At the government’s scientific meeting, held remotely on Zoom, the eminent sociologist called for a pilot study to examine the need for masks. Out of the corner of his eye, he said, he could see Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, rolling his eyes in apparent disapproval. Professor Dingwall got the message and cut off his pleading speech. “I was persona non grata early on,” Professor Dingwall recalls. He was worried about the impact of the lockdown and other strict measures – such as the two-metre social distancing rules – and had voiced his disagreement. “The problem was that social and economic voices were not taken into account,” he told the Telegraph. The Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) was the senior body tasked with providing – and the clue is in the name – scientific advice to the Prime Minister and Cabinet on dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. It was co-chaired by Sir Patrick and Sir Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor at the time, now, in the final days of the Conservative leadership contest, made a surprise exit. Boris Johnson’s government has “empowered scientists” to such an extent, he said, that he claims he has been banned from discussing the “trade-offs” of plunging the country into lockdown against the damage caused by school closures or increasing NHS backlogs.
“Powerful Clique”
Professor Dingwall was a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Group (Nervtag), one of the many scientific bodies that fed into his Sage reports. Sir Patrick will also attend Nervtag meetings, with scientists calling in virtual debates. “Sage is best understood as a network with a powerful clique at its centre,” said Professor Dingwall. “I described myself as a loyal opposition. I accepted the science but did not accept the inevitability of the political conclusions. At one point, I could see Sir Patrick in the corner of the screen rolling his eyes at me and thinking “hit that again”. This was done at a Nervtag meeting in late summer 2020.” Professor Dingwall argued for a randomized trial to examine whether mask use at school prevented the spread of Covid. He is adamant now that the school closures were a terrible mistake, proof that a “biomedical bubble” of scientists was dictating government policy. Sir Patrick declined to comment on Thursday, but his office made it clear that Sage’s advice is “limited to scientific matters” and that debate on the evidence is “actively encouraged at Sage meetings and a consensus view is reflected in the minutes”. Dr Gavin Morgan, an educational psychologist at University College London, told The Telegraph how he also felt on another of the committees feeding Sage – the one called the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, or Spi-B for short. “During those early Spi-B meetings, I often found myself a bit of a lone voice,” said Dr. Morgan. “It was early March 2020 when we were meeting several times a week. With the benefit of hindsight, there may have been a bit of groupthink in those early meetings. Things were a fait accompli, it had already been decided that closing schools was a good thing.” In an interview with The Spectator magazine, Mr Sunak said the Johnson government “shouldn’t have empowered scientists the way we did”. The Prime Minister had repeatedly insisted that his government was “following the science”, effectively giving Sage the final say.
