Scathing attack on the government from the editor of The Lancet (medical journal)
Lancet editor attacks UK government for 'catastrophic' handling of Covid-19 pandemic
"Missed opportunities and appalling misjudgments by the government over its handing of the
Covid-19 pandemic have led to the avoidable deaths of thousands of people. That is the stark view of
Lancet editor Richard Horton in an interview in the
Observer’s New Review this week.
Horton – whose book,
The Covid-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again – lambasts the UK management of the outbreak, describing it as the greatest science policy failure of a generation.
For good measure, Horton, who has been editor-in-chief of the
Lancet for 25 years, also attacks the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) for becoming “the public relations wing of a government that had failed its people” and denounces Public Health England (PHE) for not taking proper note of the World
Health Organization’s public health emergency warning about the disease. He also dismisses the UK’s response to the emergence of the Covid-19 virus as “slow, complacent and flat-footed”, a reaction that show the government was “glaringly unprepared” for the pandemic."