British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is suffering from coronavirus was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on Monday night, when his condition deteriorated. He had given irresponsible statements on the deadly virus and was accused of mishandling the crisis.
The British premier Boris Johnson — two weeks before getting admitted to ICU — said, “You’ll be pleased to know that I continue to shake hands.”
According to a news report published in The News York Times, Boris Johnson’s handling of the crisis has borne an unsettling resemblance to that of President Trump. “He was slow to recognise the risks, taking a mid-February holiday with his pregnant fiancée at his country home. Even after the virus became impossible to ignore, he remained glib and dismissive, as his government dithered and failed to put together a coherent response,” the report noted.
The British PM Boris Johnson woke up by the virus the day, when 20 coronavirus cases were already reported in the country. On Feb 28, when the UK’s index suffered its biggest one-week fall since 2008, Boris Johnson finally said that the virus was the country’s top priority. On March3, the British PM, while addressing a press confreres said: “The best thing you can do is to wash your hands with soap and hot water while singing Happy Birthday twice. We should all basically just go about our normal daily lives as long as we are washing our hands for 20 seconds, several times a day.”
Two days later, Italy and Spain were shutting down, pleading for other countries not to repeat their mistakes, Boris Johnson was explaining jauntily that one of the options for handling the virus was not to close schools or sporting events but to ‘take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.’ It was later policy that this approach was was to encourage ‘herd immunity’.
“Mr. Johnson found it impossible to maintain either consistency or seriousness. He delighted in describing cutting peak death rates as squashing the sombrero and declared with verve that we would soon send coronavirus packing. He has veered among solemnity, evident boredom and grins, as if his virus briefings were the Boris Johnson Entertainment Show, not the grimmest of necessary broadcasts.” another NYT report noted.