I think the big problem here is the misunderstanding that SAGE is independent and that its deliberations and decisions, laundered through a political lens, are purely scientific. I agree that the mathematical modelling emphasis of SAGE was wrong and I argued with Clark about this at the outset. The conventional way to deal with a pandemic is in an almost reflex manner because by the time you get extensive data it could be too late. This approach has been flawed from the outset. If in March the government had acted sooner and with a proper ‘lockdown’ then arguably we would have been in a better place. Nevertheless this does not negate the fact that there was sufficient there to know that this was a dangerous virus, it had caused mortality of over 1% overall, it had a high contagion rate, to cause considerable mortality and there was no background immunity. You cannot wait to establish all this to start acting on a pandemic.