The two variables that will predict the extent of any NHS winter crisis. And what we can do about them.

The crucial factor is how effective vaccines are against hospitalisations for the Omicron variant.

A big question for libertarians: what would they do about obesity?

This ideology celebrates willpower, yet scientific research challenges how much of it we have when making dietary choices.

Stephen Booth: The Northern Ireland Protocol. A crisis is averted. But for how long?

That Switzerland and New Zealand each have their own arrangements suggests that a bespoke arrangement ought to be possible.

Fifteen million people have been vaccinated against Covid on time. Here are thirty more fields in which Britain leads the world.

The success in procurement and distribution prompts the question of what else we are outstandingly good at.

Luke Evans: While we all hope for a vaccine, we know that we will never return to pre-pandemic normal

Although we all have to be working for the best, we also have to be preparing for the worst.

J. Meirion Thomas: If Covid-19 becomes permanent, how will we adapt?

There has been immense optimism around a vaccine. But without that, societies must consider how to live with this disease.

Raghib Ali: What I’ve seen as an epidemiologist on the Covid-19 frontline. And why it’s hard to see how the NHS now couldn’t cope.

I immediately volunteered to help out at the hospital, where I already had an honorary contract – as well as at the soon-to-open Nightingales.

We still do not understand Spanish flu – so no wonder the danger posed by the coronavirus is unquantifiable

The NHS issues studiously calm advice, and we wait to see whether the disease can be contained.

Matt Hancock: 75 years on, let’s celebrate how we Conservatives were the original Party of the NHS. And are still serving it today.

It was Henry Willink, supported by Churchill, who declared the NHS should be “free at the point of delivery, according to need not ability to pay.”

Rebecca Lowe: Why the taxpayer should fund space exploration

There is a fundamental human need and desire to know more about the universe, to engage with it, to play our part and explore and achieve.