The government’s chief scientific adviser, whom Rishi Sunak called “Dr.” The death appeared before the Covid inquiry on Thursday to express his frustration at the UK’s slow response to the Covid crisis.
Dame Angela McLean, who became the first female chief scientific adviser earlier this year, criticized politicians for failing to learn the lessons of the first lockdown in March 2020, leading to the same thing being done “again” months later later.
She was followed by Kemi Badenoch, the current business minister, who shared her experience as equalities minister during the pandemic, when there were large disparities in vaccination rates between ethnic groups.
Here are five things we learned from both the chief scientific adviser and Ms Badenoch from their statements during Thursday’s investigation:
The government still doesn’t control anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Ms Badenoch warned the inquiry that anti-vax conspiracy theories were still widespread in the wake of the pandemic and that the government was “not in control” of the situation. She said the spread of misinformation through social media and hard-to-monitor WhatsApp groups was a major cause of vaccine hesitancy among some ethnic minority groups during the pandemic and led to rising infections. The minister expressed concern that efforts to combat anti-vaccine misinformation have largely failed and that the government has yet to recognize that information, true or false, spreads “at lightning speed” in the modern world. “I don’t know how to solve this problem,” she said. “It’s very worrying… I’m still very concerned about the issue of misinformation.”
Some policy proposals amounted to “racial segregation.”‘
At a Covid inquiry examining the impact of the pandemic on minorities, Ms Badenoch said some of experts’ proposals to combat the spread of the virus amounted to “racial segregation”. She said calls to prioritize ethnic minorities for access to Covid vaccines or special financial support were discriminatory and that the government was right to focus on delivering vaccines across the country. “Ethnic minorities do not exist simply as communities of individuals. We are an integral part of this country. “We are involved with people who are not our ethnicity,” Ms Badenoch said. She also said using the word “Bame”, meaning black, Asian and minority ethnic people, as an umbrella term in the early days of the pandemic did not make sense and “obscured what was actually happening within different ethnic groups”.
This tiered system was called the “leveling up program” because it spread infections.
Dame Angela criticized England’s system of Covid restrictions as “indicating a lack of caution on the part of decision-makers” as it did nothing to stop the spread of infections. The chief scientific adviser said health authorities inside the country even called it a “levelling up plan” because it “increased the incidence of infections in many, many parts of the country.” Introduced in October 2020, the traffic light system, which divided regions of England into one of three categories based on Covid infection rates, was intended to simplify the previous patchwork of local restrictions.
Speed of decision-making has become ‘Britain’s biggest weakness in the pandemic’‘
Dame Angela criticized politicians for being too slow to implement Covid restrictions and too quick to launch risky plans that ultimately led to infections. She said the government had repeatedly failed to learn the most important lesson from the first lockdown in March 2020: Britain was too slow to react, leading to a repeat of the same mess in the autumn. The chief scientific adviser said that while the second wave of Covid in October 2020 was “predictable”, “the second lockdown was again like March – we get slower and slower and then have to hit the brakes at the last minute.” At the same time, she said the government was pushing too hard on initiatives such as Mr Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme without consulting health authorities. Dame Angela told SPI-MO [the scientific pandemic influenza group on modelling, operational] she was not asked whether the plan, launched in July 2020, could trigger a new wave of Covid, and what she then told the Treasury: “Can’t you find another way to stimulate the economy?”
Officials were often outraged by scientists’ comments
Dame Angela said there was frustration among scientists about Whitehall officials’ inability to understand data and models, and that part of their job was to “close the gaps” when problems arose between them. She recalled an incident when “a scientist from SPI-MO explained to an official why they were wrong, and the official found it rude.” got used to it. “I’ve had people say, ‘Sorry, that upset you.’ They didn’t want to be rude to you. They were talking about your work,” she added.