The Government were telling the truth. They followed scientific advice all along.

[NotEverythingIsBlackandWhite]

www.thesun.co.uk/news/11757540/boris-advice-mistakes/

According to official papers released on Friday, Boris Johnson has been following the scientific advice all along. (Forgive me if I'm late to the party but I haven't seen anything about this until today).

It was SAGE who said we shouldn't lock down earlier.
It was SAGE who says Cheltenham and Stereophonics gigs should go ahead as they were low risk.
It was SAGE who said a travel ban would just postpone the epidemic by one month.
It was SAGE who, on February 18, wrongly advised "When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.”

Well done to Boris Johnson and the Govt for trusting in and following scientific advice (even though that advice turned out to be wrong).

Boris Johnson wasn't blindly taking own action after all. Even though SAGE got things wrong, it was right to follow their advice. It was and is a difficult situation but we need to give credit to BJ and co, where it is due.

I would love to see the discussions about Cheltenham and large festivals.

It doesn't seem to make sense - unless they were of the view that the virus was already in the UK so it was going to spread no matter what happened so what the heck, go ahead with it...

Otherwise - people from around the country go to Cheltenham, get infected and then go back to where they came from.

And it will be VERY interesting to see the current Sage Advice and minutes re the current ending of lockdown - especially given what they said at the start in these minutes.

Sunday Times Insight: 22 days of dither and delay on coronavirus that cost thousands of British lives
[[http://archive.is/qbvY7
archive.is/qbvY7]]

....After being initially hostile to the idea,
the prime minister put his libertarian instincts to one side and agreed in principle that a lockdown would be necessary.

However, rather than locking down immediately,
there was a further nine-day delay as he deliberated over how and when a lockdown should be introduced.

That prevarication proved, for some, to be fatal.

New back-dated modelling assessing the historic spread of the disease

• which is published for the first time today -

estimates the number of people infected in the UK was indeed doubling every three days during late February and early March,

just as some of the initial reports from China in late January had suggested they might.

The work, produced jointly by an Imperial College London team led by Samir Bhatt and Oxford University,
suggests that on March 3 - the day the government committee gave the warning about the dire consequences of a mitigation approach -
there were about 14,000 infections in the UK.

Such was the speed of the spread of the virus that 200,000 people were estimated to be infected by the time the government began to change its mind about its policy on Saturday, March 14.

The last nine days while Johnson wrestled over the decision on when and how to go for lockdown were particularly brutal.

By the time the lockdown was announced on Monday, March 23,
such large numbers were doubling over such a short period that infections are estimated to have soared to 1.5 million.

According to the data, no other large European country allowed infections to sky-rocket to such a high level before finally deciding to go into lockdown.

Those 20 days of government delay are the single most important reason why the UK has the second highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in the world.

I wonder if thoughts of herd immunity influenced the decision to let Cheltenham etc go ahead?

Posters defending Johnson and co, would you be so vigorous in your defence if Corbyn was in charge of such a huge body count?

For what it's worth, had Corbyn been in charge of this no way on earth would I be defending or even excusing him. I demand better of our politicians and believe they should be held to account for poor performance. I would remind you as well that Johnson's management of this crisis has lead to tens of thousands of people dying. The idea that their relatives should now apologise to Johnson for criticising his response leaves me gobsmacked.

I wonder if thoughts of herd immunity influenced the decision to let Cheltenham etc go ahead

The minutes just show what was agreed - rather than the discussion.

I wonder what the discussion would have said

UK abandoned testing because system 'could only cope with five coronavirus cases a week'

Even 10 years ago, the Uk had 10,000 environmental health staff based at nearly 350 local council offices.

However, after transfering all this public health function to Public Health England,
this capability was savagely cut to 226 staff operating out of 9 offices.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/30/revealed-test-trace-abandoned-system-could-cope-five-coronavirus/

Britain’s disastrous decision to abandon testing for coronaviruss_ occurred because health systems could only cope with five cases a week, official documents show.

Newly-released papers from the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergenciess shows routine testing and tracingg of contacts was stopped because Public Health England’s systems were struggling to deal with a handful of cases.

At a meeting on Feb 18, advisors said PHE could only cope with testing and tracing contacts of five Covid-19 cases a week,
with modelling suggesting it might only be possible to increase this to 50 cases.

It is sad that some people won't take the government at their word. It's a very cynical mentality and coincides with refusing to hold their hands up when it transpires the government were following the science all along.

It is sad that some people won't take the government at their word

Have you seen this governments record on lying? Especially Johnson and Cummings?

It is sad that some people won't take the government at their word

Experience......especially with this lot.

It's a very cynical mentality and coincides with refusing to hold their hands up when it transpires the government were following the science all along

They seem to be following some of the advice from this particular group of scientists.

Which is different to 'following the science'

Funny reading the posts now trying to discredit SAGE!

Yes the Govt followed the science, yes the information given has been regular and clear, yes the strategy appears to be working, yes the economic plans have been well thought out and helpful.

Next.

yes the strategy appears to be working

Sure, if the aim of the strategy is to ensure a strikingly high death rate.

"It is sad that some people won't take the government at their word"

Well they were saying 200,000 tests when the ONS asked them to correct this to a 200,000 test capacity

Your teen has capacity to do their homework - doesn't mean they've done it !

I also haven't forgotten them excusing a DIY Specsavers 30 mile drive
Difficlut to take anything with a straight face after Gove & co saying they do it too ....

"it transpires the government were following the science all along."

That long delay in following the lockdown advice is the main cause of the UK's v high death rate

With exponential growth, you shouldn't dither for weeks

The death rate is dropping significantly lumene.

@itonyah Instead they'll keep digging. The government have done the right thing.

@BigChocFrenzy They were following the science. If they ignored it and just did what ever we'd never hear the end of it. If the advice was faulty then we know where heads should roll.

How did they advise differently to abroad ,most of Europe has done and continues to do very similar things , lockdown at similar points
NZ is an exception but a country with 5 million population who isn't a particular travel hub will always be able to control something like this better
The government has to follow science advise as they are not trained in this sort of thing , but even scientists will get things wrong and have different ideas it's a new virus of which we knew nothing about we are learning more and more and with hindsight we will look back and realise what worked and what didn't etc
But mn should def run any future pandemics as there are loads of experts on here

@drama you do realise other countries aren't reporting all deaths though some are some aren't so hard to compare yet , plus age and other factors may come in to play we just don't know yet

@kendodd they haven't pointed blame at anyone just printed the documents that everyone has been asking to see

The Spanish lockdown was particularly cruel.

@young the ventilators from wu weren't needed , we haven't been short on ventilators and the eu one not even sure if that ended up delivering in the end ,ppe was a worldwide issue most other countries also struggled with getting this in the numbers required .
Yes there have been mistakes but it's not like they deliberately set out and hindsight is great

If that's true then SAGE is not fit for purpose. We have one of the highest death rates!

"THE SCIENCE" is not one big homogeneous approach.

@kendodd I thought Scotland were actually pretty high

The death rates were partially because 111 was staffed by people who wouldn't recommend hospital early enough.

In Germany they treated people much earlier with oxygen.

Alsonwe were all terrified to 'overwhelm the NHS' which led to people literally dying in their homes

Perhaps if the NHS wasn't such a sacred cow people would have felt they could demand treament earlier.