Ross Clark Ross Clark

Five questions for Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance

Photo by Pippa Fowles / No. 10 Downing Street.

The chief medical officer, professor Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, made a statement this morning on the latest data surrounding Covid-19, laying the groundwork for new restrictions that the government is expected to announce tomorrow. It wasn’t a press conference with questions, so they could not be challenged on what they presented — but there were plenty of questions to ask. Here are five:

1. Why present only one Covid ‘scenario’ – with extreme assumptions?

Sir Patrick presented a graph showing a frightening exponential rise in cases to 49,000 a day by mid-October — if cases continued to double every seven days. He emphasised that it wasn’t a prediction, yet only presented one scenario. The idea that cases are doubling every seven days is based on data from a very brief period in late August and early September. But in France and Spain — which are being watched closely, under the assumption that the UK is following the same Covid-19 trajectories — cases took three weeks to double. Moreover, the graphs presented to us show that cases there are no longer rising at an exponential rate — in fact, the rise is starting to level off. If the UK is following France and Spain, this does not support a scenario of Covid-19 infections doubling every seven days. Why didn’t he also show a graph with this scenario: that we follow either Spain or France?

2. The death scenario is not like it was in March. Is this being factored in?

The graphs they showed of rising cases and fatalities in France and Spain were framed to illustrate what appeared to be a dramatic rise in deaths, responding to a dramatic rise in cases. What they didn’t show — because the graphs only started in July — was that in the second wave of Covid-19 in Spain and France (and this applies to many other countries too) deaths are not rising by anything like the same proportion they were in the first wave back in the spring.

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