The United Kingdom's COVID inquiry has publicly shown the WhatsApp messages between politicians as they struggled to steer the region away from the devastating effects of the health crisis.
The messages also laid bare the strained relations between key players and in some instances even showed contempt and animosity. In recent days, the inquiry heard how then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other key figures from Downing Street grappled with the size of the challenge that they faced between January and March of 2020.
UK COVID Inquiry
Johnson on Mar. 2, 2020, chaired his first meeting of the Cobra emergency committee in order to discuss how the government would respond to the rapid spread of the coronavirus. However, the day after, the PM's then-chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, said that he still did not believe that the then-prime minister was convinced of the severity of the situation.
Cummings sent a message to No 10 communications director Lee Cain that Johnson "doesn't think it's a big deal" and "it'll be like swine flu." This was a reference to another virus that spread across the world in 2009 and resulted in the death of more than 450 people in the UK but did not prompt a major public health crisis, as per BBC.
Two weeks after that meeting, Cummins was in a meeting with Johnson and then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak. During that particular event, he messages his frustrations to Cain which laid bare the vitriol that the former prime minister's closest advisers were privately sharing at the time.
Cummings described Johnson as "melting down" during a discussion regarding how the government debt would be financed during the health crisis. He noted that the former prime minister was in "Jaws mode." This was a reference to a joke that Johnson previously made about his political hero being the mayor of the movie "Jaws."
The two officials both shared that they were "exhausted" with the prime minister and then discussed a tweet from Times journalist Steven Swinford. The latter said that Johnson sent a "confusing message" at a press conference.
Expletive Messages Between Politicians
Cain also gave testimony on Tuesday that painted a deeply unfavorable picture of the British state's preparations for the health crisis. Only a few weeks before the region was plunged into a full-scale lockdown, Johnson unveiled his so-called "coronavirus action plan" on how the government could contain the virus' spread, according to Politico.
However, Cain said that the unveiled plan had very little detail and noted that it was clearly only useful as a communications device. He added that there was a strategy but not a plan. At the time of the conversations, Sunak was the top finance minister. One exchange between Cain and Cummins suggested that the now-prime minister warned Johnson about the impact the measures would have on the economy.
British physician and scientist Sir Patrick Vallance said that Johnson suggested the coronavirus was nature's way of dealing with old people. Cummings was also found to have said that vulnerable people were "appallingly neglected" amid the health crisis, said The Guardian.
