Ave_IT wrote: But what you don't seem to grasp is there's a shed load of over-whelming evidence the government response has been......errrrr..... 'sub-optimal' in many different respects. The question is how much can the blame be laid at the door of the scientific advice (as they are now scape-goating) or their own political competence and policies. The fact they want to deliberately obviscate (is that the right word?.....sounds good!) .....they deliberately obviscate the decision making process and their own track record of wilfully distorting evidence, statistics and facts certainly strongly suggests to any reasonable person they are the main culprits. At the end of the day THEY are the government - THEY make policy. To quote the president of the Royal society again:-
"Scientists like me are invited to give advice and have no power to enact any decisions. They don’t have to accept the advice, and indeed should take a wider view than the science when making decisions – they are elected by the population to take decisions on our behalf.”
To duck that responsibilty is gutless & cowardly.
There you go again - you've decided that the government is treating scientists as scapegoats and that they're obfuscating. Guilty as charged - but how do you know that?
Could it actually be that they did follow the collective advice of Sage all the way through - just like they first said they would in early March? Just like when they followed the herd immunity strategy (remember that

And as you requoted the President, I will too "They don’t have to accept the advice ..." which by association means they can also accept the advice.
As I say, if there's a case to answer then I'm all for calling them into question. But as it stands, there has been barely a murmur from any members of Sage - except of course when Ferguson said that while present (and he shouldn't have been IMO) Cummings had no influence on proceedings. But again, that got ignored because it didn't suit the narrative I suppose.
Oh and BTW, again, that other advice may well be valid but it doesn't matter in the context of this question - which is basically about the relationship between the Government and its own advisers. Conflating the argument with quotes from a lot of scientists critcising with the benefit of three months hindsight - yeah, right I guess we all know better now eh Ave_IT? Where were they in February? They may well have held those opinions, but why weren't they out there saying that Sage and The Government had herd immunity strategy all wrong? There certainly were critics back then - especially in the international community, so why weren't the media carrying those reports front and centre? Why wasn't the critcism stronger then?
The answer? Because nobody really knew what would happen and so many of us were wrong, weren't we? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.