How Britain s Insanely Risky Coronavirus Experiment Will Affect the U.S.
LONDON On Thursday, Boris Johnson delivered the most chilling warning from a British prime minister since Winston Churchill prepared the country for potential destruction during World War Two. I must level with you, Johnson said, looking like a man who had just emerged from a doctor s office after receiving a terrible diagnosis. Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.
His message was stark, and somehow seemed to hit even harder coming from a man who has built his political career on flippant clownery. The novel coronavirus can no longer be contained in the United Kingdom, he said, and all that can be done now is to mitigate the worst effects of it to give the doctors and nurses in the country s already creaking national health service a fighting chance to save as many lives as possible.
But the strict containment measures now familiar around the planet population lockdowns, prohibition of mass gatherings, and travel bans were notable only by their absences. Johnson s government has diverged with the rest of the world and decided to take a much less draconian approach, and his scientific advisers have admitted the strategy could see as much as 60 percent of the population catch the coronavirus.
In point of fact, Britain is effectively encouraging a potentially deadly virus to spread to the majority of the people who live here.