LONDON — Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday rejected suggestions that he wanted to let COVID-19 “rip” through the population as he defended his handling of the pandemic during a second day of testimony at a public inquiry into the crisis.
Johnson shook his head and responded “No, no, no” as he was confronted with a series of diary entries by his chief scientific adviser that indicated he had argued in favor of letting the virus spread rapidly to increase immunity to COVID-19 rather than imposing further restrictions on the people of Britain.
The former prime minister, who is testifying under oath, said he was simply pushing scientists to explain why such a strategy wouldn’t work as the government debated whether to impose a second national lockdown in the autumn of 2020 when infection rates were rising and vaccines weren’t yet available. Johnson said critics should look at his public statements and actions, rather than “people’s jottings from meetings that I have been in” when they assess the government’s response to the pandemic.
“I think, frankly, it does not do justice to what we did — our thoughts, our feelings, my thoughts, my feelings — to say that we were remotely reconciled to fatalities across the country, or that I believed that it was acceptable to let it rip,” a frustrated Johnson said under questioning from the inquiry’s chief legal counsel, Hugo Keith.
Johnson rejected the notion that he was untroubled by the “suffering that was being inflicted on the country” and became emotional as he shared his experience of being hospitalized with COVID-19.
“When I went into intensive care, I saw around me a lot of people who were not actually elderly. In fact, they were middle-aged men and they were quite like me -– and some of us were going to make it and some of us weren’t,” he said. “What I’m trying to tell you in a nutshell -– and the NHS, thank god, did an amazing job and helped me survive -– but I knew from that experience what appalling a disease this is. I had absolutely no personal doubt about that, from March onwards.”
Johnson defended his efforts to balance the health and economic impacts of COVID-19. He was grilled about his government’s “Eat Out to Help Out” program, which supported the hospitality industry by subsidizing restaurant meals, and delays in imposing a second national lockdown as infection rates began to rise toward the end of 2020.
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