Had a chat today with my longest pal. We did our PhDs together in the 80s. I had a career in biomedical R&D, latterly founding a U.K. biotech. My friend has a largely academic career & is now a professor of immunology at a minor U.K. Uni. Credentials aside. He’s been speaking...

...with a friend who’s something in PHE, involved in modelling the tail end of the pandemic. PHE guy tells my pal that “the pandemic is over & Govt knows this”. But he’s having running arguments with Neil Ferguson, who takes a different view. PHE guy says “no one had any...”

...confidence in Ferguson’s model & thinks he’s completely wrong on everything. He also disclosed that the false positive rate of the PCR test is “a lot higher than we (the public) think, and this has implications”. PHE guy is part of the team which advises HMG, who is worried..

..that “if we tell the public it’s over, how will we get them to do what we want if needed?”. The psychologists in the team moderate the advice upwards, requesting tougher action than is actually needed. PHE guy then complains that “the media then take this the wrong way and...

...get everything out of proportion”. My pal said he greatly enjoyed taking with his PHE contact, but got the strong sense that, with ‘conflict at the heart of the expert advisory group’, they’ve not clue how to get out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves.