Thread by @paulwaugh

Seeing tonight's awful events on Clapham Common jogged my memory of something Patrick Vallance told MPs this week about outdoor protests, but which was not picked up at the time: there is little evidence such events cause Covid spikes. 1/3

Vallance said outdoors not completely risk free but stressed: "It is the case that it is difficult to see how things like large beach gatherings and so on can cause a spike. The same was the case in a protest march in New York. *They did not really see any spikes
after that*" 2/3

Vallance then said to Chris Whitty: "Chris, do you want to add to that?"
Whitty replied: "No, I completely agree."

Surely ministers + @metpoliceuk need to take heed of this, quite apart from all the other failures tonight?

[This was evidence to @CommonsSTC] 3/3

For all those wrongly comparing this vigil to a football match, he added: "The other thing that can happen with outdoor events...when indoor things are also open, you start to get people congregating indoors around that. That can increase risk, but outdoors itself is lower risk."

And of course *indoor things* ie restaurants/bars are not currently open.

Committee chair @GregClarkMP has tweeted the clip of this here:

https://twitter.com/GregClarkMP/status/1370888909111107584?s=19