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 I’m right in saying that the prime minister gave up science at 15,” he said. “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.”
During the pandemic, Vallance was a highly visible presence in the U.K. He and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, would flank Johnson in numerous daily COVID-19 press briefings from the prime minister’s offices on Downing Street.
Vallance, who stepped down from his role as the British government’s chief scientific adviser earlier this year, said Johnson’s struggles were not unique and that many leaders had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020.
“I would also say that the meeting that sticks in my mind was with fellow advisers from across Europe, when one of them — and I won’t say which country – declared that the leader of that country had enormous problems with exponential curves, and the telephone call burst into laughter, because it was true in every country,” he said.
“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,” Vallance added.
Johnson was hospitalized with the virus in April 2020 less than two weeks after he put the country into lockdown for the first time. Vallance conceded the prime minister was “unable to concentrate” on things when he was really unwell but that after his recuperation “there was no obvious change between him and what he was like beforehand.”
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.
Johnson, who was forced to step down as prime minister in September 2022 following revelations of lockdown rule-breaking parties at his Downing Street residence during the pandemic, is due to address the inquiry before Christmas.
The probe, led by retired Judge Heather Hallett, is expected to take three years to complete. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold a public inquiry after heavy pressure from bereaved families, who have hit out at the evidence emerging about his actions.
The inquiry is set to hear from current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was Johnson’s Treasury chief at the time.
Sunak is likely to face questioning about his “Eat Out to Help Out” initiative, which sought to encourage nervous customers back to restaurants in August 2020 as the first set of lockdown restrictions was and before subsequent lockdowns were enacted.
Vallance said scientists weren’t aware of the restaurant program until it was announced and that the messaging around it ran “opposite” to the need to limit mixing between households.
“I think our advice would have been very clear on that,” he said.
The U.S. government is offering to send another round of four at-home virus tests ahead of the typical surge in cases during the winter holiday season.
Anyone who did not order a batch of four COVID-19 tests in September can secure up to eight of them this time around starting Monday at COVIDtests.gov. The U.S. Postal Service will deliver them for free.
The government is mailing out the coronavirus tests as the the flu season kicks off and a spike in RSV cases has been reported in some spots around the country. Hospitalizations for COVID-19, which has killed more than 1 million people in the United States, were on the rise this fall but have stayed steady in recent weeks. Immunity from previous vaccinations and infections has kept case counts lower compared with other years.
The new release of free COVID-19 nasal swab tests also comes ahead of the first winter since the pandemic started that insurers are no longer required to cover the cost of them. On average, at-home tests now cost $11 out of pocket, according to an analysis by the nonprofit health research firm KFF.
The Food and Drug Administration also approved updated COVID-19 vaccines in September in the hopes of revving up protection for Americans this winter. The shots target an omicron descendant named XBB.1.5, replacing older vaccines that targeted the original coronavirus strain and a much earlier omicron version. Shots are recommended for everyone age 6 months or older, but uptake has been slow.
U.S. taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars to develop COVID-19 tests, vaccines and treatments in the three years since the pandemic started.
Sardines swirling in preserved lemons. Mackerel basking in curry sauce. Chargrilled squid bathing in ink. All are culinary delicacies long popular in Europe that are now making their mark on U.S. menus.
The country’s canned seafood industry is moving well beyond tuna sandwiches, a pandemic-era trend that began with Americans in lockdown demanding more of their cupboard staples.
Since then, the U.S. market has only expanded, fueled by social media influencers touting the benefits of the high-powered protein food in brightly colored metal containers. On the TikTok channel Tinned — Fishionado, Kris Wilson posts recipes for quick meals, including one mixing leftover rice, soy sauce, avocado and a runny egg with a tin of smoked mussels from the Danish company Fangst.
Tinned fish, as it’s called in Europe, is now a regular offering on menus at wine bars from San Francisco to Houston to New York, where patrons scoop the contents straight out of the can. There are even tinned fish clubs that mimic wine clubs by sending members monthly shipments of various seafood packed in various combinations of spices, oils and sauces. Videos on tinned fish, from tastings to how-to tips on cleaning the fishy smell from cans, have generated more than 30 million views on TikTok.
U.S. canned seafood industry sales have grown from $2.3 billion in 2018 to more than $2.7 billion so far this year, according to market research firm Circana.
Becca Millstein opened a Los Angeles-based tinned fish business in 2020 after eating more of it during coronavirus lockdowns.
“When we were all quarantining at home, preparing 100% of our meals day in and day out, it was very time consuming to create satiating meals,” she said. “I just found myself eating so much canned fish, and at the same time, the options that I found when strolling up and down the aisles of my local grocery store just were not great.”
Millstein lived in Spain in college and spent time in Portugal, both countries where tinned fish has long been a part of people’s diets, so she knew there were better options to be had.
“I was eating the same canned fish that my great grandmother Rose in Brooklyn was eating in the 1930s,” she said. “I thought that was just insane.”
Her company, Fishwife Tinned Seafood Co., set out to offer high-quality, sustainably sourced seafood.
Millstein said she sought out canneries in Spain and Portugal and contacted fishers along the West Coast who connected her to canneries in Oregon and Washington.
“Our mission is really to just galvanize the canned fish industry and transform and make it what we think it can be,” Millstein said, adding that means offering much more “than tuna fish sandwiches.”
Priced from $7.99 to $10.99 per tin, Fishwife products are meant to be delicacies that can be served over rice bowls, on charcuterie boards or in salads, Millstein said. She added that her company’s sales grew by 250% from 2021 to 2022, and are on track to jump about 150% this year, though she declined to release dollar figures.
To that end, Fishwife’s products include smoked salmon brined in salt, garlic salt and brown sugar then hand-packed into cans with Sichuan chile crisps crafted in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Its anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea are packed with premium Spanish extra virgin olive oil, sourced directly from farmers in northern Spain.
The company’s smoked albacore tuna is caught in the Pacific Northwest, with one fishing pole at a time to minimize harm to marine species such as sea turtles, sharks, rays, dolphins and seabirds that can be caught unintentionally during commercial fishing operations.
“These are products that you would want to serve to people who are coming over for dinner,” Millstein said. “They’re not just something that you would want to maybe like mash up really quickly and feed yourself for a quick, cheap protein fix.”
Simi Grewal, a co-founder of the San Francisco wine shop and bar DECANTsf, said her business turned to tinned fish to feed customers partly because it doesn’t have a kitchen suitable for cooking.
“It’s super versatile, especially when we’re talking about pairing with wine,” she said.
Tinned fish at the shop runs anywhere from $8 for Ati Manel garfish, a needle-like fish offred in olive oil from Portugal, to $36 for Conservas de Cambados ‘Sea Urchin Caviar’ from Spain’s Galician estuaries.
“People make a lot of assumptions about, you know, tinned fish being a cheap product. And you know, when you come here, this is a very highly curated program,” she said. “I spend hours and hours a month researching these folks and trying to find what are the newest items that they have out.”
Maria Finn, a chef and author in the Bay Area, said tinned fish is attracting everyone from foodies in search of the newest taste to doomsdayers stocking their bunkers. She takes the mussels from Patagonia Provisions on her annual mushroom hunts for a quick lunch and keeps packed cans of Wild Planet sardines in her bag in case wildfire threatens her home.
“I figure if anything can keep you alive for a long time, it’s going to be a tin of sardines packed in olive oil,” she joked.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cautioned people, especially pregnant women, to avoid eating too much fish, especially tuna or swordfish that may contain high amounts of mercury. But many tins contain smaller fish like sardines and anchovies that have the added benefit of being low in mercury. The canned products, however, tend to have a higher salt content than fresh seafood, health officials say.
Greenpeace has expressed concerns about overfishing to meet the growing demand and cautions buyers to do their research to make sure the products are sustainable. Longlining is one of the most commonly used methods for fishing tuna, which can snare other species like turtles or dolphins, according to the environmental group.
California was once home to thriving sardine canning factories in the coastal town of Monterey, which inspired John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” The industry disappeared decades ago as the fish population plummeted. The canneries have long been replaced with hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops.
John Field, a research fishery biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, doesn’t see large factories ever coming back, but he said the trend could help small local canneries and sustainable fishing.
He admits thought that he’s not so sure about ordering a tin off a menu.
“Personally, when I go out to an expensive dinner, I probably would prefer to have fresh fish than from a can,” he said.
The former top aide to ex-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday painted a picture of widespread chaos and dysfunction in the U.K. government during the coronavirus pandemic.
In keenly awaited testimony to the country’s public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic, Dominic Cummings, a self-styled political disruptor, was withering about many of the people dealing with the situation, including his former boss.
“I would say, overall, it’s widespread failure, but pockets of excellent people and pockets of excellent teams doing excellent work within an overall dysfunctional system,” he said.
He added that it was “crackers” that he had been appointed by Johnson to such a senior political position in government, using a British slang term for something that is ridiculous.
In emails and WhatsApp messages that were handed to the inquiry, Cummings also slammed many ministers in expletive-ridden terms.
“My appalling language has always been my own but my judgment of a lot of senior people was widespread,” said Cummings, who was the prime minister’s chief adviser during the first months of the pandemic in 2020.
Cummings also said Johnson constantly changed his mind during the pandemic which made it difficult to set policy,
“Pretty much everyone called him the trolley,” he said, using the British term for a shopping cart.
During his testimony, he also took a swipe at many of the formal structures of government during the pandemic. For example, he said the Cabinet Office, which coordinates policy around departments, was a “dumpster fire.”
Cummings follows other aides who have painted a picture of Johnson as a leader who was distracted and indecisive during the country’s biggest peacetime crisis.
Cummings was hired by Johnson after helping to mastermind the victorious “leave” campaign in Britain’s 2016 European Union membership referendum. He went to work in Downing Street when Johnson became prime minister in 2019, filling a loosely defined but powerful role that saw him dubbed “Boris’s brain.”
In May 2020 it was revealed that Cummings had driven 250 miles (400 km) across England to his parents’ house while the country was under a “stay-at-home” order and while he was ill with coronavirus. Cummings made a later journey to a scenic town 30 miles (50 km) away.
At the time Johnson resisted calls to fire him, but Cummings left his job in November 2020 and has fired broadsides at Johnson ever since on social media and his blog.
The U.K. has one of the highest COVID-19 death tolls in Europe, with the virus recorded as a cause of death for some 227,000 people.
Also on Tuesday, former top communications director Lee Cain, said Johnson’s erratic decision-making was “rather exhausting” and indicated that the pandemic did not suit his temperament.
Cain said COVID was “the wrong crisis for this prime minister’s skillset.”
Cain also said that Johnson considered allowing the pandemic to let rip through the elderly population but that he eventually took “the moral and responsible action” of imposing lockdowns, though admittedly later than they should have been.
Johnson, who was forced to step down as prime minister in September 2022 following revelations of rule-breaking parties at his Downing Street residence during the pandemic, is due to address the inquiry before Christmas.
The probe, led by retired judge Heather Hallett, is expected to take three years to complete. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold a public inquiry after heavy pressure from bereaved families, who have hit out at the evidence emerging about his actions.
“While COVID-19 was ripping through the country and I was doing everything I could to protect my mom, he was unable to take decisions, and left the country at the mercy of the virus he was supposed to be protecting it from,” said Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice U.K.
The COVID-19 treatments millions of Americans have taken for free from the federal government will enter the private market next week with a hefty price tag.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is setting the price for a five-day treatment of Paxlovid at $1,390, but Americans can still access the pills at no cost — for now. The less commonly used COVID-19 treatment Lagevrio, manufactured by Merck, also will hit the market next week.
Millions of free, taxpayer-funded courses of the pills will remain at pharmacies, hospitals and doctor’s offices across the country, U.S. Health and Human Services officials said Friday. People on private insurance may start to notice copays for the treatments once their pharmacy or doctor’s office runs out of the COVID-19 treatments they received from the government.
The U.S. government initially inked a deal with Pfizer to pay more than $5 billion for 10 million courses of Paxlovid in 2021.
Under a new agreement, reached last month between Pfizer and the federal government, people on Medicaid, Medicare or those who are without medical insurance will not pay any out-of-pocket costs for the treatment through the end of next year. Pfizer will also offer copay assistance for the treatment through 2028. The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense and Indian Health Service will still be able to access Paxlovid the government has on hand. The government will also get 1 million treatment courses to keep in its stockpile.
Suppliers to pharmacies, doctor’s offices and hospitals can begin ordering the treatments from the drug companies starting next week.
“Pfizer is committed to a smooth commercial transition and is working collaboratively with the U.S. government and health care stakeholders to ensure broad and equitable access to this important medicine for all eligible patients,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.
Paxlovid has been used to treat COVID-19 since 2021, but the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval earlier this year for it to be used on adults with coronavirus who face high risks of hospitalization or death. That group typically includes older adults and those with medical conditions like diabetes, asthma and obesity.
Merck has not confirmed a list price yet for its Lagevrio treatment but said in a statement to AP that it will also offer the treatment free to patients “who, without assistance, could not otherwise afford the product.”
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Associated Press reporter Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist who helped drive anti-COVID-19 measures in China that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes has died on Friday. He was 60.
An announcement from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention about Wu’s death gave no cause, but said that “rescue measures failed.”
The news of Wu’s death came just hours after the death of former Premier Li Keqiang was announced. Li was the country’s No. 2 leader during the pandemic.
Wu was the chief epidemiologist of China’s CDC and one of the public faces of the country’s zero-COVID measures that suspended international travel, imposed draconian lockdowns and prompted protests at the end of 2022.
