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West, who is also part of Independent Sage that shadows the government’s scientific advisory group, said ministers are “very much aware of the consequences of different levels of restrictions and obviously what it’s doing is it’s making what it considers to be a political decision”.
Asked if the level of infection and number of deaths was potentially avoidable, he told BBC News:
Yes, it was always avoidable. This is the really frustrating thing for all of us who work in public health.
This was always avoidable. When the government says – I’m going to be quite critical now I’m afraid – but when the government says ‘oh we’re in the same boat as other countries, we didn’t see this coming’, and so on, and ‘we’re acting at the right time’. That is completely false.
They didn’t do this. They maintained their hugely expensive but ineffective test, trace and isolate system.
They’re not providing the kind of support that’s needed for people to feel that they’re able to do the sorts of things that the government is now saying ‘well, we’re going to punish you if you don’t do it’. So they’ve got it all the wrong way round. It’s really much, much more about support.
Prof Robert West, a participant in the UK’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), said that, due to the more infectious variant the lockdown should be strengthened, in order to try to get the same result as the first shutdown.
He said the current lockdown rules were “still allowing a lot of activity which is spreading the virus”. Asked if he thinks they should change, he told BBC News:
Yes, I do. Not just me. I think probably most of the people I talk to, epidemiologists, and medical scientists and virologists.
Because we have the more infectious variant, which is somewhere around 50% more infectious than last time round in March, that means that if we were to achieve the same result as we got in March we would have to have a stricter lockdown, and it’s not stricter. It’s actually less strict.
Read the original article at The Guardian