Christmas Jigsaw No. 1

A bitterly cold day today. I nipped into town first thing to drop some jigsaws off at the charity shop. I’ve done various little things indoor mostly, but I was outside for 20 mins and it was soooooooo cold! I’ve bought my artificial Xmas tree in from the garage ready to put up over the weekend. I’ve done my first Xmas jigsaw - a month before Xmas eve.

Covid update
Yesterday I watched Professor Dame Angela McLean (Govt Chief Scientific Advisor) give evidence to the Covid Inquiry. She was very impressive and willing to give her opinions. Again it came across how senior ministers and the PM didn’t appear to grasp the seriousness of what the scientists were saying or to understand the implications of things like the virus growing exponentially. She was taking some blame for not getting her points across, something I often saw from women who weren’t listened to by men in executive committee meetings (I don’t remember ever seeing it the other way round). It also struck me that those making decisions appeared to want to wait until more data was available. Risk is made up of likelihood and impact - where the potential impact is huge, you take action as soon as you can, you don’t wait until the likelihood is clearer (with a few caveats). This almost certainly led to repeated delays in lockdowns, which were therefore more drastic, longer, more costly, with more deaths and long term health consequences. It’s clear that decision makers need training on the basic aspects of risk management, modelling, statistics and scientific terms.