[tomtom]

BBC Panorama showed they were counting individual paper towels and individual gloves in their ppe delivery totals...

[ali k]

BBC Panorama showed they were counting individual paper towels and individual gloves in their ppe delivery totals...

The one the government is now accusing of being biased you mean?
https://mobile.twitter.com/arusbridger/status/1256859029420290049

Note that they haven’t disputed any of the facts presented. They only have a problem with who spoke about those facts.

[Nigel]

I will also grant the (claimed) possibility that this actually what the science said, but in that case why have they not persisted with the original "do nothing" strategy?

This phrase really bothers me. There is no bearded man, high on a mountain, labouring down with stone tablets inscribed with 'The Science'.

There is no such thing as 'The Science'.

There are however, multiple scientific inputs of varying degrees of reliability. Once collated, the leadership elects a strategy. This is 'The Politics' for which No 10 appears very determined to avoid accepting responsibility.

The scientific output from SAGE looks compromised by political input too, which makes foisting responsibility onto neutral advisers like Whitty and Vallance even more egregious. Are either of them PM now, to dictate decisions to the country??

Boris needs to own his own decisions.

Yes JR agreed completely - I meant to put "the science" in quotations! Made myself watch the briefing yesterday, during the questions part of which the deputy CMO Jenny Harries answered a question about lifting the lockdown by saying that "we don't have enough information yet to be very clear on the immune status". Bit more here - https://inews.co.uk/news/health/we-dont-have-enough-information-yet-on-immunity-a-senior-medic-has-warned-2787219 

I nearly choked on my beer! So in early May we don't yet have enough information on immunity. Fair enough, but how come we had enough information / "science" in early March to temporarily pursue a strategy of herd immunity?! The consequences of that mis-step are now becoming tragically clear.

Given that we are now gearing up to basically copy what South Korea did in late January (test, trace, isolate), the question has to be why didn't we do this back then? Something obviously went very wrong somewhere between SAGE ("the science") and Downing Street ("the politics").

[ali k]

how come we had enough information / "science" in early March to temporarily pursue a strategy of herd immunity?! The consequences of that mis-step are now becoming tragically clear.
Something obviously went very wrong somewhere between SAGE ("the science") and Downing Street ("the politics").

Not sure if you’ve seen, but former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King has set up a 12-strong panel of academics to look at “the science” due to the lack of transparency of SAGE. Ostensibly to explore ways to exit the lockdown but presumably they’ll look at other decisions that have been made along the way. Press conference today at 4pm.

[ali k]

former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King has set up a 12-strong panel of academics to look at “the science” due to the lack of transparency of SAGE.
Press conference today at 4pm.

Sorry, 4pm tomorrow.

[Nigel]

Thanks for the heads up Ali, I'll try and watch that.

Current daily briefing notes a "slight dip" in most recent daily testing numbers. Of a slight, neither here-nor-there, margin of error, barely worth mentioning drop of 43,000 tests, from the maximum two days before.

[ali k]

Yeh, it's amazing. The National Medical Director of NHS England. A professor of medicine no less. Someone you might think would know how to interpret a statistic or two. Suggests that an almost 40% reduction from Friday's high point is just a "slight dip" due to the weekend. When there's been no discernible weekend variation whatsoever. In fact Fridays have if anything previously shown a slight drop in numbers for whatever reason.

And we're supposed to believe these people straddling the government ministers at the lecterns every evening are independent of political direction.

[Nigel]

I didn't see any briefings last week. When the test numbers went up 43,000 overnight to meet Hancock's target, I presume that this was described, in equally dispassionate terms, as a "slight increase"?

[mrjonathanr]

Jobs for the boys

[Nigel]

Jobs for the boys

Appalling, but unsurprising. In an extra twist the NHSX app is being delivered by CEO Matthew Gould. Those with long memories will recall he was an intergral part of the Fox-Werrity scandal, and thus already has form for dealing on national security matters with people with no security clearance.

[mrjonathanr]

Interesting. I would like to know more, this section of the article made me curious.

Faculty is working at the heart of the government’s response to the pandemic. It has been processing large volumes of confidential UK patient information in an “unprecedented” data-mining operation alongside Palantir, a US firm founded by the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel.

Marc Warner disclosed in an article in the Times that he too attended a critical meeting of Sage in March before the lockdown was imposed. He argued that he needed to align Faculty’s work with that of the rest of government, including Sage. Faculty said he attended Sage as an observer.

[Camo]

Apologies if this has been posted already but I came across this today:

https://amp.theguardian.com/law/2020/may/01/uk-government-faces-legal-challenge-coronavirus-lockdown-businessman-simon-dolan

He seems like a complete twat. We’ve been in lockdown for roughly 40 days...28,000 deaths from CV-19 in the uk. He thinks the lockdown was a bad idea - how many more people would’ve died if the government had just said ‘crack on, don’t worry about the virus’???

Particularly annoyed by this as he is living in Monaco.

[Nigel]

Free to read article in the FT on a subject which seems to have dropped off the agenda, PPE for health workers, so posting to keep it current: https://www.ft.com/content/9680c20f-7b71-4f65-9bec-0e9554a8e0a7

[Ru]

He seems like a complete twat. We’ve been in lockdown for roughly 40 days...28,000 deaths from CV-19 in the uk. He thinks the lockdown was a bad idea - how many more people would’ve died if the government had just said ‘crack on, don’t worry about the virus’???

I can't see this litigation going anywhere for a whole host of reasons.

[Camo]

He seems like a complete twat. We’ve been in lockdown for roughly 40 days...28,000 deaths from CV-19 in the uk. He thinks the lockdown was a bad idea - how many more people would’ve died if the government had just said ‘crack on, don’t worry about the virus’???

I can't see this litigation going anywhere for a whole host of reasons.

I wonder if his lawyer believes in the case or just took it on because they’ll get paid regardless of the outcome?

[Oldmanmatt]

He seems like a complete twat. We’ve been in lockdown for roughly 40 days...28,000 deaths from CV-19 in the uk. He thinks the lockdown was a bad idea - how many more people would’ve died if the government had just said ‘crack on, don’t worry about the virus’???

I can't see this litigation going anywhere for a whole host of reasons.

It sounds like someone setting themselves up to be the next Farage; in which case, it’s more important to lose...

[Falling Down]

He's also known for promoting David Icke videos.

[Nigel]

Members of SAGE now public: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response-membership/list-of-participants-of-sage-and-related-sub-groups

"2 participants have not given permission to be named". Hmmm I wonder who they could be?

[Nigel]

From earlier in the thread:

So after 32 daily Covid press conferences where our top scientific advisers have wheeled out a graph showing the ‘global comparison of deaths’, today a significant proportion was spent arguing why you shouldn’t compare with other countries. Including pointing out an article in the Guardian by David Spiegelhalter on that subject.

Turns out David Spiegelhalter is on SAGE.

[ali k]

Members of SAGE now public: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response-membership/list-of-participants-of-sage-and-related-sub-groups

Released to coincide with the first meeting of the ‘Independent SAGE’ group.

[petejh]

From earlier in the thread:

So after 32 daily Covid press conferences where our top scientific advisers have wheeled out a graph showing the ‘global comparison of deaths’, today a significant proportion was spent arguing why you shouldn’t compare with other countries. Including pointing out an article in the Guardian by David Spiegelhalter on that subject.

Turns out David Spiegelhalter is on SAGE.

Is this a simple statement of fact or am I missing something?

Should he not be on SAGE? Or should he be on SAGE, but not have written the article? Or should he have written the article, but not be on SAGE? Or should he neither a. be on SAGE nor b. have written the article?
Or is it something else?
Should the gov not have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries because they are flawed? Or should they have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries despite them being flawed?
And should they have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries, AND said that they were flawed? Or should they have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries BUT said they weren't flawed (or just not mentioned flaws)?
Or should they not have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries AND said they were not making them because they were flawed? Or should they not have made (flawed) comparisons to other countries BUT NOT said they weren't making (flawed) comparisons because they were flawed but for some other reason?

Or something else? Or nothing?

Help me out here I'm struggling to know the rules of what they should be doing, to be doing it right!

[ali k]

Help me out here I'm struggling to know the rules of what they should be doing, to be doing it right!

To achieve “maximum transparency”, which is what the government claims to be striving for, they should livestream the SAGE meetings (same as they do with parliamentary select committees) with all the contributors publishing any data or modelling. Or at the very least publish full minutes from the meetings immediately afterwards.

And then government creates policy off the back of that. If it was all out in the open then ministers wouldn’t have to justify any of the science - only the policies they come up with. Which is surely the way it should be?

[petejh]

And you Nige, do you agree with this? ^

Interesting, seems a pretty high transparency bar if you don't mind me saying. It's *almost* as if you don't trust anyone in government to make decisions

Other than policy for responding to coronavirus, which other parts of government policy-making do you think should apply this level of transparency: Defence? Transport?  Home Security? Foreign Policy? Budget? Education? Agriculture? Public Health? All? None? Some? If some why not the others?

[Sidehaas]

Members of SAGE now public: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response-membership/list-of-participants-of-sage-and-related-sub-groups

"2 participants have not given permission to be named". Hmmm I wonder who they could be?

52 participants! No wonder it takes a long time to reach decisions...

[ali k]

Other than policy for responding to coronavirus, which other parts of government policy-making do you think should apply this level of transparency:

Before expanding the discussion to other policy areas (which I’m not avoiding and is an interesting subject), do you disagree with the above level of transparency? Given that this is a new virus, there is very rapidly emerging scientific research, and opening up the debate to as wide a range of expert opinion could potentially save many thousands of lives? Not to mention that full transparency and peer review is the accepted model of scientific and medical research.