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Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, has given evidence today to a joint session of the Commons Heath, and Science and Technology committees.
Prof Robert Dingwall, Professor of Sociology, Nottingham Trent University, said:
“Cummings is suggesting that the signals about scale and severity were much clearer in January/February than they actually were. There was a lot of confidence in the ability of the PRC to contain the outbreak, as they had done with the original SARS virus and no-one had identified the important role of asymptomatic transmission. Most infections are passed on after symptoms appear, which makes containment much easier. Also worth remembering that the WHO had established that most Covid-19 infections were mild to moderate by the end of February – Patrick Vallance was quite right in mid-March when he saw this as the key pathway to population immunity. Both the PRC and Italy have much more hospital-centred healthcare systems than the UK so the overloading of their services would not necessarily have constituted a precedent for the UK.
“With a novel virus, population immunity is the only way out. The policy options are to let the virus rip through (the Black Death model) or to try to buy time for the development of a vaccine by slowing the movement of the virus through the population as best one can, with minimum collateral damage. That is a difficult political judgement, especially when there is no certainty that a vaccine can be produced quickly – will be interesting to see whether Cummings can justify his claim that Covid-19 vaccines could have been developed, produced and brought to market more quickly. If that gamble failed, the result would probably be a similar number of deaths, but spread over a longer period.
“Should also note the lack of scepticism about the cherry-picking of international comparisons with South Asian countries that attempted to manage the movement of the virus more tightly – no mention of similar countries that failed.”
Professor Susan Michie, Director of UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, University College London, said:
“Cummings does not appear to understand the role of SPI-B nor the contribution of behavioural scientists on that group. SPI-B is not asked to comment, and has not commented, on what interventions are effective or when they should be triggered. Instead, the group is asked to provide advice aimed at anticipating and helping people adhere to interventions that are recommended by medical or epidemiological experts. It also considers the likely or possible impact of various measures or scenarios.
“On 4th March, a SPI-B report noted that ‘Empirical evidence for the behavioural and social impact of, and adherence to, each of the strategies is limited’ and that ‘research on the impact of interventions is likely to be underway in Italy, Japan and elsewhere. Access to these results would assist us in testing our assumptions and refining our advice.’ The measures that were being considered, following SPI-M modelling, were school closures, social distancing, public gatherings and isolation of symptomatic cases and at-risk members of the public.”
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/d919fbc9-72ca-42de-9b44-c0bf53a7360b
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