The Challenge of Controlling COVID-19. Lewis, Jane
but the Government decided not to go this far and instead confined its actions to tightening existing regulations, for example, by ordering the shutdown of bars and restaurants at 10pm.
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The Government may have had unrealistic expectations of SAGE. The dominant voice among the experts on SAGE belonged to those modelling the virus, with the Group also playing an important role in reporting on whether a particular approach to disease prevention met their high standards of evidence. They relayed their findings via the CMO and the CSO to the Government. They did not make recommendations based on observations, for instance on what was happening in other countries, and they did not engage with operational issues, such as how to set up a test and trace system and make it work. As Nickson et al (2020) have suggested, ministers need to be clearer about SAGE’s remit, the role of science advice and its limitations.
In addition, in the early stages of the pandemic, the data available to influential members of SAGE was inadequate and the problem this posed was compounded by the Government’s tendency throughout the first wave of the virus to postpone taking decisive action. It may also be that the Government should have widened its group of advisers, most obviously to include public health practitioners, and that their means of engaging with scientific advisers and public health and social care leaders required modification, although as the next two chapters show, ministers showed little appetite for consulting with people working on the ground. A Government facing a new disease that was spreading extremely quickly wanted solutions, but SAGE’s advice often spelled out the uncertainties, denying ministers the certainties they desired (for instance on whether to cancel large public sporting events and close borders). This was not the fault of the scientists whose views were sought via SAGE. Nor can the Government necessarily be blamed for hoping for and wanting more, although as the President of the Royal Society intimated, it showed inadequate understanding of the nature of scientific advice.
Inevitably, given the rapid spread and high number of cases requiring hospital treatment by mid-March, attention became more firmly fixed on treatment and in particular on the danger that the NHS would be ‘overwhelmed’ than on the need for further urgent development of measures to control the pandemic by developing the role of public health.
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