Amid all yesterday’s defection drama, it was easy to miss that Boris Johnson announced the scrapping of his ‘Plan B’ Covid measures. Such a move has not gone down well among the more hysterical elements of Covid Twitter who appear to see the restoration of civil liberties as a dastardly Tory plot to privatise the NHS. The SNP MP for Central Ayrshire Dr Philippa Whitford spoke for such elements when she called the announcement ‘crazy’, asking ‘Would you slash your seatbelt or airbag in the middle of a car crash?’
Not all of Whitford’s nationalist fellow travellers agree though. For Professor Devi Sridhar, an ardent supporter of ‘Zero Covid’ and lockdowns appears to have today thrown in the towel and come out as a lockdown-skeptic. In an article for today’s Guardian, she has written an article headlined ‘Now that science has defanged Covid, it’s time to get on with our lives.’ It waxes rhapsodic about how ‘humans are social: we need to hug, dance, sing and recognise each other’s faces and smiles’ and intones gravely about the ‘economic and social damage… built up over two years in a holding pattern.’
All this marks a huge change from, er, three months ago when the same Sridhar was demanding that ‘Britain must control Covid now – or face a winter lockdown’ and that ‘We need to adopt plan B, on masks and vaccine certification – Europe has shown it works.’ How’s that working out in France? The same academic was still plugging in August her Zero Covid column from April 2020 in which she declared that ‘countries that are actively working to contain this virus… are buying time to build a more informed policy response.’ Her prediction meanwhile that ‘Australia [is] on track for elimination’ – was, er, another claim that turned out not to be the case at all.
Given all her spinning, pivoting and backpedaling, how long before Devi gets offered a job in Nicola Sturgeon’s comms operation?
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