Quote Originally Posted by noel View Post
Interesting. I didn't watch the press conference, so may not be in the best place to comment here, but (that doesn't normally stop me)...

Could it be that the conversation went something like:
Scientists: You really will have to do some sort of lock-down
Politicians: OK we agree, but people won't believe us unless we scare them a bit. Can you show them that graph you showed us last week?
Scientists: But that's already out of date and it's not tracking any more
Politicians: That doesn't matter, no-one will look at the details. We just need a headline of 4000 a day, then we can justify the lock-down
Well...faced with confusing data from which it is difficult to draw a robust conclusion it is much easier to decide a course of action and then publish the data to support it.

It's the approach a Labour Government might adopt in starting a war.