It depends which scientists you believe. Perhaps we should believe those scientists and their mouthpieces who have consistently provided incorrect data, such as:
The overall numbers of deaths, adjusted down by over 10K earlier in the year.
The 4000 people who were going to die daily as a result of the spread.
There are literally dozens of inaccuracies not only I within the data but also in the presentation of the same, such as the announcement on Saturday that this was a new strain when in fact it is probably 6 months old.
This same rhetoric is then used to scaremonger the general public into ‘blindly’ following these instructions.
I’m not suggesting any kind of conspiracy theory, I am pointing out that the ‘facts’ are not so, and with this in mind THIS government needs to provide more data and be able to 100% justify any action taken.
When you rise to the top on a wave of populism, it suddenly becomes very hard to make unpopular decisions, because it's literally all you are capable of. Johnson has found this out with the whole Brexit bollocks because he's realising that the other leaders don't give a monkeys about his cheeky-chappy charm or his Latin. They are professionals, he isn't. Look at every decision the government have made, from locking down too late on March to opening up quickly (after promising to go slow) and to a track and trace system that still hasn't reached the levels they promised for when schools opened - they were all made and declared to appease his adoring public. There are still members of my own family who think he's doing a good job.
Of course, when you ask them what positive things he's done, all you get is "he's doing his best","nobody could have predicted this" or "oh, I suppose Corbyn would have done better?", rather than anything he has actually done.
I suppose the short answer is, there are a **** tonne of cases and it's rising, the specific numbers are almost irrelevant to the man on the street. What they need to do is make a decision that is based on anything other than populism. Christmas should never have been 5 days, but it was a great headline to say he'd given us back Christmas. Now he looks like a ****.