'If Only We Had A Crystal Ball' To Plan Lockdown Says Health Minister Nadine Dorries
Only “a crystal ball” could have allowed the government to plan for a second lockdown a health minister has said – almost six weeks after government scientific advisers called for circuit breaker restrictions.
Amid reports that England would soon be forced into another month-long full national lockdown, Nadine Dorries tweeted that only a crystal ball could have helped the government anticipate the scale of the second wave of Covid-19.
The health minister has been met with widespread criticism for her comments, made more than a month after the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) called for a two-week circuit breaker to halt the spread of the virus.
In a response to a tweet by journalist Hugo Rifkind, who earlier in October wrote “the lesson of the pandemic so far has been that everything we do, we do at least three weeks too late”, Dorries wrote “If only we had a crystal ball and could actually see how many over 60s would be infected, the positivity rate, the infection rate and the subsequent lag giving us thee 14-day anticipated demand on hospital beds on any particular say, three days in advance.”
See? If only we had a crystal ball and could actually see how many over 60s would be infected, the positivity rate, the infection rate and the subsequent lag giving us the 14day anticipated demand on hospital beds on any particular day, three weeks in advance. https://t.co/WtQI5D9T4u
— Nadine Dorries 🇬🇧#StayAlert (@NadineDorries) October 31, 2020
On October 13 it emerged that ministers had been warned three weeks prior that the country faced a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences” unless they took decisive action and implemented a two-week lockdown.
SAGE proposed five measures alongside a circuit breaker; advising anyone who could to work from home; a ban on household mixing inside homes (apart from within support bubbles); the closure of all hospitality venues, indoor gyms and services such as...
