Expert Says Misunderstanding Scale of Coronavirus Spread ‘Undoubtedly Led’ to UK’s Huge Death Toll

Independent scientists have accused the Boris Johnson’s government and its advisers of making two crucial mistakes: failing to understand where Britain was on the epidemic’s curve, and assuming the public would suffer from “fatigue” if lockdown was brought in too early, according to The Independent.

The Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallace claimed on March 12 that the peak of epidemic “could be 10 to 14 weeks away” – but evidence now indicates Britain’s peak came much sooner, in the second week of April.

Paul Hunter, professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, said the “big error” was relying on flawed modelling to make critical decisions.

“Everything we were looking at was probably two to three weeks out of date, in terms of what the infection was doing in the community,” he told BBC’s Newsnight, adding, “I think that was a big error – and that has undoubtedly led to the large number of deaths that we’ve had.”

Experts also criticised an apparent guess made by No 10’s closest scientific advisers in the early weeks of March that the public would not stick with lockdown rules.

On March 9, Chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty said, “There is a risk if we go too early people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.”

Professor Robert West, member of the government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), said the idea of “lockdown fatigue” did not come from his group.

“There’s no science behind the idea of behavioural fatigue,” he told the BBC, adding, “I couldn’t blame someone like Chris [Whitty] for bringing up this notion. But at a very early stage the government should have said, “Actually that’s not a thing”.”

Minutes from the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) meeting from March 13 stated, “There is some evidence that people find quarantining harder to comply with the longer it goes on. The evidence is not strong but the effect is intuitive.”