In evidence to the Science and Technology Committee on 25 March 2020, the Editor of The Lancet, Dr Richard Horton, said that his journal had published articles on 24, 29 and 31 January with an analysis of the situation in China.124 He told the Committee: Those papers were truly alarming and showed that the disease caused a serious fatal pneumonia. A third of patients who had been reported in those papers required admission to the intensive care unit. The number of deaths that were being described was rising quickly. The authors of the papers were advocating the immediate provision of personal protective equipment and were urging the importance of testing and isolation. They were describing the fact that there was no effective treatment and also emphasising the pandemic potential. 119 GOV.UK, SAGE 12, Potential impact of behavioural and social interventions on an epidemic of Covid-19 in the UK, 9 March 2020 120 See footnote 108 121 See, for example: Q113, Q119 and Q474. 122 World Health Organisation, Report of the WHO-China Joint mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): 16–24 February 2020, p21 123 These were estimates of the fatality rate of covid-19 in February 2020 124 Oral evidence taken before the Science and Technology Committee on 25 March 2020, HC (2019–21) 136, Q39 Coronavirus: lessons learned to date 37 Those were the people from the frontlines of the epidemic at the end of January. Many of us at The Lancet felt that that was a red flag. We have had seven to eight weeks since that time, and February was the opportunity for the UK to really prepare, based on testing, isolation, quarantine, physical distancing, ICU capacity and so on. I think you described it as being critical and, yes, it was, in the sense that we missed that opportunity. We could have used the month of February, based on what we knew in January. When I look at the evidence that SAGE posted on the website—there is a lot of evidence and it is great that they have been so transparent—wh