severity with which SARS-CoV-2 affects those infected. The hypotheses put forward by scientists range from the influence of the receptor to which the coronavirus clings to cells, the definition of resistance to infection and the reaction of the immune system. 50% of the symptoms appear to be genetic, says a team of epidemiologists from King’s College, London.

“These deaths warn that this may be genetic, but when people live together they also share an environment,” notes however the leader of the researchers, Tim Spector, quoted in “The Guardian”. Marcus Munafo, a professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Bristol, warns that caution is needed in this type of reading.

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