Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fixated throughout the Covid-19 crisis on elderly people accepting their fate and saw the virus as “nature’s way of dealing with old people,” an inquiry into Downing Street’s handling of the pandemic has heard.
At a Tuesday hearing as part of the government’s inquest into Covid-19, notes from Johnson’s top science adviser, Patrick Vallance, were shared, which detailed what the aide viewed as Johnson’s “obsession” with older people accepting risks as they related to the potentially fatal virus.
The notes, dated from August 2020, detailed Vallance’s opinion that Johnson was keen to let “the young get on with life and [keep] the economy going” – which Vallance described at the time as a “quite bonkers set of exchanges.”
Vallance added in the notes: “[Johnson] says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people, and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much.’ [He] wants to rely on polling.”
The notes were shared during evidence given to the UK Covid-19 inquiry by Johnson’s former director of communications, Lee Cain, as part of the independent investigation into London’s response to the pandemic.
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fixated throughout the Covid-19 crisis on elderly people accepting their fate and saw the virus as “nature’s way of dealing with old people,” an inquiry into Downing Street’s handling of the pandemic has heard.
At a Tuesday hearing as part of the government’s inquest into Covid-19, notes from Johnson’s top science adviser, Patrick Vallance, were shared, which detailed what the aide viewed as Johnson’s “obsession” with older people accepting risks as they related to the potentially fatal virus.
The notes, dated from August 2020, detailed Vallance’s opinion that Johnson was keen to let “the young get on with life and [keep] the economy going” – which Vallance described at the time as a “quite bonkers set of exchanges.”
Vallance added in the notes: “[Johnson] says his party ‘thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people, and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them. A lot of moderate people think it is a bit too much.’ [He] wants to rely on polling.”
The notes were shared during evidence given to the UK Covid-19 inquiry by Johnson’s former director of communications, Lee Cain, as part of the independent investigation into London’s response to the pandemic.