The fallout from the announcement of the lockdown continues. Today, the Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance and the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty appeared before the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.
Labour MP Graham Stringer asked Sir Patrick if he believed he had frightened people with the bleak deaths data.
The Chief Scientific Adviser said: ‘I hope not and that’s certainly not the aim… I think I positioned that as a scenario from a couple of weeks ago, based on an assumption to try and get a new reasonable worst-case scenario. and if that didn’t come across then I regret that.
In my humble opinion, he knew what he was doing and when you consider he gave an off the record briefing on Friday, he appears to be playing at politics and Boris Johnson is too stultified to clamp down on him. He is like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary carried out a quiet, restrained, forensic questioning of the pair and left them squirming. The arrogance of these two has grown as time goes on and Boris Johnson’s grip seems to be loosening.
Further developments resulted in the phones of Michael Gove and Matt Hancock being confiscated by an investigative team from the Cabinet Office and examined as the search for the leaker(s) hots up.
In a dissenting view: –
King’s College London academics, who have been tracking the size of the coronavirus outbreak since the summer, argued infections were now ‘plateauing’ and there was a ‘slight fall’ in new cases across the UK last week.
Professor Tim Spector, the lead scientist behind the KCL study, revealed the latest R rate estimate on Twitter today, hailing it as ‘good news’. He has already questioned the need for a second national lockdown because the virus is ‘running out of steam’.
This is becoming a popular view, as is the feeling that Johnson was bounced into making the decision on the lockdown.
A letter was sent from over 500 academics decrying the presentation of the statistics (and the accuracy) and there are signs that dissent is becoming widespread and people are no longer afraid to promote debate about the Government’s policies and actions. Which is all well and good, but the economic damage has been done.
In a welcome development:
The head of Boris Johnson‘s Vaccine Taskforce is expected to leave her post at the end of the year amid a furore after she billed the taxpayer £670,000 for a team of boutique PR consultants to oversee her media strategy.
Whitehall insiders suggested Kate Bingham’s contract ran until the end of the year and she had always intended to leave at that point.
Yeah, right!!!!
The under-fire vaccine tsar has come under intense pressure after it emerged at the weekend that she spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on public relations support.
She has also been forced to deny claims she shared commercially sensitive information with investors.
Source Daily Mail
The whole group of people charged with the governance and management of matters relating to COVID-19 is riddled with cronies, insiders and people who know people. If Boris Johnson had been brave and appointed people because of ability, not connections, the whole situation would have been in control and better managed from day one. But this is the UK, and we have to indulge in the national pastime of backscratching and letting things take their course.
Meanwhile, in a crime breath-taking in its audacity, a woman and her daughter raided a care home and removed her 94-year-old mother to take her home and care for her themselves. They had not been allowed to visit her for months. They were stopped by police who then arrested and handcuffed the woman and escorted them back to the care home where the elderly lady was deposited. Even though the woman was a qualified nurse experienced in elder care she was not allowed to return home with her mother. To their eternal credit, the police were sympathetic and apologised whilst they were detaining them. They agreed with the woman that it was not something they agreed with, but that they were given instructions by a social worker that their mother must be returned to the home. It transpired that the woman had power of attorney over her mother’s money but not enduring power of attorney over her welfare. In an act of supreme irony, she could pay for her mother to be in care, but not care for her at home.
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