Making it up as they go along

On May 12th, the Government announced setting up of a new "department", the Joint Biosecurity Centre, which will oversee and approve actions in relation to pandemics.

"The government has said this centre will lead a new biosecurity monitoring system. It will bring together experts on disease incidence and control (epidemiologists) with other analysts from across government to give ministers, via the chief medical officer, joined up advice on decisions about managing the disease.

The centre will have two main jobs. The first is as an independent analytical function to provide real-time analysis about infection outbreaks. It will look in detail to identify and respond to outbreaks of Covid-19 as they arise. The centre will collect data about the prevalence of the disease and analyse that data to understand infection rates across the country.

Its second job is to advise on how the government should respond to spikes in infections – for example by closing schools or workplaces in local areas where infection levels have risen. Should UK government ministers decide to impose different restrictions in different areas and regions across England, it will be on the advice of the JBC.

The JBC looks to be based on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC). JTAC analyses intelligence related to terrorism and sets threat levels, which in turn inform ministers’ decisions on protecting the public and operational deployments by the police and other agencies."

Yesterday, under questioning at the daily briefing, Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted the JBC does not yet exist, and yet was supposed to have had oversight in the relaxing of the lockdown.

Although official figures showed that there had been just 111 deaths registered in the previous 24 hours, and additional 414 were added to the total, explained only by a footnote, like some kind of administrative clear up. Each one is a life lost before its time.

The FT's adjusted total of additional deaths was at just under 64,000 as of Tuesday last week, and with the lockdown now having pretty much broken down, kids going back to school and many people returning to work, and no measures in place to slow the infection down, we should know by the end of next week whether a second wave is coming.

I hope against hope it isn't, but a Government has prioritised the career of a political advisore over the public health of 67 million people. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) have said that the SAGE advisors have compromised their integrity for political reasons, and they should choose now to break away.