Former UK PM Wanted to Let COVID Kill the Elderly – Ex-Aide

MOSCOW (RT) - 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 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.

Cain told the hearing that Johnson was reluctant to impose a so-called ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown to inhibit the spread of the virus in September 2020, as this was “very much against what’s in his political DNA.” However, Cain added that his own research had indicated that the UK public’s overall desire was for a more cautious approach.

Cain added that Johnson would frequently “oscillate” between different COVID policy decisions, delaying the government’s ability to effectively respond to the pandemic, which he said he found “rather exhausting from time to time.”

“What would probably be clear in COVID,” Cain said when asked at the hearing if Johnson was the right person to lead the UK through the pandemic, “It was wrong for this prime minister’s skill set.”

Johnson’s apparent indecisiveness, as revealed in Vallance’s notes, felt like being “punched in the stomach,” said Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, according to the BBC on Tuesday.