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| Beware! 5 hours! Click screenshot to go to vid |
Wow, it sure was a humdinger! Dominic Cummings' evidence yesterday 26 May, to Parliament’s Science & Technology Committee looking into "lessons learnt" from how Westminster handled the pandemic.
And one of the lessons, if a cheap shot, is "don't get on the wrong side of Dominic". He was savage on the Health Sec, Matt Hancock: a “liar” who should have been fired for “criminal and disgraceful behaviour”. And on Boris (“unfit for the job”) and on the Civil Service is "not fit for service".
But that's a little unfair. For I thought he gave good testimony. Honest, self-critical and insightful. (not everyone agrees....)There's plenty of reporting out there, so I won't repeat that. Just in the British press, going left to right: The Guardian, The Independent,, BBC, Daily Mail, The Sun.
Just some of my own observations:
Cummings was very critical of himself for not hitting the "panic button" earlier than 14 May 2020. And gave a credible explanation for why he didn't. There were also other things he said "I got completely wrong". Good on him for that; I believed him.l
Thursday 12 May 2020 was "like Independence Day" in the Oval Office, with Dr Warner (who he'd brought in to look at the science) playing the part of Jeff Goldblum. Apart from the emerging pandemic, they'd been asked by Trump to join the US in bombing Iraq (on that very day!), and by Boris's "girlfriend" to sort out and issue relating to her dog (Dylan?). Wow! This was the day they decided they had to go from Plan A (herd immunity) to Plan B, which was to become the first lockdown a week later.
He described Boris as having played down the coronavirus -- it was "just another swine flu", according to Boris. Me: we also downplayed it at the time, having gone through the 2002 SARS. We were planning on a trip to Alaska as late as early March. The rest of the world was too. Think Pelosi and De Blasio in the US, taking part in Chinese New Year celebrations, urging people to go out in crowds. So, Boris wasn't alone then.
I didn't know that Boris was so anti-lockdown as Cummings testified. Since March last year he's seemed very keen to launch lockdowns, but that's not the case, says Dominic, he was always wanting to keep the UK open -- "I should have been like the Mayor in Jaws and kept the beach open" he says Boris said.
Vaccines: I'd heard before that vaccines had been developed really quickly, in weeks after discovery of the virus. Cummings confirmed that in the UK they had a vaccine "within hours of getting the DNA of the virus". The delay was due to procedures and protocols not designed for the emergency we faced.
His criticism of the ingrained problems in the Civil Service ring true -- I've had experience of them myself in the Australian Public Service, where for a time I was at senior levels, dealing Ministers and CabSec's. Oz is actually pretty good, but even there it was difficult to move them off the system of jobs going to the next in line. (We did that in 1990, in a major reshuffle of Austrade, but it was against a strong tide of "this is the way we've always done things". Reform is needed and Cummings' points were powerful and well made.
Questions the Committee didn't ask:
Was the Swedish model considered? The one neither complete lockdown nor "let the virus rip", but telling people to socially distance, wear masks, etc, protect the vulnerable (elderly) but otherwise get on with it.
What was the influence of the Imperial College of London's modelling by Neil Ferguson? Modelling that has proved wanting, but which many believe had critical influence on the government.
Why the strict binary? Cummings repeatedly said it was a choice between strict lockdown or having the virus spread unchecked. But there is a wide variety of approaches around the world: just look at the 50 states of the US. There are certainly "lessons to be learned" there, and it's not always -- indeed not often -- the case that the stricter and quicker the lockdown the best the effect. I've written about this often, and done some original analysis:
- "Are lockdowns effective?" (15 May 20)
- "Did lockdowns reduce Covid deaths" (18 Mar 21)
- "Correlation between lockdown and Covid death rates low-zero" (21 Apr 20)
In short, I think this is Cummings' biggest blind spot. At the beginning he says "I got xxx completely wrong". Why can he not be wrong about this? It's non-binary!
Why was the Barrington Declaration not even mentioned? Protect the vulnerable (targetted protection), urge social distancing and masking, but otherwise let the public get on with it.
Cummings said that had there been no lockdown there would have been: (1) people self-locking down, therefore (2) impact on economy (that Boris had been trying to avoid by not locking down), as well as (3) complete closure of the NHS because of the large number of cases. But I don't get it. He wasn't challenged on that statement, especially the one about the NHS, at any point? Why? Why would there have been a complete close down of the NHS?
LATER (10:30am GMT): Watching UK Parliament live, Matt Hancock giving his side. It’s clear the government has decided to circle the wagons. It’s fascinating to watch it happening in real time. A master class in how to handle extremely damaging allegations (lying, costing thousands of lives).
