Boris Johnson’s lockdown-sceptic messages to Dominic Cummings last autumn closely resemble ideas in a fringe anti-lockdown opinion piece published in the Telegraph newspaper a few days earlier.
Leaked WhatsApp messages from 15 October 2020 show the prime minister told his aides that Covid was not shortening the lives of its victims, that few under-60s were being hospitalised, and that he no longer believed “this NHS overwhelmed stuff”.
All the claims were made virtually word-for-word in a comment piece published just a few days before in the 11 October edition of the newspaper – which until recently paid Mr Johnson £275,000 a year.
Critics accused the prime minister of “believing everything he reads in the paper” and said it was “downright dangerous” for him to listen to “fringe voices and unsubstantiated views” at the expense of official advice.
The article was written by a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, a fringe anti-lockdown statement sponsored by US right-wing think-tank the American Institute for Economic Research.
Both Mr Johnson and the article’s author make the same error regarding life expectancy, and the claims made by the writer are similar to those repeated by the prime minister in private as the basis for policy.
In the leaked messages, the prime minister said: “I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer.
“Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive.
“And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate.”
The article published only days before, which was written by microbiologist Professor David Livermore, said: “The median age of those who have succumbed is 82 years, while life expectancy is 81 years.
“Fewer than 400 UK residents under 60 without comorbidities have died. For this, we have restricted human interactions and stifled the economy.”
Referring to Sweden’s approach to the pandemic, he added: “Hospitals were not overwhelmed and hopefully ours won’t be either; if things get tight, the Nightingale sites can be used.”
The Great Barrington Declaration signed by the author of the article was said by Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific advisor, to include “fatal flaws”, while chief medical officer Chris Whitty told the Science and Technology Select Committee in early November that the declaration was “dangerously flawed”, “scientifically weak”, and “ethically really difficult”.
Both the article and Mr Johnson’s comments appear to make the same mistakes of comparing two incompatible life expectancy figures.
Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at The Open University, said: “Making the comparison between life expectancy at birth and the average age at death of people who died of Covid is comparing apples and pears. It’s just the wrong comparison.” He noted that researchers from the Health Foundation had calculated that the average person who had died of Covid in the UK had lost around 10 years of life.
Michel Coleman, Professor of epidemiology and vital statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told The Independent: “Apart from being jaw-droppingly amoral in the middle of a pandemic, the prime minister’s reported remark last October was just stupid.
“For the thousands of people who have died from Covid under the age of 80, getting Covid can hardly be described as a passport to longer life.”
The prime minister’s messages were sent at a time when he was rejecting the advice of his scientific advisors on Sage, who had said the UK faced a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences” if a lockdown was not quickly imposed.
Mr Johnson was eventually forced to U-turn and impose a lockdown as cases surged, with more than 1,000 people a day dying in a protracted winter second wave that ultimately dwarfed the first.
The prime minister’s former chief aide Dominic Cummings this week told the BBC that the prime minister had changed his views about lockdown “very quickly, as the Telegraph and various parts of the media” had “started screaming” about the policy.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, told The Independent Boris Johnson’s “reckless and callous indifference” had cause “tens of thousands of avoidable deaths”.
“We already know that Conservative MPs have endorsed and legitimised deadly conspiracy theories and anti-vaxxers,” she said.
“We need the public inquiry to begin immediately so we can get to the truth about Boris Johnson’s deadly failures to lockdown to save lives and whether he was being influenced by danger conspiracy theorists rather than the need to protect the British people.”
Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Munira Wilson added: “We’ve long suspected that the prime minister is fond of believing everything he reads in the paper, but this habit is downright dangerous if all he reads are fringe voices with unsubstantiated views.
“If Boris Johnson instead listened to sound scientific advice, rather than making policy up by casting his eyes over his favourite opinion sections, then we’d have better decisions and the clearer guidance that the public have needed throughout this pandemic.”
Layla Moran, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group of coronavirus told The Independent: “Time and again during this pandemic, it appears the prime minister has been influenced by political pressure rather than listening to expert scientific advice.
“It makes a mockery of the government’s promise to be led by the data not dates. These latest revelations show yet again why we need a Covid public inquiry now, to ensure mistakes are not repeated and key decision makers are held accountable.”
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Cummings, who leaked the messages, said that by mid-September “the data was clear about what was happening and Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty came to Downing Street and said ‘it’s clear where this is going, we think that you should consider hitting it hard and early’ – the Prime Minister said no, no, no, no, no, I’m not doing it.”
Downing Street has not responded to a request for comment on this story at the time of publication. As news of the leaked messages broke on Monday evening, a Number 10 spokesperson said: “Since the start of the pandemic, the Prime Minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice.
“The government he leads has delivered the fastest vaccination rollout in Europe, saved millions of jobs through the furlough scheme and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns. The government is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.”
