Thread by @robfordmancs

I've been very positive about the UK's vaccine rollout, which has been outstanding.
But the successes this month only serve to throw into sharper relief the failures of last month, when a spineless got delated (again) taking the steps needed to avert catastrophe

https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1338795308352933890

The rolling 7 day average of cases in the UK has been halving about every two weeks since the peaked a few days after we, finally and belatedly, locked down in full on 5th January.

How many cases could have been averted if we had instead have locked down on 15th December?

Cases then, per @ganeshran , were running at average of 20k per day. Assuming same 2 week halving, we would have had:
10k per day around 29th Dec
5k per day around 12th Jan
2.5k per day around 26th Jan

Instead we had:
39k per day 29th Dec
56k per day 12th Jan
32k per day 26th Jan

40,000 people have died since 15th December, when I - and others - were urging the govt to cancel Christmas and warning not doing so would risk a preventable catastrophe.

Locking down then would not have saved all of them. But it would have saved a lot. Most likely tens of thousands of people.

A full Premier league stadium of people who died because the govt wouldn't listen to scientists and cancel Christmas, even with vaccines weeks away.

Most of those people will have been in the higher risk groups. Most of them, if there were still alive, would be vaccinated by now. But we can't bring them back.

The vaccination programme is a huge success. What preceded it was a huge and tragic failure.

Lets also not forget the role of parts of the media in egging on the govt to "defy scientists" and "save Christmas".

express.co.uk/news/uk/136234…

dailymail.co.uk/debate/article…

I remember as a child the Kings Cross fire. 31 people died. There were recriminations for years afterwards about the negligence and failures that led to these avoidable deaths.

More recently at Grenfell negligence led to a fire which killed 72

Since Christmas, we have had a death toll equivalent to 30 Kings Cross fires a day, every day.

Equivalent to 15 Grenfells a day, every day.

The nation was on fire and the government neglected to put it out.

To "save Christmas."

So, yes, I will cheer the vaccine success we are having, and for which our govt deserves due credit.

But I will not forget the colossal deriliction of duty which preceded it, and has left hundreds of thousands grieving for lost relatives who could and should have been saved.

Relatedly here’s a thread on what was done and when, and what was known and when

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1347274149274791936