No need for the ad hominems - play the ball not the man, in this case he's just stating simple maths.
He's part of the machinery of government, but that doesn't mean he's "part of Boris' government". If Corbyn or Screaming Lord Sutch had a majority, he would still be there. I'll repeat - we don't have the US system where much of the machinery of government at a senior level is appointed directly by the politicans.
The "following scientific advice" thing is a real cop-out, as scientists will often disagree - so politicians can select the advice that suits them and ignore the rest. Look out for much more of that in coming months as Johnson desperately tries to dump the blame on Vallance and Whitty. Anyway, you and foxy misunderstand what Ferguson said - he was saying it this week, in hindsight, as part of his evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee:
“We knew the epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced. So had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half."
That's just basic maths - if infections are doubling every 3.5 days then in a week you will have 4x the starting number. If lockdown manages to halve the infection rate, then in a week you will have 2x the starting number.
So Ferguson isn't saying anything particularly profound, he just understands maths.
Far more serious than Ferguson is
the document that's been leaked that allegedly shows Steven Riley of Imperial recommending to SPI-M on 9 March that "Governments need to devote the entirety of their attention and resources to creating viable ongoing solutions to the presence of this virus. We suggest that the first step is to adopt stringent fixed-term social distancing so as to give time for detailed planning the rapid development of any accompanying technology."
Remember what I said above - would Cummings have the same job if Corbyn was in power? No.
SpAds are in a bit of a unique position, as one of the few direct appointees of a PM, and clearly the only reason Cummings has stayed on is through Johnson's personal patronage. Once again he's used the flexibility afforded by an unwritten consitution to bypass some of the usual mechanisms, that eg expect a PM to sacrifice an underling rather than toss his government's credibility under the bus and lose 10+ points in the polls.
In comparison, I'd note that a member of SAGE - Ferguson - was kicked out after a far less serious infringement of the lockdown.
On the other hand they could have elected this guy a year ago, who was saying this on 12 March :
