Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why have No. 10’s Covid forecasts changed so much?

Just ten days ago, Boris Johnson was attacking lockdowns for the “psychological, the emotional damage” they inflict: the effect on mental health as well as the economy. Then, he saw Covid-19 as a menace that could be managed with a “commonsensical approach” of local and regional measures. Now, he sees Covid as a monster capable of overwhelming the NHS and warns of a “medical and a moral disaster” if we do not do a stay-at-home lockdown. His view of the virus seems to have changed, utterly. Why?

As soon as he started his statement, he turned to the graphs on which his case hangs. It was not so much new data, but new models showing new forecasts. Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific Officer, ran through them: the same ones leaked to the BBC a few hours earlier. As we know, the first wave peaked at just over 1,000 daily deaths. The new graphs show deaths hitting 4,000 deaths a day – perhaps even as high as 6,000. To put this in perspective, daily deaths in the USA peaked at about 2,500. If 4,000 is daily deaths is now plausible from a second wave in Britain, as the models seem to suggest, drastic action is understandable. Here is the graph, shown at the press conference, that makes the case for lockdown :-

The above graph is quite a departure from previous understanding of Covid’s potency. We now see second-wave deaths dwarfing not only those from the first wave but those envisaged by the government’s official ‘realistic worst-case scenario’ (RWC) for the coming winter. The RWC was a secret until The Spectator published it a few days ago, showing deaths peaking at about 800 a day. Here it is.

All the precautions we’re taking seem not to have protected us from a second wave far bigger than the first

When we printed the above chart, it looked bad enough. Now it looks tame by comparison of the new studies. And there’s no mention of ‘worst-case’ scenarios: these are billed only as ‘winter scenarios’.

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