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British PM Opposed Lockdowns as People Dying in UK Were Mostly ’All Over 80’

British PM Opposed Lockdowns as People Dying in UK Were Mostly ’All Over 80’
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By Staff, Agencies

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings left his powerful post in November 2020 and since then has fired several shots at the government of his former boss, criticizing his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cummings has accused Johnson of placing his “political interests ahead of people’s lives” as the prime minister apparently didn’t want to ruin the British economy with stricter COVID-19 restrictions simply in order to prevent deaths among the elderly.

Since Cummings’ departure from 10 Downing Street last year, the political strategist has launched an unprecedented attack on his former boss and key Brexit ally Johnson, telling the MPs that the prime minister was effectively unfit to lead the UK out of the pandemic.

Speaking to BBC in his first ever one-on-one TV interview, Cummings said that Johnson believed that people dying in the UK during the pandemic were “essentially all over 80” and there was no need to “kill the economy” on their behalf.

As his interviewer, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, noted that this was a serious accusation to make against the prime minister, Cummings responded by saying that his words could be easily backed by other officials.

BBC cited Johnson’s alleged WhatsApp message from 15 October, where he apparently argued that "Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital... and of those virtually all survive.”

“And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate... There are max 3m in this country aged over 80,” Johnson reportedly went on to write. "It shows we don't go for nationwide lockdown."

On 31 October, Johnson actually announced a four-week lockdown in England as daily cases and deaths were on the rise in the UK, reaching several hundred fatalities per day. Johnson justified the stricter measures by the need to protect the NHS over concerns that deaths could climb to “several thousand a day” if “tough action” was not introduced.

According to Cummings, Johnson just wanted to let COVID “wash through the country.”

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