Quote of the day 26th June 2020

"I come back to the idea of transparency of scientific advice - widen the gene pool of scientists giving advice to ministers. 

"What I think we need to do is de-politicise the process of scientific advice and also educate the public that sometimes scientists disagree. 

"Just as economists giving advice on interest rates regularly disagree. 

"We need to avoid the groupthink that clearly existed - we need to find ways to challenge the groupthink that meant we thought we were all fine because we prepared for a pandemic flu, when actually we needed to be thinking about pandemic SARS. 

"That's the kind of structural change which we urgently need to address."

"With the benefit of hindsight, for sure, we would have done lots of things differently... 

"And these aren't just mistakes that were made here, they were made by governments all over the world."

(Former Health secretary Jeremy Hunt on learning the lessons of the pandemic.)

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