One year after a fire nearly destroyed the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the cause of the blaze remains a mystery.

On April 15, 2019, the 850 year old gothic building was engulfed in flames, sending its iconic spire crumbling to the ground.

Despite police initially asserting that an electrical short circuit was the probable cause of the fire, Europe Echaffaudage said that the electricity supply to the two lifts on the site "was perfectly within specifications and well maintained."

12 months on and there is no official conclusion as to how the fire started.

The UK government has extended its lockdown for another three weeks. But could the shutdown of society be doing more harm than good? In fact, is there any evidence it is doing any good at all? Dr John A Lee, a recently retired professor of pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, has repeatedly called for a critical and dispassionate examination of the evidence in relation to Covid-19, raising questions about the government and its advisers' interpretation of the data. spiked caught up with him to find out more.

spiked: You have been a relatively lone voice in questioning mainstream assumptions about coronavirus. Why have you found it important to speak out?

Dr John A Lee: As a doctor and a scientist my entire career, I believe that medicine and science have improved life immeasurably over the past 200 years, and especially over the last 50 years. But in the particular mix of science, medicine and politics that we are seeing now, I am not absolutely sure that is the case. I think it is more important than ever to try and look at this issue in a clear way in order to make sure that we are really doing the right thing on the basis of the right ideas. And it isn't clear to me at the moment that we are.

spiked: What problems do you see in the way figures are currently being recorded and reported?

Lee: The figures are just so unreliable. It's very difficult to understand when you are looking at figures from different countries, and figures in isolation about things like death, what they really mean. And obviously, if we can't understand what the figures mean, it is quite difficult to then know what we should do about them.

These figures are then fed into models of the disease and the epidemic which are being used to influence and inform public policy. But those models are only as good as their input data and the assumptions they make. And there are so many unknowns which means the models' outputs are really quite questionable. And given that we have now got ourselves into this situation, for a variety of reasons, getting ourselves out of it using the same models and predictions is even more questionable. So we are in a very difficult situation.

For example, we are currently in lockdown for two reasons. One is that the initial figures suggested that we were dealing with a very highly virulent disease. The World Health Organisation initially suggested that the case-fatality rate - the proportion of people diagnosed with the disease who die - would be 3.4 per cent. This is a very high number which would have caused a huge number of deaths. But as we have had gradually more and more data coming in, those percentages have been falling. In many examples, more complete data are now suggesting case-fatality rates of 0.4 per cent. My guess is that it will end up between 0.5 and 0.1 per cent, and probably nearer to the lower end of that. So if the disease isn't as virulent as was originally thought, the number of deaths will be correspondingly lower.

Nearly a third of 200 randomly tested residents of Chelsea, Massachusetts, were found to have Covid-19-related antibodies in yet another indication that the virus could be far more widespread and much less lethal than believed.

All of the participants "generally appeared healthy," but around half of them admitted that they had suffered at least one coronavirus symptom in the past month, according to the Massachusetts General Hospital researchers. Those who had previously tested positive for Covid-19 in the regular nasal swab were deliberately excluded from the study.

A total of 64 out of 200 blood samples tested positive for antibodies "linked to COVID-19." However, Dr. Vivek Naranbhai who conducted the testing, warned that the staggering result does not necessarily mean that up to a third of the Chelsea population had already contracted the virus ― and recovered without even knowing ― and that many of those tested might still be contagious.

The WHO, media and national governments have told us for weeks now that COVID-19 is a plague-like pandemic that is or will decimate the global population. One month into total lockdown of the west and much of the rest of the world, let's check their own statistics to gauge how far along their 'plague' is...

I began collecting data on the 26th of March and chose what was then the top ten countries by 'infection': China, Italy, Spain, the US, Germany, Iran, France, Switzerland, the UK, and South Korea. To these I added the world statistics as well as Australia - just because I live here - and on the 12th of April 2020 I added (and backdated) Sweden as a control group of a 'non-lockdown' country (although South Korea also did not have extensive lockdowns).

I also kept the statistics of the top ten countries by 'death', starting 26th March: Italy, Spain, China, Iran, France, the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Obviously I added the world total, Australia and Sweden to remain consistent with the above list.

Much of the $350 billion in the Small Business Administration's emergency coronavirus relief fund was effectively spoken for within the first minutes of launch, according to senior banking executives.

"We didn't even get through the first five minutes of applications," a JPMorgan Chase senior banking executive said.

The bank received over 60,000 applicants for the Paycheck Protection Program within those first five minutes, a senior executive at Chase said. When funds ran dry after less than two weeks, only 27,000 loans had ultimately been approved, Chase said.

After reports revealed details about which companies had been successful in securing emergency funding, small-business owners across America were angry about having never made their way to the front of the line.

The Spanish government has just "authorized" the military to prepare planes for aerial spraying of disinfectants across major metro areas as confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to rise, reported La Razón News.

The order was first published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado, the country's official gazette, on Friday, that "authorizes the NBQ (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) units of the Armed Forces and the UME to use biocides authorized by the Ministry of Health in disinfection efforts to deal with the health crisis caused by the coronavirus."

According to the order, "the most effective disinfection techniques are the use of aerial means because through them, with nebulization, thermonebulization and micronebulization techniques, all surfaces are reached quickly, avoiding reliance on manual application, which it is slower, and sometimes it does not reach all surfaces because there are obstacles that prevent reaching them."

The order continues to say "aerial disinfection" missions will be conducted "regularly" as long as the pandemic continues to ravage the country.

On Friday, Spain reported 5,252 new infections, the most significant jump in cases in more than a week, pushing up total cases to 184,948, with 19,478 deaths. The surge in cases could suggest that curve flattening via strict social distancing measures are not working, hence why the government has called up the military to conduct aerial disinfectant spraying missions.

US and Syrian forces and local residents have engaged in a tense war of position in the country's northeast in recent months, with Syrian troops and locals repeatedly blocking American convoys attempting to make their way through local communities. Fortunately, most of these incidents have taken place without either side resorting to deadly force.

Residents of the villages of Abu Qasaeib and al-Rhaia al-Souda in the al-Qamishli district, Al-Hasakah governorate banded together to intercept and turn back a US convoy of five vehicles, preventing them from traveling through their communities along a key local road, the Syrian Arab News Agency has reported.

Video footage reportedly shot outside one of the villages shows locals, activists and troops singing songs and waving a Syrian flag after engaging the US convoy in a short standoff and forcing it to turn back. No gunfire was exchanged and no one was hurt in either of the incidents.

Only 9% of Britons want life to return to "normal" after the coronavirus outbreak is over, a survey suggests.

People have noticed significant changes during the lockdown, including cleaner air, more wildlife and stronger communities.

More than half (54%) of 4,343 people who took part in the YouGov poll hope they will make some changes in their own lives and for the country as a whole to learn from the crisis.

And 42% of participants said they value food and other essentials more since the pandemic, with 38% cooking from scratch more.

The survey found that 61% of people are spending less money and 51% noticed cleaner air outdoors, while 27% think there is more wildlife.

Three men, who all live outside of Steamboat Springs, were arrested in the city Monday evening on charges of not complying with the public health order after refusing to leave a friend's residence, police said.

Around 9 p.m. on Monday, a person called police to report that a roommate had invited friends over at their residence. The caller tried to get the visitors to leave, but was unsuccessful, and then called police, according to Annette Dopplick, operations commander with the Steamboat Springs Police Department.

At least two paramilitary police have been killed by unknown assailants in the Indian-controlled Kashmir region, local media reported. The attackers fled the scene, prompting a manhunt.

Unidentified militants reportedly opened fire on a joint patrol of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and local police in the Sopore area of north Kashmir's Baramulla district on Saturday, wounding a number of troopers.

The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital, where at least two CRPF personnel were pronounced dead on arrival. Other media reports indicate that the third trooper died at the hospital shortly afterwards.