Thread by @fascinatorfun

This chapter makes sorry reading.

And quite something that in March it was thought that the intermittent lockdown approach might get deaths down to 100k even if no vaccination

Bad. But not as bad as the possible half a million.

https://twitter.com/anjahuja/status/1447853842373255170

Yet here we are 18 mnths later, post 3 lockdowns of sorts, Alpha then Delta variants increasing the risks & worsening the odds, 45 mill+ fully vaccinated
163,500 Covid deaths (by date of death): deaths & hospitalisations still piling up.

And a Government even sloppier than at the beginning.

The second and third/ fourth waves are unequivocally on Johnson. His choice against scientific advice.

How very Johnson to absent himself from the country when the Select Committee report is published.

Time to remember this Rory Stewart interview on 12th March 2020.

There were political choices to be made.

And Johnson made the wrong ones. And it has cost us huge number of lives and sickness and multi billions spent ineffectively

His unerring instinct for bad decisions.

https://twitter.com/politicsjoe_uk/status/1238085538957139968

Worth looking more at Chapter 5 of Spiked (Jeremy Farrar’s book)

And Steven Riley’s unequivocal WRITTEN advice on 10th March 2020 that herd immunity would not work

&

It would be “at enormous human and economic cost”

drawing on his experience of MERS in Hong Kong

And 12th March the clearest possible message from John Edmonds that

“NO I AM NOT!” In caps in response to a question whether he was happy with the U.K. Gov plans (or lack of them)

Whilst the scale, gravity and imminence of the onslaught WERE spelt out at the SAGE meeting you’d never think so from the anodyne presentation of the facts from the minutes.

I remember going out for a meal with friends on my birthday in mid February 2020 and saying (with a feeling of dread) “I don’t think we’ll be doing this again for a while” and getting questioning looks from friends.

So already I was worried about what was coming.

And from then on started limiting my contacts and stopped going to restaurants.

I was in lockdown weeks before the official one. And definitely before the Cheltenham Festival with people arriving for it from 10th March.

So we knew.

At the time.

This is from the Summary of the report.

What a whitewash when it comes to the second wave on.

These bad outcomes were driven by bad political choices and ignored official scientific advice.

NO lessons learned.

Correction. * John Edmunds*

Ooops. Part of the Thread made it onto the Jeremy Vine programme.

https://twitter.com/maffyou/status/1447896300171706368

Just looking back through my Feb notes.

I seemed to move between alarm when I saw the speed of double at the end of Feb, - redoubled when Johnson did his shaking hands speech…then a degree of reassurance from Whitty and Vallance..sucked into Jenny Harries’ disparaging mask .

Saw some WHO data and the fact that Italy had early deaths in March. Made me think we had a bit more wiggle room. (Now we know we had Covid deaths at end Jan).

I believed they would cancel the Cheltenham Races, right up to 9th.

And when they didn’t I’ve written “BIG TROUBLE”.

I suspect that uncertainty and moving between fear and some degree of reassurance (sometimes in the same day) and back to fear again was common.