Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson 'Bamboozled' by Science, Ex-adviser Tells Inquiry

Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, struggled to come to grips with much of the science during the coronavirus pandemic, his chief scientific advisor said Monday. In keenly awaited testimony to the country’s public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick Vallance said he and others faced repeated problems getting Johnson to understand the science. “I think he’d be the first to admit it wasn’t his forte and that he struggled with the concepts and we did need to repeat them — often.” In extracts from his diary that were relayed to the inquiry, Vallance said Johnson was “bamboozled” by the graphs and data and that watching him “get his head round stats is awful.” Vallance said Johnson’s struggles were not unique and said many leaders around Europe had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020. “So I do not think that there was necessarily a unique inability to grasp some of these concepts with the prime minister at the time, but it was hard work sometimes to try and make sure that he had understood what a particular graph or piece of data was saying.” The U.K. has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in Europe, with the virus recorded as a cause of death for more than 232,000 people.