Sage admits its models were ‘at variance to reality’. But why?

The Sage committee was set up as a pool of experts on tap to advise government. During the pandemic, it mutated into something different: a group whose advice ended up advocating long lockdowns. Its regular meetings have now been discontinued, with questions being asked in No. 10 about whether it’s time to disband Sage and set up a new structure – in the same way that Public Health England was reformed and became the UK Health Security Agency. There will be plenty of lessons to learn. But we might not have much time to learn them: a new variant or (given the growth of genomic sequencing) a new pathogen could come along at any time.

This matters. Failure to identify past mistakes will guarantee that they are repeated – and that’s why the evidence given by Professor Graham Medley, chair of the Sage modellers, to the science and technology select committee matters. The figures his team collated suggested that Omicron would kill between 600 to 6,000 people a day – as worked out, fatalities peaked at 273 on 21 January.