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I have spent many years watching politicians bring ignorance, stupidity and self-interest to issues (Letters, 11 April . That said, I have to agree with Bryn Glover that some of them deserve applause for their efforts in dealing with the coronavirus. I won't be criticising their shortcomings on this given they've inherited a nightmare and …

Graham Lawton outlines three distinct options for navigating our way to a safer future: hold the lockdown restrictions for an extended period to see off the virus; build medical capacity to cope with a second wave and then ease the lockdown; or end the lockdown more rapidly but shield the vulnerable. Surely a better strategy would be to integrate all …

You reported on the question of whether warmer spring conditions could slow the virus's rate of spread 4 April, p 8 . Have any of the studies into the effects of temperature and humidity on the transmission of covid-19 taken air conditioning into account? The use of air conditioning is widespread in most wealthy countries …

Carrie Arnold explains the long road to an effective and safe coronavirus vaccine 21 March, p 44 . The creator of the rubella vaccine, Stanley Plotkin, has suggested one way to speed things up : we should bypass ordinary testing protocol and expose volunteers in vaccine trials to the coronavirus after they are given test …

You investigate why Australia has relatively few serious cases of covid-19 18 April, p 10 . One factor could be that, at the end of summer in an outdoor living nation, few people will be deficient in vitamin D. By contrast, in the northern hemisphere, other than in the tropics, people's vitamin D levels are …

Sam Edge is certainly right when he says that pharmaceutical firms only bear a small part of the costs of vaccine development, as "most of their work is founded on existing research..." (Letters, 4 April ). That is the way science works. Even Isaac Newton noted that he had seen further only because he could …

You report on a new study suggesting that cave bears died out at the height of the last glacial maximum 24,000 years ago because their skulls were shaped in a way that prevented them from switching to a diet of meat 11 April, p 18 . Like many similar ideas, this doesn't explain why the …

Alert readers of "Creatures of the abyss" may have wondered about the names Osedax (said to mean "bone-eating" in Latin) and Xylophaga (said to mean "wood-eaters" in Latin) 18 April, p 40 . They seem to have nothing in common, so which bit means "eat"? The explanation for the conundrum is simple: Osedax is based …

Exoplanet TOI-849b has a surface area that is about 12 times that of Earth ( 18 April, p 14 ).

Liz Berry wrote about the possibility of immunity from pathogens by eating earthworms (Letters, 25 April ). Back in the 1950s, my brother was found at the bottom of the garden rolling earthworms in sugar before eating them. He hasn't suffered from pathogens, but does have high blood pressure – presumably from all that sugar.