Boris Johnson has announced a UK inquiry into COVID-19 to start in 2022, a parallel one is being planned in Scotland, and many more will emerge all over the world. But how should such inquiries be designed and run? What kind of inquiry can do most to mitigate or address the harms caused by the pandemic? We’re beginning to look at this question at IPPO (the International Public Policy Observatory), including a global scan with our partners, INGSA and the Blavatnik School of Go

This is a piece run by the Conversation - looking at how we think of risk, before, during and after the pandemic Life is risky and tends to end in death, which makes it easy to become paranoid – about the food you eat, the air you breathe or the strangers you walk past in the street. But what should we really fear, whether as individuals or collectively? After a year of lockdowns and millions of deaths this question is very much in the air as countries weigh up the risks of n

When I was younger I was often impressed with people who could speak confidently, in sweeping, quite abstract terms about big questions. I often didn’t quite understood what they meant but assumed the failure was mine not theirs. As I’ve grown older I’ve discovered that in some fields the failure is indeed mine. Despite many attempts, I still struggle to understand quantum physics and many other fields, from the intricacies of genetics to linguistics. But in the fields closer