Professor Susan Michie:

I can certainly talk about the pattern of what happened in the UK. There were a couple of things that led to a real decrease in trust and an associated drop in adherence. One of these was the very mixed messaging with regard to opening up the economy, which focused on very vague ideas such as staying alert and controlling the virus. People got confused and a bit alienated as a result. In the UK, there were two or three days when people close to the scientists and politicians were mentioning the concept of herd immunity. That resulted in a real outcry because such a small percentage of the population would have had any kind of build-up of antibodies. We already know that it is about 6% which means that 94% do not have such antibodies. We do not know whether antibodies translate into immunity and, if they do, how much immunity and for how long. This is really not a viable strategy without tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. This is why Independent SAGE, the Scottish Government and others are considering a zero-Covid strategy. I have heard the British Medical Association is also going to endorse it. In the UK, the lack of a strategy and the chopping and changing of advice to people is one of the reasons trust continues to be very low. Having an overarching strategy and measures therein which the population understand will engender trust. The population can be brought along with that, with clear leadership. In the absence of a strategy, we have confusion and the conspiracy theories which were alluded to at the beginning of the session.

I need to go shortly, but, from the perspective of Independent SAGE UK, I really commend this strategy to the committee, even though I understand that a lot of the details and nuts and bolts need to be worked out to implement it.