1). Patrick Vallance tells the @CommonsSTC that SAGE advised the govt to impose lockdown measures “as soon as possible” “on the 18th or 16th of March, I can’t remember”

Remarkable that he doesn’t recall the date.

He fails to explain why the govt wait a week before locking down?

2). Professor @JeremyFarrar, who is a member of SAGE, does remember.

He has just clarified that on 13 March - with #COVID infections doubling every 2-3 days - SAGE decided a lockdown was needed.

They advised the govt of this on 16 March.

UK locked down on 23 March.
#COVID19

3/. On 10/6, @neil_ferguson who did the modelling presented on 16 March, said locking down a week earlier could have saved 20,000 lives.

Modeller, Prof Edmunds, told #Marr: “We should have gone into lockdown earlier…I think that has cost a lot of lives.”

4/. Whilst it is true that the findings presented by @neil_ferguson showed transmission rates were twice as high as previously believed, its vital to note that Ferguson’s earlier modelling, presented on 25 Feb, ALSO showed the NHS would be overwhelmed.
https://twitter.com/stefsimanowitz/status/1271726687072518144?s=21 https://twitter.com/stefsimanowitz/status/1271726687072518144

5/. Recently published SAGE minutes show that the govt KNEW on 25 February - 3 weeks before they claimed - that NHS ICU beds would be overwhelmed.

NERVTAG populated a data table on 21/2 which fed into a table used by SPI-M and Imperial’s report on 25/2.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/891878/S0023_SAGE10_Sensitivity_of_ICU_Surveillance.pdf

6/. At the SAGE meeting on 27 Feb, the Reasonable Worst Case for deaths if action wasn’t taken, was estimated at 500,000.

This was less than the 1.3m estimated by NERVTAG on 21 Feb, but more than the 400,000 @neil_ferguson warned of on 14 Feb on #C4News.

7/. Cummings would have seen these figures when he attended his first SAGE meeting on 5 March.

Minutes of this 5/3 meeting suggest "sustained community transmission was underway” & yet inexplicably it was decided “there are no scientific grounds to moving from contain to delay”.

8/. The same SAGE meeting recognized the risk facing the elderly & vulnerable & the need for “early measures” BUT inexplicably recommends there should be a delay of “roughly 2 weeks” before isolating them.

"Cocooning of older and vulnerable patients can start later."

Why?

9/. Despite SAGE’s calls for “early measures” & claims by ministers that a “protective ring” was put around care homes, we know action wasn’t taken.

Asked about it today Vallance said:
“Care homes were flagged up very early on”....”as early as February”.

10/. "Did SAGE advise at an earlier stage that care home workers should be routinely tested?”

“I can’t remember exactly what we recommended on individual measures. I don’t know if we recommended that.”

An extraordinary admission by CSO Vallance. #COVID19

11/. On 13 May, I published "the smoking gun" of the #CareHomeScandal, but since then there've been more smoking guns.

In the space of a month, 25,060 people were discharged from hospital to care homes without being routinely tested for #COVID in England. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1260665437790130177

12/. On 8 March, I stumbled into the #COVID19 scandal & have been up to my neck in it ever since.

It was clear that the country was taking the wrong path.

We knew
They knew
They knew we knew

And yet they carried on.

I call it the #HerdImmunityScandal. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1269782035499028482

13/. There is an expression that is key to good journalism: “follow the money”.

It means focus on the real motivations driving those who took the decisions.

It is clear that #HerdImmunity is the strategy but what is the goal.

I'm still figuring it out. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1282288536016871426