The video addresses the differing perspectives surrounding the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK as of July 2020. It focuses on the perspectives of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is optimistic about easing restrictions by Christmas, versus those of scientists who remain cautious and emphasize the need for continued social distancing amidst ongoing virus transmission. The discussion includes the implications of these competing visions and the potential for another wave of infections during the winter months.

This is a must-watch because it highlights the ongoing debate between political decisions and scientific advice during the pandemic. It examines the complexity of balancing economic recovery with public health measures and the importance of a strategic approach to testing and tracing. The video also provides insights from leading figures in the scientific community and government, discussing the challenges faced in preventing a second wave of COVID-19 without the availability of a vaccine.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. triad [ˈtraɪˌæd] - (noun) - A group or set of three connected people or things. - Synonyms: (trilogy, trio, threesome)

This triad politician, scientist, medic, the last two perpetually perched on the prime ministerial's shoulders.

2. perpetually [pərˈpɛtʃuəli] - (adverb) - In a way that never changes or ends; constantly. - Synonyms: (constantly, incessantly, endlessly)

...two perpetually perched on the prime ministerial's shoulders.

3. epidemiological [ˌɛpɪˌdiːmiəˈlɒdʒɪkəl] - (adjective) - Relating to the branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases. - Synonyms: (public health, disease study, epidemiologic)

The prime minister is now being more open about balancing economic and epidemiological harm.

4. bumbling [ˈbʌmblɪŋ] - (adjective) - Acting in a confused or ineffectual way. - Synonyms: (clumsy, awkward, inept)

...and the alternative is to keep kind of bumbling along at quite a high level of infections.

5. solidarity [ˌsɒlɪˈdærɪti] - (noun) - Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest. - Synonyms: (unity, unanimity, cohesion)

Social solidarity is very important here.

6. austere [ɒˈstɪər] - (adjective) - Severe or strict in manner or attitude. - Synonyms: (severe, strict, stern)

On the other hand, a more austere view from the scientists...

7. posed [poʊzd] - (verb) - Present (a problem, danger, or difficulty). - Synonyms: (presented, posed, introduced)

But in the end, decisions are taken by the elected politicians.

8. deterministic [dɪˌtɜːrmɪˈnɪstɪk] - (adjective) - Involving the philosophy that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. - Synonyms: (predetermined, inevitable, fixed)

The number one thing that will determine the likely outcome is how effective we are at identifying cases.

9. resurgence [rɪˈsɜːrdʒəns] - (noun) - An increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence. - Synonyms: (revival, comeback, renewal)

You can see the countries that did initially well are having a resurgence of cases.

10. pandemic [pænˈdɛmɪk] - (noun) - A disease prevalent over a whole country or the world. - Synonyms: (epidemic, outbreak, plague)

But I mean, the other thing one's obviously got to do is look at the other harms of the coronavirus pandemic as well

Covid Lockdown - Boris Johnson sets out plan for 'significant normality' by Christmas - BBC Newsnight

There's been three faces of this crisis, two of whom you'd almost certainly never seen before March 1, which almost no one wouldn't recognize. This triad politician, scientist, medic, the last two perpetually perched on the prime ministerial's shoulders. And yet today, only the prime minister was there. Good morning. There was some caution today, money on offer to prepare the NHS for a second spike, and a reminder that everything he said was conditional. But it was the optimist, Johnson, largely on show, with a promise of normal life on the horizon.

It is my strong and sincere hope that we will be able to review the outstanding restrictions and allow a more significant return to normality from November at the earliest, possibly in time for Christmas. But that valance and witty were no longer flanking him was, the prime minister said, no longer important. The chief scientific advisor, chief medical officer, give us advice which we, of course, take very, very seriously. But in the end, decisions are taken by the elected politicians. We have to weigh the advice that we get, and I don't think that our wonderful scientific medical advisers would want to take those decisions. For us, those are decisions for us to take.

This is a change of tack, and one a long time coming. Remember this. From the very beginning of this crisis, I followed the advice of our world leading scientists at each point. At each point, we have been following scientific and medical advice. Scientific and medical advice. We are following the expert scientific and medical advice. We must continue to follow the scientific evidence. Yet after Boris Johnson and his ministers hinted today that life could be back to normal and that we might be able to abandon social distancing, the science or scientists move still further away.

Everyone that I've spoken to thinks it's highly likely that this disease will continue to circulate and will come back in waves, and it may well be seasonal. The reality is, distancing remains an important part of this mix. It's a message other scientists echo. What we need to do in the summer months is absolutely ramp up the public health response, and that's primarily test and train or test and protect, as we call it here in Scotland. And again, the data that came out from test and trace in England just this week shows that things are really not improving at the pace they should be. But I think the announcements today mean kind of set the message that things are going back to normal and we shouldn't be feeling that things are normal.

Earlier this week, the Academy of Medical Sciences warned us modeling of our reasonable worst case scenario suggests a peak in hospital admissions and deaths in January, February 2021, of a similar magnitude to that of the first wave in spring 2020, coinciding with a period of peak demand on the NHS. And even before we get there, we've not even defeated the first wave. New cases have substantially declined across the UK since early June, but are hovering at a stubbornly high 600 or so new cases every day. Many scientists want to get that lower before any further loosening takes place.

Effectively, we had two competing visions on display to day. Two competing visions of different futures. On one side from the prime minister. Yes, some caution. Yes, optimism within limits, but a fundamentally optimistic one, saying that there is a chance that we might get back to normal by the autumn. On the other hand, a more austere view from the scientists, a view with which we've been perhaps more familiar in recent times, that effectively, there is no chance of us getting back to normal until we find a vaccine.

The prime minister is now being more open about balancing economic and epidemiological harm. He wants sunniness to get us back to work, to our jobs, to our lives. But the colder months are looming. The question is whether our actions in summer will make winter all the longer.

Lewis Goodall. So, science led or leaving science behind? Joining us now are Sir Mark Walputh, formerly government chief scientific adviser, now chief executive of the UK Research and Innovation Agency, and Professor Christina Pagel, director of the Clinical operational Research Unit at UCL and a member of Independence Age. That's the alternative scientific committee.

Professor Poggle, if I can start with you first, do you think there is any realistic possibility of all these social distancing and other measures being relaxed by Christmas? No. I mean, I can't imagine that anyone would think that there is a realistic possibility without a vaccine. It's just not. It's just not possible. The only place where it's been possible so far is New Zealand, where they've actively pursued a strategy of elimination, and that isn't the UK strategy.

Would you agree that New Zealand is fundamentally different in terms of its geography, its connectivity, for the New Zealand example to be applied in this country, or do you think it is theoretically possible to go for elimination? I think it is possible because what we do share with new Zealand is that we are an island. And if we pursued a common strategy with the Republic of Ireland, we could take advantage of that to keep driving cases down. I mean, Northern Ireland and Scotland are already pursuing that strategy and are very close to it. I mean, the alternative is to keep kind of bumbling along at quite a high level of infections and never being quite able to open fully.

Well, let's pick that up with Sir Mark Walport, New Zealand. Elimination, realistic possibilities. It's just not a comparable country, unfortunately. I mean, if you look at the countries that have had it most severely, they have been the countries that are the most globally connected, the cities that have been the most globally connected. So London started in the UK, New York, and where I all agree is that a vaccine is going to be eventually, hopefully the way out, although we can't take a vaccine for granted.

Do you think, though, that you can consider getting rid of social distancing without a vaccine? Well, and the answer is, no one is saying that we should get rid of social distancing completely and we really shouldn't. It's absolutely, it was implied it might be possible by the prime minister today if all the indicators were going in the right direction. So, look, the general principle of infection control is that you stop the transmission between people, and so there's two ways to do that. You have to separate people, and that's what's happened in the lockdown. And that has been successful to the point that actually the infection is now in decline, but nevertheless, there are somewhere between three and 11,000 new cases every day in England.

So it's here, it's widely distributed. The other thing that's absolutely critical is test and trace. So, you know, the principles of epidemic control are identify the cases, test them, identify the contacts, and so that's going to be really critical to the outcome. So the two of you would agree that back to normal by Christmas, it's not really on. It's going to be difficult, I think, you know, it's impossible not to be cautious. I'm a clinician by background and we know that winter is when viruses, respiratory viruses, thrive, so it's going to be tough. But, you know, in a sense, the prime minister said that. He said, hope for the best, plan for the worst. But of course, what we also need to do is, as far as possible, prevent the worst.

Christina Poggle, let's bring it back to you, because we were hearing there about thousands of new infections daily. But it is true to say, isn't it, that despite reopening pubs, restaurants, sending lots of kids back to school, all these other steps that have been taken, there has been no spike or second wave as such. Well, what has happened is that cases have stopped declining. We were on a steady decline down and over the last three or four weeks, according to the Office of National Statistics, it's been pretty flat. And we're now seeing that in the confirmed cases every day for the last two weeks it's been absolutely flat. And in fact, the last three days have started going up.

And we know from other countries that have opened that it takes something like four to five weeks before you start seeing a sustained increase in cases after relaxation. We're not there yet. In fact, we just keep opening every two, three weeks something else without waiting to see what the impact was of the most recent one. And that's something where I'm quite worried is that maybe it will be too late by the time you realize it.

Okay, well, let's put that to smart, because the numbers of cases, I mean, we were looking at this before we went on air, 0.03% of the population estimate, based on the survey testing, up to 0.04%. Is it rising and does that mean that this is going too fast? It gets very difficult to be accurate when the numbers fall very small. But the evidence at the moment is that reproduction rate in most parts of the country is just below one. Just below one.

But I mean, the other thing one's obviously got to do is look at the other harms of the coronavirus pandemic as well. And of course, the other harms are health harms through people not getting healthcare for other conditions from them being socially isolated, the harm of not having education, the harm to the economy. And so, you know, it's very easy if you simply look through the lens of the infection alone. But actually, if you're a politician, you've got to look through the lens of the economy, society at large, and it's a very difficult balancing act.

And Christina, in balancing those harms, is it significant in your view that excess deaths are now below average for the time of year? The figure many people consider the critical variable in this. I mean, it's great news that excess deaths are below average now, but don't forget, deaths lag cases by about four weeks. So you wouldn't be expecting to see anything in our death figures for a while.

Especially the people getting infected right now are younger than the people who typically were infected in March and April. So again, they're less likely to die. But it's not just about deaths. The more we find out about COVID the more we realise it has potentially long lasting effects on the loads of your organs. There are some people who have chronic fatigue syndrome after it, so we have to be really careful about saying it's okay as long as you don't die.

So I definitely am a bit worried about just using deaths as your indicator. And in terms of other harms, I mean, hospitals are opening. And I absolutely agree that it's incredibly important that we get people back into healthcare and healthcare treatment who were disrupted during the pandemic. Having increasing Covid cases doesn't help that. In fact, it makes it harder to treat people because they're more scared to come into healthcare.

Where we both agree is that we have to keep this disease under the best possible control, which means keeping the cases as low as we possibly can. Eliminating it completely is a very, very tough ask, as we've seen around the world and those countries that have done well, and it's important that we learn the lessons from around the world. You can see the countries that did initially well are having a resurgence of cases.

And so the clinical challenge is to make sure that we test and trace and that people. Social solidarity is very important here. If people get symptoms, then as Baroness Harding said earlier today, they should be tested. They've got to cooperate in terms of providing contact details. We've got to do the very best we can to track down the cases wherever they are.

The involvement of local public health is absolutely critical because they know their area. So we've got to really manage it well. And in terms of that management, does it help that the scientific advisors do seem to be giving a different message on social distancing and the length of time that we might be having to restrict society? But the answer is, and the prime minister said this today, it is the job of the scientists to advise, it is the job of the politicians to decide. They're the ones that are elected, the scientific advisors are not. And the scientific advisers who are looking obviously through the lens of the infection, as Professor Pagil is clearly, you know, one wants to reduce the transmission.

Social distancing is an important part of that. And no one has actually said that social distancing is out of the window. But it is, you know, clear as I was coming in here this evening, that people out on the streets are pretty variable in their social distancing. Professor Poggle, prime minister did say today, hope for the best, bye. Prepare for the worst.

Does this new raft of measures, in terms of additional investment in the health service testing and all the rest of it, give you any confidence that that rising cases you've been talking about can be managed in the coming months? The way that they're preparing for the worst seems to be dealing with it. Once we have a second wave, it doesn't seem to be preparing for the worst and trying to prevent that second wave. I mean, yes, we're going to need loads more tests but we also need a much better contact tracing system and we need a much better communication strategy.

As Mark was saying, it's about social solidarity. It's about explaining to people why getting tested is important, why isolation is important, why social distancing is important, all of these protective measures, but that kind of communication just isn't happening right now.

But look, let's be. We didn't have a test and trace system in place when we started and people will look back on all of this, but virtually no country did. It is ramping up very fast. It is the big challenge. The number one thing that will determine the likely outcome is how effective we are at identifying cases as they arise and the contacts.

And of course, in the context of winter, where there may be flu as well, which is why the flu vaccination is so important. It will get harder. It's a tough job being a politician. It hasn't improved. I've been looking at the metrics. It's pretty much staying exactly the same.

All right, thank you very much, Professor Christina Pargals and Mark Walpole. Thank you both for joining us. Doubtless we will return to this theme as the story develops.

Science, Politics, Global, Public Health Strategy, Uk Covid-19 Response, Social Distancing Debate, Bbc Newsnight