According to testimony given before an independent hearing, the prime minister lacked the necessary “skill set” to manage the pandemic.
An investigation of Downing Street’s handling of the pandemic has revealed that former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was obsessed with elderly people accepting their fate during the Covid-19 outbreak and believed the virus to be “nature’s way of dealing with old people.”
papers from Johnson’s senior science advisor, Patrick Vallance, were revealed at a Tuesday hearing as part of the government’s inquest into Covid-19. The papers described what the assistant believed to be Johnson’s “obsession” with older people accepting dangers associated with the potentially fatal virus.
The August 2020 notes expressed Vallance’s belief that Johnson wanted to “let the young get on with life and [keep] the economy going,” which Vallance called a “quite bonkers set of exchanges” at the time.
Not sure if I agree with Johnson’s party, which “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people,” or not, Vallance said in the notes. Many moderates believe it to be a little excessive. He desires to depend on surveys.
As part of the independent investigation examining London’s reaction to the epidemic, Johnson’s former director of communications, Lee Cain, provided evidence to the UK Covid-19 probe. During that testimony, the notes were shared.
Johnson was hesitant to implement a so-called “circuit-breaker” lockdown to stop the virus from spreading in September 2020, according to Cain, who testified during the session, since it went “very much against what’s in his political DNA.” Cain did, however, note that his own research suggested that a more cautious approach was what the UK population wanted in general.
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Johnson would regularly “oscillate” between various Covid policy options, according to Cain, which made it difficult for the government to react to the pandemic quickly. He described this as “rather exhausting from time to time.”
When questioned at the hearing if Johnson was the best person to lead the UK through the pandemic, Cain responded, “What would probably be clear in Covid”: “It was wrong for this prime minister’s skill set.”
As stated in Vallance’s notes, Johnson seemed unsure of himself, which Brenda Doherty, a representative for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, said as a “punch in the stomach.” The BBC reported this on Tuesday.
“It’s evident how directly responsible he was for that, given that the UK had one of the highest death tolls per person worldwide from Covid-19 during the first and second waves of the pandemic,” Doherty stated.
Although Johnson has not publicly addressed the evidence presented at this week’s hearings, he did launch the probe when serving as prime minister in May 2021. According to a spokesman, the former prime minister is “cooperating fully” with the inquiry. Later this year, Johnson and the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, are scheduled to testify.
Online research indicates that Covid-19 has claimed the lives of 230,669 persons in the UK. Those 75 years of age or older accounted for the bulk of deaths.
