The UK government's chief scientific adviser has hit back at accusations from Conservative MPs that epidemiological modellers had spread gloom over the Omicron variant.
Sir Patrick Vallance said that it was not the responsibility of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies to take a particular policy stance.
He used an article in the Times to respond to criticism that was spread among Conservative MPs and ministers that the modelling was an exercise in fear-mongering.
The editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, had an exchange with a member of the Sage group. The exchange was widely shared in the groups of Conservative MPs.
Nelson complained in his column in the Telegraph on Monday that more cautious projections were ignored, and that the press seized on projections that Omicron could kill between 6,000 and 7,000 in a single day.
Nelson wrote that the 6,000 was the top of a long range of scenarios.
He said that he had been contacted by a few ministers who were alarmed to think that the modellers were not giving the probability of various outcomes but cooking up gloomy scenarios to order.
