Today's Insight story ( https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/three-weeks-of-dither-and-delay-on-coronavirus-that-cost-thousands-of-british-lives-05sjvwv7g) is quite interesting but based on this obviously wrong graph which gives the misleading impression that the legal lockdown on 23/3 was the only thing which could make a difference to the spread of disease.

Is it really plausible that in w/c 16/3 the number of infections continued to grow at the same pace? This graph shows that in that week (and before) people increasingly started to stay at home without being legally ordered to.

This is *not* to defend the mistakes made by govt, but we must not pretend there was ever a simple dichotomy between 'everything normal' and 'full lockdown'. Any analysis must take that into account.

The ST piece also strongly suggests that ministers were ignoring the warning coming from their scientific advisers.

E.g. advice supposedly communicated 3/3 (left) and 11/3 (right)

Presumably that's a different John Edmunds to this one, who went on TV 13/3 to dismiss the idea that govt strategy would lead to a large number of unavoidable deaths? https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1238573667002523648

Advisers advise, ministers decide - and must be held to account for their decisions. But if ministers get the wrong advice, it's hard to see how they can make the right decisions. ST piece doesn't seriously grapple with that question.

It also doesn't seriously examine how UK govt response compares to other European countries. Yes NZ has done great, but that's not particularly comparable. Big Q: what did get wrong and get (more or less) right?