Thread by @LawDavF

I've long had a theory that if the government wants to keep a secret its best course is to publish the information in an official document because then you can be sure no one will read it. Information is far more interesting when it is leaked through a 'Whitehall source'. 1/n

There are now call for a public inquiry into the government response to Covid-19. Well I know a bit about what an inquiry involves and you normally go to the archives to find out what was going on. 2/n

Fortunately the advice upon which policy-making was based has been published some days ago. This is probably why most people are unaware of it. But here it is.
gov.uk/government/gro…
3/n

There are many papers which show the advisory group worrying about how well various measures will work in terms of both reducing infections and public acceptability and compliance. There are caveats and uncertainties. 4/n

There is a lot of concern about coping with a second wave and the timing of suppression measures although no specific mention of 'herd immunity'. 5/n

A number of documents are important but here is one that caught my eye. It is the consensus statement produced on 2 March. By this day the UK had 39 recorded cases and still no deaths. Here it is. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
6/n

This depended on modelling based on the Wuhan experience, which the group assumed had peaked. They knew it might be different in the UK but believed the Wuhan doubling time (the time it takes for the number of new infections
to double in size) was 4-6 days. 7/n

This meant that they expected a relatively slow rise to the peak 3-5 months after 'widespread sustained transmission' of the virus. 8/n

They were not sure about the effect of 'non-pharmaceutical interventions' but better data would be needed. They also believed that as soon as any suppression were lifted the virus would return.
9/n

The overall impression (and no doubt epidemiologists will correct me if if I have misunderstood) is that they had time before they acted and needed better data. As we now know they didn't. 10/n

From this point to the big announcement on 16 March there were a number of studies about the virus and the value of various forms of suppression but there does not appear to have been another summary document updating that of 2 March. 11/n

We now know that realising that the doubling rate on the basis of evidence from Italy was not 4-6 days but 2-3 days injected urgency into the government's response. 12/n

My question for an inquiry would not be about herd immunity but whether there was a delay in appreciating that the curve would be steeper than first supposed. and, whether, when it was appreciated, there was a delay in HMG's response? These are questions not accusations. /end.