Quote Originally Posted by Flem View Post
Are you talking about 'predictions' of what would happen with the lockdown or without the lockdown?

In his presentation in the press conference with Boris Johnson on 31st October (see link, below), Vallance made it clear that the 'predictions' (if that's what you want to call them) related to the situation in which changes were not made to the mitigation measures in place. However, changes were made. So to compare those predictions with what is actually happening is, obviously, pretty meaningless.

Two example from the presentation.

1) The slide presented at video time 8:36 has the title "WINTER SCENARIOS FROM EARLY WORKING ANALYSIS: England daily deaths if no changes in policy or behaviour". Note the phrase if no changes in policy or behaviour.

2) At video time 11:20, Vallance says "So unfortunately that's a very grim picture in terms of what this looks like in the absence of action and continued growth." Note the phrase in the absence of action.

It's also important to understand what is meant by phrases such as 'reasonable worst case scenario" and "what could happen".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B1sBUdQeio
But you have to build in the average time lag between infection and death. The average time between infection and symptoms is apparently 5 days and I believe that the average time lag between symptoms and death is around 23 days. So given that full lockdown only started on the 5th November, a comparison between actual deaths and the four scenarios is definitely valid. The deaths we are seeing at the moment relate to infections that occurred prior to lockdown. In fact we can keep on validly making these comparisons until early December.

All four scenario's are worse than actual and will probably end up being far worse. Actual deaths for November could easily have been more accurately predicted for the whole of November when they made the presentation because they already had the infection figures at that point