![]() ![]() To an extent this built on evidence earlier this month that Johnson said he would rather “let the bodies pile high” than impose a new lockdown. ![]() Asked if he still believed this, Vallance called the words “a late night moment of frustration”, but also did not disagree, saying Johnson had been “influenced a lot by the press”. In one entry Vallance lamented that the UK had “a weak, indecisive PM”. Vallance thought Johnson was indecisiveĪt one point, the hearing was shown a series of typed-up transcripts from Vallance’s written diary detailing debates over a possible second lockdown in autumn 2020, and it was not altogether flattering for the former prime minister. Vallance recalled being on a group call with scientific advisers from various countries, when one said their leader could not understand exponential curves, “and the entire phone call burst into laughter because it was true in every country”. One entry said the prime minister was “bamboozled” by modelling, while another said Johnson would fail to understand ideas he had had put to him six hours earlier. It was, Vallance said with heartfelt understatement, “difficult at times” to get the then prime minister to fully absorb concepts central to Covid, such as how lockdowns can flatten infection rate curves.īoris Johnson last studied science at the age of 15 and “would be the first to admit it wasn’t his forte”, and he had the habit of pretending to misunderstand things to test out whether an alternative could be true, Vallance said.Įxtracts from Vallance’s contemporaneous diary showed Johnson found it “a real struggle” to understand some graphs. ![]() Vallance said: “I think it would have been very obvious to anyone that this would inevitably cause an increase in transmission risk, and I think that would have been known by ministers.”Īndrew O’Connor KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “And Mr Sunak?” Vallance replied: “I can’t recall which meetings he was in, but I’d be very surprised if any minister didn’t understand that these openings carried risk.” Boris Johnson is not great at science The inquiry was shown written evidence from Sunak who said: “I do not recall any concerns about the scheme being expressed during ministerial discussions,” including ones attended by Vallance and by Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England. ![]()
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