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This 'investigation' rewrites history so much that it amounts to a lie. The central conceit is that the government was set on a herd immunity strategy while scientists and modellers urged them to bring in a lockdown. 1/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/three-weeks-of-dither-and-delay-on-coronavirus-that-cost-thousands-of-british-lives-05sjvwv7g
The nearest it gets to blaming scientists is criticising Patrick Vallance who, the article tells us, used to have a well paid job in the pharmaceutical industry, as if that has any relevance. 2/
It claims that Neil Ferguson's March 16 model called for a "series of lockdowns" and contrasts this with "the government's preferred mitigation measures". This is simply untrue. 3/ https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1263240484362878981?s=20
You can see what scientific advice was given to the government in this series of documents. You will not find anything vaguely recommending a lockdown until March 16, and even then only a modest version of what we ended up with. 4/ https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/scientific-advisory-group-for-emergencies-sage-coronavirus-covid-19-response
Imperial's models can be found here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/covid-19-reports/ The infamous Ferguson model is here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-9-impact-of-npis-on-covid-19/ None of them called for a lockdown before the lockdown happened. 5/
The scientists and modellers may have been wrongly treating covid as if it were a flu pandemic, but there was not a govt strategy versus a scientific strategy. If anything, the decision to lockdown was political after weeks of "following the science". 6/
