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Dominic Cummings has unveiled whiteboard charts that he says were brought in to convince Boris Johnson to lock Britain down last year – a move which he compared to a scene from the film Independence Day.
The former aide to the Prime Minister uploaded an image on Twitter which he says was taken in Boris Johnson’s study on March 14, 2020, before Britain’s first lockdown.
It shows a series of graphs drawn on a whiteboard, outlining potential outcomes that could happen depending on how the Government approached the crisis.
One graph, labelled ‘No mitigation’, shows a blue bell curve, seemingly representing Covid cases, skyrocketing well above a red line representing ‘NHS capacity’, predicting there would be ‘100,000+ people dying in corridors’ if no action was taken.
Another graph, titled ‘Current plan’, shows a more spread out curve, which still exceeded the health service’s ability to cope, implying that the measures in place at that time were insufficient to stop the health service being overwhelmed.
A third chart, named the ‘Actual plan’, shows the rate at which coronavirus spreads being suppressed, with the blue line annotated ‘lockdown to (lower) rate = delay’. Under a section titled ‘public health’ is written ‘3 weeks min – no non-essential movement’.
Mr Cummings yesterday listed his ‘heroes’ of the pandemic in evidence to MPs, including Vote Leave ‘data geek’ Dr Ben Warner, and his AI expert brother Marc.
MPs were told: ‘It was like a scene from Independence Day with Jeff Goldblum saying the aliens are here and your whole plan is broken and you need a new plan. With Ben Warner in the Jeff Goldblum role’.
One graph, labelled ‘No mitigation’, shows a blue bell curve, seemingly representing Covid cases, skyrocketing well above a red line representing ‘NHS capacity’, predicting there would be ‘100,000+ people dying in corridors’ if no action was taken. Another graph, titled ‘Current plan’, shows a more spread out curve, which still exceeded the health service’s ability to cope, implying that the measures in place at that time were insufficient to stop the health service being overwhelmed. A third chart, named the ‘Actual plan’, shows the rate at which coronavirus spreads being suppressed, with the blue line annotated ‘lockdown to (lower) rate = delay’. Under a section titled ‘public health’ is written ‘3 weeks min – no non-essential movement’
Mr Cummings had said the PM was warned: ‘The NHS is going to be smashed in weeks, really we’ve got days to act’
Mr Cummings added to an extensive series of tweets today, writing alongside the image: ‘As shown to PM, his study, Sat morning, 14/3, by Ben Warner/me: ”Current plan” = disaster vs ”actual plan”. The PlanB whiteboard is just behind. ”The official plan is a disaster, we need Plan B”. ‘
Mr Johnson announced a lockdown beginning on March 23.
Just one day before the image was allegedly presented to the PM, the second most senior civil servant at the Cabinet Office, Helen MacNamara, had told Mr Cummings ‘I think we are absolutely f***ed’ and warned that ‘thousands’ of people could die, according to what Mr Cummings told MPs yesterday.
Mr Johnson announced a lockdown beginning on March 2
Mr Cummings has claimed that he warned the PM on March 12 that there were ‘big problems coming’ if self-isolation measures were not announced immediately.
He said he told Boris Johnson: ‘We’ve got big problems coming. The Cabinet Office is terrifyingly sh**. No plans, totally behind the pace, we must announce today, not next week. We must force the pace. We’re looking at 100,000 to 500,000 deaths between optimistic and pessimistic scenarios.’
But he said on that day rather than focusing on Covid the Government was consumed with a potential bombing campaign in the Middle East at the request of Mr Trump and a ‘trivial’ story in the Times newspaper about Mr Johnson, his fiancee Carrie Symonds and their dog.
He said: ‘And then to add to … it sounds so surreal couldn’t possibly be true … that day, the Times had run a huge story about the Prime Minister and his girlfriend and their dog.
‘The Prime Minister’s girlfriend was going completely crackers about this story and demanding that the press office deal with that.
‘So we had this sort of completely insane situation in which part of the building was saying are we going to bomb Iraq? Part of the building was arguing about whether or not we’re going to do quarantine or not do quarantine, the Prime Minister has his girlfriend going crackers about something completely trivial.’
The PM’s former top advisor said that Dr Ben Warner (pictured) told Boris Johnson in March 2020 the NHS would be ‘smashed in weeks if not days’ because SAGE had got it ‘all completely wrong’ having predicted the tipping point would be June
MPs were told: ‘It was like a scene from Independence Day with Jeff Goldblum saying the aliens are here and your whole plan is broken and you need a new plan. With Ben Warner in the Jeff Goldblum role’
Mr Cummings said on the evening of March 13 the second most senior civil servant at the Cabinet Office, Helen MacNamara, came in and relayed to him the view of another senior official that ‘there is no plan’ and ‘we’re in huge trouble’.
Mr Cummings said she told him: ‘I think we are absolutely f*****’ and warned that ‘thousands’ of people could die.
However, at around the same time there were still meetings going on with officials suggesting people should be advised to have ‘chicken pox parties’ to spread the virus more quickly.
Even in the first half of March Mr Johnson was still of the view that the threat to the economy was more significant than the public health risk.
Mr Cummings said it was like something out of disaster movie Independence Day, where star Jeff Goldblum says the plan had failed and there needs to be a new one.
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