Is science being set up to take the blame? (Another story on the SAGE minutes)

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wouldnt surprise me at all I’m afraid :(
 
Bruce Stephens said:
This one's by Ross Anderson, a computer security guy.

Is science being set up to take the blame?
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The committee started out full of NHS medics and bureaucrats, and lots of theoreticians – modelers aplenty – but there’s still nobody from the care sector. The members focus on the NHS they know and stay in their comfort zone. And now, we might ask, is there anybody with operational experience relevant to running a large testing and tracing programme? Or would it be a waste of time to try to create such a competence in the SAGE environment?
 
Actually Eddy, there was representative of PHE (Public Health England) on the committee from the start. No idea what contribution they made because the minutes don't record any discussion. But yes, the early minutes do seem to assume that the virus would cause an epidemic, that it would be something that would have to be managed rather than controlled and the flu models would be used to do that. There is no reference to containment.

Yet to get to the minutes when the consequences of going with that strategy become apparent.
 
Well as per somebody has to take the blame...sigh.
 
At the SAGE meeting of 13 Feb, still assuming it was like flu and the only sources of transmission considered were schools and prisons. I think that was because schools figure highly in flu models because children are badly affected by flu and mixing in schools is a great way to transmit it. Why prisons, I am not sure. No mention of care homes or hospitals as transmission hubs at this stage.

Fiascinating stuff.
 
Things begin to change in the next meeting (18 Feb) when containment is mentioned and the three stage stategy promulgated by HMG emerges. Quotes from the minutes.

6. Priorities will shift during a potential outbreak from containment and isolation on to delay and, finally, to case management.

7.Currently PHE can cope with five new cases a week (requiring isolation of 800 contacts). Modelling suggests this capacity could be increased to 50 new cases a week (8,000 contact isolations) but this assumption needs to be stress tested with PHE operational colleagues.

8.SAGE agreed that alongside contact tracing, early warning surveillance systems –community and sentinel based –need to feed into trigger points for decisions on when the current monitoring and contact tracing approach is no longer working.

9.When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.

Around this time, they were locking up people returning from infected cruise ships if I remember correctly. Still no thoughts on care homes or hospitals being transmission centres.
 
Docb said:
Things begin to change in the next meeting (18 Feb) when containment is mentioned and the three stage stategy promulgated by HMG emerges. Quotes from the minutes.

6. Priorities will shift during a potential outbreak from containment and isolation on to delay and, finally, to case management.

7.Currently PHE can cope with five new cases a week (requiring isolation of 800 contacts). Modelling suggests this capacity could be increased to 50 new cases a week (8,000 contact isolations) but this assumption needs to be stress tested with PHE operational colleagues.

8.SAGE agreed that alongside contact tracing, early warning surveillance systems –community and sentinel based –need to feed into trigger points for decisions on when the current monitoring and contact tracing approach is no longer working.

9.When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.

Around this time, they were locking up people returning from infected cruise ships if I remember correctly. Still no thoughts on care homes or hospitals being transmission centres.
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Wild ... Presumably those five new cases/800 isolations per week metrics have been revisited. Otherwise, even assuming just the ~2,000 new cases per day being reported now (and not the 8,000 which is being floated around as the actual new infections per day), at face value it would mean that:

- The UK's new fully-fit-for-purpose track/trace/isolate system has expanded capacity by about 2,800X.
- The UK is preparing to isolate 160 X 2,000 = 320,000 people per day.

No wonder they came to this disastrous conclusion: When there is sustained transmission in the UK, contact tracing will no longer be useful.

But who knows where the metric came from? Presumably something to do with flu? It's wildly off-beam for COVID-19, even in terms of what was known in Feb. Just another indication that learnings from the rest of the world weren't making it into the SAGE consensus.

SAGE has about 55 members listed. Do all of these people sit around a table nutting out a consensus? I can't believe it would happen like that - not even SAGE's molasses-like decision cycles would be possible.

(I compare to Oz, where the sort-of equivalent has just the federal CMO and the state/territory chief health officers, drawing on technical committees as needed. It made recommendations really quickly.)
 
Eddy Edson said:
Wild ... Presumably those five new cases/800 isolations per week metrics have been revisited. Otherwise, even assuming just the ~2,000 new cases per day being reported now (and not the 8,000 which is being floated around as the actual new infections per day)
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I think the 8,000 comes from the ONS, who estimate (based on sampling) that there were 54,000 new cases per week. (See Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey.)

The 2,000 number is presumably confirmed cases, so largely people who are already in hospital (though increasingly including people in care homes (including working in them) and in the future people with symptoms in the wider community).

Obviously it would be better to be tracing from the 8,000 people (as well as the 2,000, since there might not be much overlap), but we've no idea who or where they might be. (The ONS study found just 36 individuals.)

(What seems insane to me is there doesn't seem to be much desire to test the people who are contacted during contact tracing. Until they get symptoms, anyway.)
 
Continuing to look at minutes and just started to compare what was being said at the briefings with what was being said at SAGE. Led by the science? Mmmm, I think there might be a book in it.

For the nerds...

Compare the minutes of the SAGE meeting on 18 March


with Johnsons statement on 19 March

www.gov.uk

Prime Minister's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 19 March 2020

PM Boris Johnson’s opening statement from the press conference on coronavirus.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk

What do you think?
 
I think if you can be bothered to analyse the rest of the minutes and comparing the advice given by BJ or one of his pea brained acolytes you will find the same variance.

It’s clear from that example that they have been making it up as they go along.
 
The English government appears to have given up the charade of being led by science. The new format of the daily briefings is just a government mouthpiece without scientists/doctors standing either side. That’s presumably so that awkward questions can’t be asked about whether government recommendations are based on Sage advice. Or, quite possibly, those advisers are unwilling to appear to support the government stance.

Who knows? There is a reason for everything.
 
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