Executive Summary Introduction

Written Evidence Submitted by Edward Sudall (CLL0109) Executive Summary ● The evidence base of lessons learnt to avert poor COVID-19 response existed before the onset of COVID-19. The political under-prioritisation of preparedness in response to prior policy documents is partially to blame for Britain's under performance. ● The dictum to ‘Follow The Science’ is problematic and counter-intuitively indicative of poor use of the necessarily broad scientific evidence base and uncertain information required to face the complexity of a pandemic ● Demarcating science from non-science in lending epistemic authority to British made epidemiological models rather than precautionary emergency management illustrates systematic errors. ● Socially constructed assumptions about risks and anxieties shaped how British decision-makers responded, and did not respond, to the threat of COVID-19. ● Whitehall communications in COBR-SAGE foster miscommunication by design in having too many voices, an overabundance of expertise, and diffuse responsibility. ● British policies such as The Civil Contingencies Act and UK Concept of Operations are agents in the process of decision-making and are too generally designed around frequent risk ‘emergencies’, such as terrorist and national security issues, than national scale rare yet high magnitude hazards such as pathogen outbreaks. Introduction 1. My name is Edward Sudall and I am submitting evidence. I am an MSc student at the department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at University College London (UCL). I worked as an uploader who edited articles from The Washington Post, The New York Times, and our own reporters at The Independent newspaper from January 2020. I am therefore familiar with the real-time commentary and media response to COVID-19. I became invested in the government response partly out of the disparate reports and fact-claims from across the world, but most of all in my Science Policy study within STS. Science Policy in An Era of Risk and Uncertainty, taught by Dr Carina Fearnley of The UCL Early Warning Research Centre, in particular, illuminated the differing mechanisms and competencies of national responses. 2. I am submitting evidence on the efficacy of UK intra-government communications in its response to COVID-19. I however emphasise that policies, albeit grouped in different themes, are interrelated and bear family resemblances even when categorically distinct. International government communications, for instance, affects prior preparedness, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and determines what data makes it into epidemiological models. Nevertheless, for the sake of brevity, I keep my submission terse given the scale of challenges; my citations, nonetheless, are open to further investigation and I am open to providing clarifications to the Science and Technology and Health and Social Care Committees as they may see fit. Lessons Learnt To Lessons Enacted 3. The inquiry requests that ‘lessons learnt’ from the pandemic be evidenced. Scientific evidence alone is however insufficient for preventing and addressing disasters of intercontinental complexity in an era of uncertainty unless they are acted upon. Consider pertinent prior inquiries such as Scientific Advice and Evidence in Emergencies (2010-11), Science in Emergencies: UK Lessons from Ebola (2014-15), and Operation Cygnus (2016) which all provided evidence-based lessons learnt. Those lessons however were under prioritised and under-funded, leaving the UK vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic (Department of the Official Report (Hansard) et al., 2010; House of Commons Select Committee, n.d.; Mellish et al., 2020; Public Health England, 2020). I therefore distinguish between lessons learnt and lessons enacted; the existence of sound evidence alone is seldom enough to alter policy. We also distinguish between good evidence and chosen evidence; relevant expertise and evidence is out there but unevenly distributed and selected. For example, a 2007 systematic review of physical distancing measures and lockdowns from the 1918 influenza pandemic, concluded early lockdown and physical distancing reduced peak death rates by 50% compared to cities without lockdowns (Hatchett et al., 2007). Such dormant evidence became a priority, however, in reaction to the COVID-19 emergency rather than in pre-emption for a COVID-19 scale emergency. The admittance of lessons to be learnt, then, is of little use if the policy apparatus fails to enact those lessons. 4. While the prior distinctions may appear pedantic, the process of learning from COVID-19 supports them. Since the existence of correct information and lessons learnt on-paper from the past seemingly had little bearing on adequately preparing the UK for COVID-19. Johns Hopkins’ vetted Global Health Security Index (GHSI), for instance, ranked the UK second “most prepared'' nation in the world for a pandemic, as illustrated below: 5. 6. (The Global Health Security Index, 2019) 7. This second place ranking is partially formed from an absence of evidence, such as in the unpublished Exercise Cygnus. Jeremy Hunt, health secretary in 2016, defended UK preparations after Cygnus exposed failings by citing that “a US think tank ranked us second most prepared” (Sherling, 2020). Assumedly he refers to the GHSI which is, however, only as good as the data provided and data enacted. The GSHI assessment would bear a different result with Cygnus data communicated and thereby factored-in. The GSHI rank is actually an example of scientific evidence misleading because of ignorance of pertinent data and its confident ranking inviting, perhaps even enacting, complacency compared to mid-ranked nations like New Zealand (Boyd et al., 2020). In reality, the inverse of GHSI has come about. The UK has underperformed with a cumulative confirmed death count of 127,156 on 14 April 2021 (Official UK Coronavirus Dashboard, 2021). And, population factored in, one of the worst death counts in the world: 8. 9. (Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths, 2021.) 10. The Lowy Institute ranks the UK sixty-sixth for its COVID-19 performance. Nations with harsher prior experience of epidemics and natural hazards meanwhile performed far better; the Westminster-modelled New Zealand government ranks first in the world (Lowy Institute, 2021.). New Zealand has 26 deaths (COVID-19: Current Cases, 2021.). Sheila Jassanoff et al categorise the UK as a “chaos country” whereas New Zealand is best defined as a control country (Jasanoff et al., 2021). Jack Stilgoe and co-authors blame UK under-performance on “A climate of complacency, weak leadership, policy hesitancy, vacillation and presumptions of national exceptionalism” (Jasanoff et al., 2021, p. 102). These are indeed proximate causes of mismanagement. But the ultimate causes behind them are difficult to discern. Assumptions of British exceptionalism and improvised response nonetheless can contribute. The assumptions are key because tacit background culture informs policy through demarcating what risks and messages are communicable and what risks and messages are acceptable within a socio-historically contingent frame (Arnoldi, 2009, pp. 105–120; Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983) Following The Science to Post-Normal Science 11. Mary Douglas asserts that risks are conceptualised through cultural anxieties rather than objective, pure, evidence. (Douglas & Wildavsky, 1983). British politicians prioritise individual liberty, trade, and travel. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for instance, gave a speech in February 2020 praising how the UK would remain resilient, free, and trading whilst much of the world hastily interfered with individuals’ rights by implementing restrictions (Whittell, 2020). British politicians weighed the risks of psychologically salient messages about subjected people, stifled trade, and blocked travel and gave these more receptive dread than the faraway and nebulous risks of COVID-19 (Paul Slovic, 2006; Slovic et al., 1982). SAGE, for instance, initially deemed lockdowns unacceptable to Britain, because they were authoritarian and thereby antithetical to British values and customs (Hunt, 2021). Lockdowns and restrictions are conspicuously unreferenced in the January 2020 SAGE minutes (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, 2020). Instead of a scientific method to contain the virus, then—restrictions having been used in liberal democracies long- before Wuhan—COBR and SAGE framed lockdowns as, in Jeremy Hunt’s words, “China-style” (Hatchett et al., 2007; Hunt, 2021; Taiwan in Time: Remembering the SARS Lockdown - Taipei Times, 2020) 12. Contrary to following the science, then, the UK government chose and selected the science best suited to its preferences, biases, and values. As Sheila Jassanoff explains, “we gain explanatory power by thinking of natural and social orders as being produced together. The texture of any historical period, cultural and political formations, can be properly appreciated only if we take this co-production into account” (Jasanoff, 2011). The cultural preoccupation of British experts co-produced the evidence and what counted as ‘the science’ to follow. Yet in government communications following 'The Science' became emblematic, without regard to uncertainty, complexity, and sometimes misleading science. 13. Indeed, the frame of following the science with the definite noun—the—suggests a problematic interpretation of homogenous science offering facts determining optimal outcomes in comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, a ‘normal science’ approach. Joseph Ravetz,

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