The prime minister either did not understand what scientists told him about Covid, or he ignored it for political reasons
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“No responsible prime minister could ignore the message of those figures,” intoned Boris Johnson after the chief medical officer had finished his presentation of the latest Covid-19 data at Saturday’s press conference, called after news of a second national lockdown had leaked to the press.
Yet ignoring the figures is precisely what the prime minister has done since the start of the pandemic. The government’s own scientific advisers had called for a short lockdown at the end of September. Respected epidemiologists in this country and abroad had projected precisely this trend for infections for months. As far back as June, the NHS had begun emergency planning for a second wave that was anticipated to be as much as twice the size of the first.
