I fear that when we look back on the pandemic, this week will be, among others in February & March, a week which was pivotal in the way England - and I mean England - has suffered. 1. The government’s own Joint Biosecurity Centre has said we’re not ready to move from alert level

4 to 3, which the PM said was needed for the next phase of lockdown, and yet that’s still going ahead on Monday. 2. A number of Sage scientists - not just “independent Sage” and others - say we’re moving too fast. 3. There are signs, albeit very small, of a possible increase in

death rates - see this from a public health expert https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1266416763727642632?s=21 https://twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1266416763727642632

4. Last week showed a small - and it is small, but still worrying - increase in hospital admissions in London. If our lockdown has gone so well and we’re ready for phase 2, why is this happening? 5. Sage has said that reopening schools will add 0.2 to the R rate, and we are only

just below 1, and together with the groups of six people from Monday, surely this is going to push R - I mean value not rate, sorry - over 1 and we will be in exponential growth again. 6. The messaging has become muddled - from we’re doing all of this lockdown to save lives to

“Hurrah! We can have a barbecue in our back gardens!” The next phase should’ve been along lines of “you can finally see your children’s grandparents together after all this time, but please keep your distance”. 7. Track and trace has not been established for long enough before

the new phase has started. 8. The advice on wearing face masks in public has been vague and is now barely existent - are people going to wear masks when they go shopping from Monday? 9. On Thursday, our two most senior experts, @uksciencechief and @CMO_England, kept repeating

that infection numbers remained high. That should be ringing in all of our ears. And finally 10. On Monday, Dominic Cummings admitted he had made “mistakes” over the response to coronavirus not related to his own journey. Given what’s happened with our death rate, care homes, PPE

on the way up to the first peak, don’t the public have a right to know what those mistakes were before we enter phase 2 and unwittingly contribute to a second peak? The government’s 5th test for adjusting the lockdown is all about avoiding a second peak, but I am worried that

that is exactly where we’re heading. End of thread.

Post-script: I should add that, at the start of this, I had faith in the government because of the weight ministers were putting on the scientists. I put aside my views on Brexit and No10’s attitude to the press and took a constructive approach. I haven’t taken a side and been

oppositional for the sake of it. I trusted the government to do the right thing. This is where I have ended up three months later.