Using Greek letters is to avoid a virus being named after a place of discovery: ‘the Kent variant’ became ‘Alpha’, etc. Four days later it’s named a variant of concern by the WHO and named ‘Omicron’. Omicron first detected in South Africa: then known as B.1.1.529.Given how many of the key players then are still in place now, we can’t expect much scrutiny over the mistakes made. The whole episode offers an interesting example of how the government works in a crisis, raising questions of accountability among modellers whose work can decide whether a country is locked down or not, the nature of caution (is lockdown cautious or reckless?) and the flaws in a Sage system that still exists now, unreformed, ready to spring back into action when needed. This even extended to the Prime Minister, who said later that he spotted Omicron’s fall in Gauteng, the South African epicentre, and used that to challenge his advisers’ assumption that the ‘doubling time of two days’ meant it would keep growing without lockdown. The decision to lock down was made by cabinet members – many of whom had resorted to asking for their own advice as they did not trust Sage. ‘Who knew or understood what, and when, is likely to be the main point of the inquiry,’ Professor Medley added. But this did mean that Britain was very nearly locked down for a fourth time on the strength of ‘scenarios’ that even the authors may not have regarded as credible. That raises the prospect that a subset of people may have been briefed that Sage was discarding real-world South African data on the mildness of Omicron – so its ‘scenarios’ could bear no resemblance to reality. ‘We obviously made sure that the people we were talking to did understand,’ he told me. Recalling the anniversary, I had an interesting exchange with Graham Medley, who chaired the SPI-M modelling committee that fed into Sage. At the time, published Sage documents had outlined a range of 600 to 6,000 daily deaths unless more action was taken. Exactly a year ago today, the cabinet met to decide whether or not to lock down to tackle Omicron.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |