The UK policy was to change abruptly. During the days before 23 March, multiple people within the Government and its advisers experienced simultaneous epiphanies that the course the UK was following was wrong, possibly catastrophically so. In his evidence to our inquiry Dominic Cummings told us: On Friday the 13th [of March 2020], we then started to look through all the information and we started to pick apart all the different graphs. Ben [a No. 10 Specialist Adviser] spoke to Patrick; Patrick said, “I am also extremely concerned. It seems that something has gone fundamentally wrong in the wiring of the system. We have these graphs showing that even on the best- case scenario with the official plan, you are going to completely smash through the capacity of the NHS—not by a little bit but multiple times.” The evening of Friday the 13th, I am sitting with Ben Warner and the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary in the Prime Minister’s study. We were basically saying that we are going to have to sit down with the Prime Minister tomorrow and explain to him that we think that we are going to have to ditch the whole official plan, and we are heading for the biggest disaster this country has seen since 1940.127 125 Oral evidence taken before the Science and Technology Committee on 25 March 2020, HC (2019–21) 136, Q39 126 BBC, “Coronavirus: Italy extends emergency measures nationwide”, 10 March 2020; BBC, “Coronavirus: Spain set to declare national lockdown”, 14 March 2020; Metro, “ Netherlands becomes latest country to go into lockdown in battle against coronavirus”, 15 March 2020; France24, “Macron announces 15-day lockdown in French ‘war’ on coronavirus”, 16 March 2020 127 Q1003 38 Coronavirus: lessons learned to date Mr Cummings went on to tell us that other senior officials were recognising that the UK’s approach and epidemiological trajectory was on course for a “disaster”: At this point, the second most powerful official in the country, Helen MacNamara—the Deputy Cabin