Opinion: Embracing uncertainty is the only path out of the pandemic

Sajid Javid's statement that no one will really know how many Covid cases there are over summer is more scientific than any epidemiological model, says Visiting Professor Paul Ormerod (UCL Computer Science). A few days ago, Sajid Javid made one of the most thoughtful and encouraging statements by a government minister during the whole Covid crisis. Early In July, he seemed to be falling under the control of the modellers. The number of daily infections, he stated confidently, would soon reach 100,000, bowing to the so-called experts. We now know that the peak in daily infections in the middle of last month was only just over half that number. There is a well-documented litany of pessimistic forecasts of cases, hospitalisations and deaths which have proved to be wrong within a few weeks of them being made. One of these cited by Patrick Vallance, the government's chief scientist, last October was so wildly flawed that it earned Vallance a rebuke from the official statistics watchdog, the UK Statistics Authority Javid has absorbed these failures and has learned from them.