The initial action plan did not consider the possibility of ceasing all non-essential contact. Dominic Cummings told us that the idea of behavioural fatigue was a part of “false groupthink”: One of the critical things that was completely wrong in the whole official thinking in SAGE and in the Department of Health in February/March was, first of all, the British public would not accept a lockdown and, secondly, the British public would not accept what was thought of as an east Asian-style track and trace-type system and the infringements of liberty around that.170 The then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care also indicated to us in June 2021 that “the clear advice at the time was that there was only a limited period that people would put up with it—would put up with lockdown.”171 On 9 March 2020, Professor Chris Whitty told a Government press conference: It is not just a matter of what you do but when you do it. Anything we do, we have got to be able to sustain. Once we have started these things we have to continue them through the peak and that is for a period of time, and there is a risk that, if we go too early, people will understandably get fatigued and it will be difficult to sustain this over time.172 Further, on 10 March 2020, SAGE said that: 166 Oral evidence taken before the Science and Technology Committee on 3 November 2020, HC (2019–21) 136, Q1438 167 Imperial College London, Report 9—impact on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, 16 March 2020; and BBC News, ‘Coronavirus: UK changes course amid death toll fears’, accessed 17 September 2021 168 GOV.UK, ‘List of participants of SAGE and related sub-groups’, accessed 17 September 2021 169 SPI-B, Risk of public disorder, 25 February 2020 170 Q1002 171 Q1294 172 10 Downing Street YouTube channel, PM Boris Johnson holds a press conference on coronavirus: 9 March 2020, timestamp 8:04, accessed 17 September 2021 Coronavirus: lessons learned to dat