Scientists on SAGE will answer the question that they have been asked. The key therefore is to choose the question carefully.
So far as I can gather the question that the Government is asking is ‘how best can we supress the spread of the virus until a vaccine becomes available?’
Given that the virus spreads through social contact, we can hardly be surprised when the scientists come back with a recommendation to halt social contact by imposing lock-downs, preferably as restrictive and fierce as can be enforced.
It is a bit rich however, when you hear some of those scientists who break cover to complain that they recommended a full lock-down a fortnight ago, but that they were ignored.
They were not ignored, on the contrary, their advice was considered but rejected, which is very different indeed from being ignored.
In any event, when the advice is presented it comes with a caveat -boldly articulated up-front, namely that the measures proposed are designed to curb the spread of the virus, and that they all come with associated costs and impacts that may be damaging to the economy, to our health, and to our mental health.
It is not for the scientists to weigh-up those costs, their expertise is confined to the question that they were asked -how to stop the spread.
Rather, it is for the Government to make the assessment as to whether the cost and damage is worth the candle.
So, those politicians who are now insisting that we should just do what the scientists are telling us, including the Leader of the Opposition, have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the advice and their own proper role in weighing it up.
Furthermore, they equally fail to appreciate that there is a growing body of scientists and clinicians who believe that the strategy is the wrong one. The great Barrington Declaration, which gives voice to this growing dissent, has -as I write- been signed by 26,000 clinicians and 10,000 medical and public health scientists.
The resistance is growing in Parliament too: 88 MPs voted against the 10 o’clock hospitality curfew this week.
Most dissent comes however, from within the governing party itself. This is because the coronavirus strategy has been particularly difficult for Conservatives like myself, for whom the belief that individuals make better decisions for themselves, their families and their communities than the state can make for them, is a core value.
As Winston Churchill summed it up ‘trust the people’.
Sir Desmond Swayne TD
