Emma Monk trained as a Molecular Geneticist, before giving that up to be a full time Mum. As with many full time mothers she then filled her time with helping to run toddler groups, preschools, PTAs, sports clubs, and more recently several political campaign groups. Having lived in Surrey, Bath, Cambridge and Bahrain, she is now settled in the New Forest with her family
‘Are we in a new Covid-19 wave?’ asks molecular biologist, Emma Monk This week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced we had hit a horrifying milestone: recording 200,000 Covid deaths in the UK since the start of the pandemic. But look around the shops and on the trains and you’d be forgiven for thinking […]
Thought I’d take a look at what some of the esteemed minds that were elected to run this country were tweeting about this fine Sunday morning… First up, we have Andrew Rosindell retweeting about how it is “common sense” to regress over fifty years: Here we have Fabricant, Redwood, and Karl McCartney apparently completely unaware […]
Almost two years since the first pandemic safeguards were introduced on 23 March 2020, unvaccinated people arriving in the UK will no longer have to take tests, and passenger locator forms have been scrapped. The testing rule had already been lifted for people who have been vaccinated, and the government removed the last of their […]
When the Omicron variant emerged in early December, there was a big split in the consensus between three views: “Omicron is mild”, “Omicron is just as bad as Delta” and “let’s wait and see what the data tell us over the coming weeks” Unfortunately, while the sensible scientists and commentators were erring on the side […]
In my very first West Country Voices article I debunked the claim that “There have only been 388 Covid-19 deaths among the under-60s in the UK,” reported in various newspapers back in December 2020. Last week, a similar claim started doing the rounds. People were tweeting figures such as “only 17,000 people have died of […]
Emma Monk takes a look at the ease with which Covid misinformation is created and spread and at the cognitive dissonance on display. Within days of scientists discovering a new Covid-19 variant, now called ‘Omicron’, the usual anti-science/anti-vax culprits were trying to find ways to cast doubt over it on social media. I made a […]
We appear to be living in strange times, where Covid-19 is running rife in the UK, yet the government and most of the press appear to have moved on from the pandemic! So I was initially pleased to see that the BBC was highlighting the fact that we are the ‘virus hotspot’ of Europe. Then, […]
Just over two months since ‘Freedom Day’ and in many places it feels like Covid-19 is a distant memory. Masks have been abandoned, schools are ‘back to normal’, people are crowding back on tubes; meanwhile you still can’t go into a vet’s consulting room with your pet. So where exactly are we with regards to […]
After weeks of speculation on whether or not children aged 12-15 would be offered a Covid-19 vaccination, the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation (JCVI) finally released their report on 3 September. As is often the case, the findings widely reported in the press didn’t fully reflect what the report actually said, and this has […]
The southernmost tip of the British Isles, Jersey, (until recently) had an exemplary track record for its handling of Covid-19. On the tiny island, with a population just shy of 110,000, the authorities started preparing their Covid-19 response before any cases were discovered on the island. They were monitoring their borders, held meetings with commercial, […]
Let me start by saying that I am not a farmer, and I voted to remain in the EU. Until last year, when I got involved with the Save British Farming campaign, I bought into the general idea that the vast majority of farmers had voted to leave. I wasn’t a big fan of the […]
The weekend before the May election the front pages of certain Conservative-supporting newspapers were excitedly reporting that ‘Boris’ was about to announce that foreign holidays were coming back! What a boost to give people just before an election. Especially when you are hoping that the general public will forget the 128,000+ official Covid-19 deaths caused […]
Update Following the recent announcement that twice weekly Lateral Flow Tests will be offered to everyone in England, it’s worth reiterating a couple of things. Firstly, Lateral Flow Tests are for people with no symptoms. If you have any Covid-19 symptoms it is really important you get a PCR test, and that you and your […]
One of the areas where I keep coming across a lot of misinformation relates to testing ‒polymerase chain reaction (PCR), lateral flow tests (LFT), false positives, false negatives, and whether the inventor of PCR really said PCR shouldn’t be used to test for Covid-19! It is easy to get confused by the different molecular biology […]
Much of the misinformation and confusion surrounding Covid-19 relates to whether the vaccines are safe and effective. It is completely understandable to have questions, and no-one should be dismissed for wanting to find the best information out there. I will do my best, using all the available evidence, to cover some of the questions I’ve […]
On 8 January, MP for Somerton and Frome David Warburton gave an interview to the Somerset County Gazette containing a great deal of misinformation. Short of a small link to a fact-checking website in the middle of the article, his views were printed uncontested. Is it right for an MP to be given a platform […]
There are many, many people out there who question whether lockdowns, masks and other ‘restrictions’ are actually more damaging to people’s health, mental health and the economy than the disease itself. This often leads them to conclude that we shouldn’t have lockdowns and that we should somehow simply ‘protect the vulnerable’ and let everyone else […]
Along with thousands of others, I have watched with increasing anger, sadness and frustration as misinformation has been allowed to spread so freely in the last year, not just on social media but across mainstream media outlets too. I have found myself repeatedly engaging with Covid-19 deniers and lockdown sceptics on social media, trying to […]