 Last week the government was talking about herd immunity strategy whereby 60% of the population would get coronavirus in a reasonably short space of time so over a sort of four or five months. And then ultimately we get through it and then by next winter enough people would be immune or have some immunity to coronavirus for us not to have another peak next winter next Christmas. We still don't know whether or not whether that immunity will happen I mean what most people are suggesting is that. With a normal coronavirus you do get immunity and it tends to last a year or two so it is three months right. Why different types of colds can be different lengths so cold can be anywhere between three months and two years was reached three three but I think it's it's more likely to be at least a season right so. So the science behind it wasn't completely ridiculous and what was completely ridiculous is the idea that the health service could handle 60% of the population getting coronavirus in a four week period not for sorry four month period and this became you know it seemed over the weekend that maybe the government shifted their strategy but won't be in particularly honest about it after we finished our show on Monday it got made public that actually the modeling that the government have been basing their strategy on. Was completely wrong it was wrong because they thought that only a very small proportion of people who entered hospital would be you know would have to go over into ICU to have ventilators and to have a much more intensive regime of care from the NHS. And the whilst the strategy this is the modeling when you actually put in the right data instead of the wrong data shows that the government strategy as it currently existed would kill 250,000 people. The modeling also showed that if the government took a different strategy so moving the government what they said is we're going to delay which means we're going to accept that basically most people are going to get it but we're going to try and what they would say flatten the curve. This this paper says that actually if they suppress it which is to say we try and stop as we try and make as few people pass on this disease as possible we can get deaths down to about 20,000. Now obviously it's good that the people who are making this model realize their mistake that's great but the fact that the government were pursuing the wrong strategy and it was always a high risk strategy even if it was the right strategy it was always a strategy whereby the downside of it is. Fucking awful and the outside of it is just that we have slightly less disruption. We were talking about this what a week two weeks ago and we said how do you communicate something which says well look a lot more people are going to die now than other countries but it's going to pay off in a year's time and even just a week later you look at that and you think wow that was insane. But in any case what was important in revealing this is it became clear that the modelling was wrong. And what we heard all last week from the government was anyone who said we think your strategy sounds overly risky the idea that you are just going to let this virus run wild in the hope that enough people get herd immunity we're not sure we're comfortable with that. And what were we told not just by the government but also by Laura Koonsburg Robert Peston all of the media was like the government are being led by the science we were even told that we're headline saying Boris Johnson was thought of as a populist he's proven he's not because he is being led by the science. That whole period of time there were people from the World Health Organization. A bunch of incredibly reputable scientists the editor in chief of the Lancet saying that this this strategy is crazy every other state around the world every other state around the world saying that this is not how coronavirus works. We were told no listen to the science isn't the science so I thought the fact that this had been revealed would mean that actually maybe the media would become a bit more critical about what the government means when they say we're being led by the science. For example the Labour Party were calling all over the weekend for this modelling to be made public they were saying at least if the outcomes of this modelling seem a bit counter-intuitive we should at least be able to see the modelling. If this modelling from Imperial College had been made public a week ago someone would have noticed that mistake right. And so I was hoping that the BBC would change their tune but let's look at actually how this was covered so we can go to now a tweet from the BBC news. Suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time and it says the science has shifted dramatically which is why people in the UK are now facing huge changes to their daily lives. So it's the science that has shifted this wasn't nothing about politics here this was the science that shifted and the official line is new information has emerged. It was we only realised this many people are going to ICU and we looked at Italy. I'll show you in a moment why that's bullshit but let's now look at the Beth Rigby tweet so she's political editor at Sky. Analysis we've talked about another of her big tweets where she always puts them in analysis and then just writes what could be a government press release. Why the step change the facts have changed. The senior government source told me last night we've had to accelerate we thought we could put these measures off for another week and push social shielding back a week after then but we've had to bring it forward. So she said the science has changed there was no mistake that was made new information emerged and our government who are being led by the science responded to that new information and changed policy. That's complete bullshit and don't just take that from me because I know you know I've always been very open with the fact I'm not an epidemiologist I'm not even a scientist right. So take it from the editor in chief of the Lancet Britain's most prestigious medical journal. I will take his tweet Laura Koonsburg says that the science has changed this is not true the science has been the same since January what has changed is that government advisers have at last understood what really took place in China. What is now taking place in Italy it was there to see when I saw that yesterday morning I quote to eat that saying look this guy should be on BBC News because there's been a fuck up here. I watched BBC News last night the package included you know it didn't mention the WHO didn't mention that the government adopting this strategy was controversial. All they said was the science has changed they said new information has emerged from Italy which means the science has changed. They interviewed two experts who are the two experts they were both people from Imperial College who had worked on the original modeling. You know it's like you couldn't you couldn't make it up like the BBC at this point in time for the government to be creating good policy which keeps us alive has to be holding their feet to the fire. Not just attacking them for the sake of it because obviously we it's one of the few occasions where we at Navarra Media want the Tory government to succeed. But to make sure that the advice they're giving is the correct ones and the actions they're taking is the correct ones and nothing has you know you're saying Theresa Mays line nothing has changed. We've seen that the science that the government is accepting is not sent from God it can be mistaken in this case it was seriously dramatically mistaken and lies will be lost because of it. Which means that this needs to be public which means that scrutiny needs to be allowed not dismissed. And that means that our media establishments need to take their job seriously.