Boris Johnson Viewed Virus As ‘Nature’s Way Of Dealing With Old People’ According To Covid Inquiry Evidence

Ian Vogler, Pool Photo via AP

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson viewed COVID as “nature’s way of dealing with old people” and seemed “obsessed” with the idea of the elderly accepting their fate during the pandemic, according to Sir Patrick Vallance.

Vallance, who was the government’s chief scientific advisor between 2018 to 2023, kept multiple notebooks throughout that time. His entries were detailed as evidence on Tuesday, during an examination session for the independent Covid-19 Inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic.

In an August 2020 entry he wrote that Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going. Quite bonkers set of exchanges.”

Handwritten notes captured by Imran Shafi, then the prime minister’s private secretary for public services, have Johnson asking “why are we destroying [the] economy for people who will die anyway soon?”

In December 2020, a separate entry by Vallance indicated the prime minister’s views might have concurred with some Tory MPs’ views on COVID.

Vallance wrote: “PM told he has been acting early and the public are with him (but his party is not). He 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 expressed a desire to depend on public polls.”

In another entry Vallance criticises Johnson’s desire to appease anti-lockdown right-wingers and blames the media: “The rightwing press are culpable and we have a weak, indecisive PM.”

The evidence was revealed during the testimony of Lee Cain, who served as Johnson’s Director of Communications through to November 2020.

It was announced on Friday that Johnson will join GB News as a presenter.