The claim, branded “horrific” by bereaved families, emerged from notebooks kept
by Imran Shafi, Johnson’s private secretary for public service, during the UK
Covid-19 Inquiry, an investigation that has been set up to examine the UK’s
response to and impact of the pandemic. The inquiry heard that Johnson had
earlier said the “biggest damage [from Covid will be] done by overreaction”
during a meeting on 28 February 2020 where lockdown restrictions were discussed.
Shafi said under questioning that Johnson “definitely did not want a lockdown”
in March 2020, despite being aware that the worst case scenario of hundreds of
thousands of deaths was becoming increasingly likely. But he agreed by 2 March
2020 that “control had been lost” and that “nothing short of a lockdown would
suffice”. It would be another three weeks before a UK-wide lockdown would be
announced.
He does have a point if the old had isolated and the fitter could have kept things going