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secondIn March, Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance were introduced to the nation, two wits flashing under the lights, at Downing Street press conferences as scientists to see the UK through the coronavirus pandemic. And while Boris Johnson liked to treat the chief medical officer and chief science advisor, respectively, as his two favorite puppets, they were still the men whose advice was largely based on government policy.
But at some point, things turned sour. Whitty and Vallance were visibly uncomfortable when Boris chose to be unscrupulous in interpreting the data in his own way, and the relationship appeared to have been completely broken when the government ignored Sage’s advice to introduce a short “circuit breaker” lock and opted for a series of staggered regional closures.
Still, the band had reconciled their differences long enough to reform for a comeback tour for Saturday’s briefing in which the pair were invited to speak through a few slides, before Johnson made the announcement, already leaked to the press the day before, that there would have to be another national blockade after all. On Monday, it was Johnson’s turn to get MPs to turn politics around; Tuesday was Whitty and Vallance’s, who got their advice scrutinized at a hastily assembled science and technology select committee meeting.
It’s fair to say that both men would have preferred to be elsewhere. Any pleasure in becoming public figures once again has quickly faded, and Whitty and Vallance now yearn for anonymity again. The disconnect between data-hungry MPs and cheap political scoring and pundits who can only deal with odds has grown too great. It was a clash of cultures in which there could be no winners.
The session got off to a fairly friendly start with committee chair Greg Clark asking the questions. There is nothing worse than having an academic article that is likely to be read by fewer than 10 people and reviewed by one of your archrivals. Vallance insisted that he was only really confident in talking about six-week projections and noted that many of his predictions had proven to be totally accurate.
Not long ago, Sage had been ridiculed for suggesting that deaths could rise to 200 a day by mid-November; that number had already been reached a long time ago. Similarly, in September, when there were only 536 patients in the hospital with Covid-19, people had laughed at the idea of that number rising to 2,500 by mid-October. Now we were up to 10,000 and counting. So far so good.
Things got nastier when Labor Graham Stringer asked why Vallance and Whitty had included a “reasonable worst-case scenario” of 4,000 deaths a day in their slides at the Downing Street press conference when all other models were coming up significantly to lowers it. Wasn’t Sage guilty of trying to scare Boris and the public into an unnecessary block?
“It was not our intention to scare people,” Vallance insisted. One person’s reasonable worst-case scenario was another’s walk in the park. That was the nature of the oxymoron. Also, 4000 wasn’t a prediction, it was a model, he said, never fully clarifying the difference between the two. And it was a model that came from a reputable institution, so it deserved to be included, even if it was somewhat atypical.
At that point, Whitty began to look visibly narrated. So 4,000 might be very exaggerated, he snapped, but would MPs be happy to go back to the daily death toll of 1,000 we had at the beginning of the year, because we were definitely on track to reach that goal? And if the deputies were happy with the 1,000 deaths, he was not. Yes, the regional lockdowns had made a difference, but the infection rate was still going in the wrong direction and we didn’t want to get to a point where the NHS couldn’t cope, because then there would also be an increase in excess deaths. between cardiac and cancer patients.
Things calmed down a bit after that, but there was still some discomfort in the room. Whitty noted that MPs kept asking for more and more data and Sage was doing his best to provide it. It wasn’t their fault if they didn’t like what they got. After all, it was inevitable that many of the predictions were not entirely accurate. And instead of asking you about the economic costs of the blockade, why didn’t you try asking some economists? The whole gist of the coronavirus was that there were no good options. Scientists had to choose between shit and real shit.
Still, there was time for everyone to find something in common. And that was about the futility of the government’s test and trace system. One of the objectives of the blockade was to drop the number of infected people so low that Typhoid Dido could locate at least a couple of his contacts. Coincidentally, Harding herself had been simultaneously granted the 5pm cemetery space at the CBI conference. A time when everyone was almost guaranteed to have packed for the day and she would struggle to find her way.
Clark desperately tried to end the session on an optimistic note. Could we go back to regional closures in a month? He asked desperately. Whitty and Vallance shrugged. They had no idea. There were too many variables for the R to drop below 1. But things were looking a little rosier, Clark said. To begin with, there was the possibility of a vaccine. Winter might be harsh, but spring would be bright.
“Brighter,” Whitty corrected, ready to nip any signs of optimism in the bud. The afternoon hadn’t been his idea of fun, but at least he had the last word.
