The evidence coming out of the Covid inquiry is depressingly familiar to those of us capable of seeing through the idiot Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. All the chaotic roads lead back to him. He was the one with catastrophic ineptitude who displayed a “complete lack of leadership” according to Sir Patrick Vallance. As Chief Scientist he came across yesterday as extremely capable and calm, the sort of person you would want making decisions in times of crisis. Unfortunately, when the pandemic struck we had the jabbering idiot Johnson.
There have been any number of references to the then PM in the last few weeks at the inquiry, none of them flattering. He was and still is a bumbling incompetent who couldn't make or stick to a decision at knifepoint.
If you like black comedy, some of it is almost laughable. In one meeting, Johnson is absolutely shocked when presented with some bleak forecast, but Vallance noted in his diary that Johnson had seen the same figures six hours earlier and didn't comment. Either his mind was elsewhere or he just couldn't understand what he was seeing.
The FT’s deputy political editor Jim Pickard picked out some gems from Vallance’s private diary entries after various meetings with Johnson in 2020. To say the former prime minister was hopelessly incapable would be about the kindest thing you could say:
starting to think Vallance didn’t think that much of Johnson’s intellectual capabilities pic.twitter.com/5pCob41Ely
— Jim Pickard 🐋 (@PickardJE) November 20, 2023
As Lee Cain, his former communications director put it, the pandemic was the “wrong crisis for Johnson’s skill set.”
The problem was that Covid was a natural phenomenon that actually did follow the science, in other words, it did what viruses do, and only science could understand it, explain it, and predict what would happen in the future. Science and scientists could do it because they are logical, rational people and the subject is a broadly deterministic one. Truth and the dogged pursuit of it was the only way you could fight the pandemic.
Covid couldn’t be solved by slogans or mendacity. It was a scientific problem, not a political one.
But we had politicians who were skilled only at obfuscation, falsehoods, manipulation, dissembling and distraction. The sort of 'skills' you need to solve political issues like when a minister is caught with his fingers in the till or his trousers around his ankles.
They solve problems usually by defending them, lying about them, playing them down, denying they exist, blaming others, throwing money at them, waiting for them to blow over, or replacing them with bigger problems so we forget about them (the dead cat theory). The problem with Covid-19 is that it didn't and could never respond to any of those solutions.
At one point in August 2020, Johnson couldn’t understand the difference between percentages and probabilities and calculated (from figures published in the FT) the total number of deaths from Covid in the UK would be no more than 33,000! We had already had 41,000 deaths by that date.
The true figure - the result of his calculation had he used the right method- was 660,000, about 20 times more. Cummings had to explain it to him Janet and John style over WhatsApp.
Also, even then six months into the pandemic he couldn’t understand the difference between Case Fatality Ratio (CFR) and Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR). The former measures the number of people who die against the number who tested positive, while the latter is against the actual number of people infected. Since widespread systematic testing was haphazard and even non-existent at the start, we didn’t know how many actual cases of Covid we had.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice who campaigned for the inquiry tweeted:
Today was another day of horrific evidence making clear that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak made catastrophic decisions that led to the unnecessary loss of countless lives, crippled the NHS and plunged the country into even longer lockdowns.1/7— Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (@CovidJusticeUK) November 20, 2023
The group says: "We were told that even after awful death toll of the first wave he [Johnson] was claiming that 'most people who die have reached their time anyway' and wanted to 'let it rip', and was 'weak and indecisive' according to his own Chief Scientific Advisor."
And still people defend Johnson and actually want him back!
Sunak isn't coming out of it well either. He launched the Eat Out to Help Out (EOtHO) on 8 July 2020 without consulting the scientists who have all said they would have advised against it if they had been asked. It certainly contributed to the second wave and made another lengthy, economy-crippling lockdown inevitable.
Dan Hodges on Twitter asks why Sir Patrick didn’t warn about EotHO afterward as if the Chief Scientist, a civil servant, should go public and criticise the Chancellor for a policy decision he had already made.
If a civil servant today even hints that Brexit was a terrible mistake (and we all know it was) they’re mercilessly attacked as being part of "the Blob” so I can see how Vallance might have been reluctant to speak out. He was just an adviser and as Thatcher used to say, advisers advise and ministers decide.
It’s not up to the Chief Scientist to make decisions or openly criticise ministers who do. Hodge is simply trying to defend Sunak.
Advisers, even scientific ones, are there to ensure ministers are well-informed and Vallance was clear yesterday. He said he would be surprised if any minister didn’t know EOtHO would help spread the virus. I think by July 2020 every person in the country knew Covid was an airborne virus, easily transmissible by close human-to-human contact, especially in warm, crowded situations.
If the Chancellor really needed someone to tell him EOtHO was a thoroughly bad idea then he is just as culpable as Johnson. I am sure the inquiry will press him on it. How Sunak responds to that will be fascinating.
