Maria Laura Avignolo
05/26/2021 8:29 AM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 05/26/2021 11:38 AM
"There was no plan to even bury the dead."
The devastating phrase was just one in the explosive testimony of Dominic Cummings, the controversial former chief adviser to
Boris Johnson
, on the premier's conduct of the coronavirus crisis before the House of Commons Technology Committee, in Greater Brittany.
"Boris Johnson
is not in a position
to be prime minister," he launched in one of his deadly attacks on the prime minister who nominated him.
Cummings, what
He was fired from Downing St. under pressure from Carrie Symonds, the prime minister's girlfriend, who complained that a "lockdown" should have been ordered in January.
"Lions led by donkeys"
He showed
a panorama of chaos
, inefficiency, ignorance and lies at the top of power, after asking "forgiveness from the relatives of those who died in the epidemic."
Johnson was more concerned about the economy than the epidemic, and in the crisis there were "lions led by donkeys."
Boris Johnson.
Photo: Bloomberg
Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been "fired for lying."
Boris Johnson treated the covid as a "scary story" and many ministers were
"literally skiing"
as the pandemic unfolded early last year, Cummings said.
Everything should have happened in January: closing the borders, buying the masks and equipment in China and bringing them by plane, not by boat.
None of that happened.
On the list of winners of the indictments is Finance Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who created the worker support plan.
Among the losers are the England Health Service, Boris Johnson, his girlfriend Carrie and the Secretary of Health, whom he accused of
"criminal conduct."
A catastrophic situation
Appearing before MPs, the former senior adviser to the prime minister made a series of
allegations
about the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis.
Dominic Cummings.
Photo: AP
With his documents in hand, details of days and hours, he described a
scenario of chaos
and inability to decide, with the Mandarin system or public officials collapsed at its own pace.
There was a threat that the NHS would completely collapse and dissolve in the face of the force of the pandemic.
A new line of
young
, active
officials
were the ones who launched a plan that did not exist in the face of Covid in the face of paralysis of public officials.
The British
listened with horror to
the testimony of the most powerful man in the Johnson government until his expulsion, which recreated the chaos and disorganization to face the Covid and the risks to end their health system and internal differences and indifference.
"Bad decisions, bad operations and a prime minister changing his mind
1,000 times a day is
going to create a disaster zone," he said.
Fire the Secretary of Health
Dominic Cummings said the health secretary should have been fired
for "15 to 20 things,"
including "lying" to people "multiple times."
He denounced that he had "criminal behavior" in the epidemic.
The deputies
demanded "evidence"
for their accusations and the Secretary of Health must appear in two weeks before Parliament.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
Photo: Reuters
He added that he encouraged the prime minister to fire Hancock and claimed that the cabinet secretary, the top official, recommended the same course of action.
He accused him of
not wanting to test
on time and wasting all those months.
He was only concerned with his goal of 100,000 tests a day afterwards.
Cummings said there are "a lot of brilliant people" in government in junior and mid-level positions who have been let
down
by top management.
Boris downplayed the virus
Cummings claimed that Boris Johnson did not chair the first COBRA emergency committee meetings because he thought it was
like "swine flu"
and did not believe it warranted a major concern.
He told MPs that the prime minister even considered asking England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, to
inject him with the virus
to show that it was not particularly serious.
“When the public needed us most, the government failed.
There was no data system in place "to monitor infections"
Dominic Cummings Former Advisor to Boris Johnson
Under relentless questioning by former Conservative health secretary James Hunt and Labor MPs, Cummings acknowledged that "it is completely insane that someone like me should have been there (in government), just as it is that Boris Johnson was there, and that the option was Boris or Jeremy Corbyn in the elections ”.
Cummings, who studied Classics and History at Oxford University, was the
most powerful
man
in
the kingdom after Boris Johnson because he made them win Brexit and he made him his adviser.
Officials skiing in pandemic
"There are so many thousands upon thousands of wonderful people in this country who could provide
better leadership
than either of those two. And obviously there is something terribly wrong with political parties if that is the best they can do," he said.
Cummings said that, since January, he said that if they did not remove the crisis from Hancock's power and did not test they were facing a
health catastrophe,
with thousands of deaths.
The government was not operating on a "war footing" in February 2020. "A lot of key people were literally
skiing
in mid-February," Cummings said.
"Absolutely screwed up"
Cummings leaves his London home in March 2020. Photo: AP
The
plan B
came into force when the government realized that "we are absolutely screwed ,
" he said.
Cummings said that on March 13, 2020, a Cabinet Office official came to see him to tell him that the government's initial plan would not work and that they would need a "Plan B."
"We will have to get rid of the whole plan and we are heading to the biggest disaster this country has seen since 1940. I have been told for years that there is a complete plan for this. With no plan, we are in big trouble. I think we are absolutely screwed. and we are going to kill
thousands of people,
"he acknowledged then.
The initial hope was to achieve herd immunity in the kingdom.
"The initial plan was for
a limited intervention
," Cummings said.
A plan that the spokesman for Boris Johnson's government denies.
CASES
0.000.00000.000
per million inhab.
Xxxxx
DEATHS
00,0000,000
per million inhab.
Source:
Johns Hopkins
Chart:
Flourish
|
Infographic:
Clarín
He added that there was hope of achieving herd immunity to the virus, until it became clear that the death toll
would be unacceptable
.
The delay in announcing the closure in March was due to "there was no plan."
Cummings said the government
did not support a lockdown
because it thought it would only mean a worse peak in the winter.
But he said he realized it on March 12: "The system was taking time to announce all these things because
there was no established plan
. These things are being delayed because planning and preparation has not been done," he acknowledged.
"When the public needed us most,
the government failed
. There was no data system in place" to monitor COVID infections in March 2020, he said.
At the time, Cummings said it was about him bringing a white board into a room on Downing St. and having NHS chief Sir Simon Stevens read
"on pieces of paper"
the number of Covid patients in the units. intensive care.
More concerned about the economy
Cummings said data on tracking the pandemic was "
weeks out of date
."
The prime minister was "more concerned about the economic damage than the virus."
“There were quite a few people around Whitehall who thought the real danger was the economy.
The opinion of the prime minister was that the real danger was not the disease, but the measures we take against the disease and
the economic consequences,
"he admitted.
When asked why they didn't close the borders when the pandemic increased, Cummings announced that
the prime minister did not want to
.
“We were imposing all these restrictions on people domestically but we could see people coming from infected areas.
Nobody took it seriously,
"he said.
Cummings revealed: "I threatened to resign and tell the media that the government was going to kill thousands of people" on March 16.
The system then was in chaos.
I told the prime minister: "You are more scared of me trying to stop this chaos than you are of the chaos itself," he said. The answer did not surprise him: the prime minister laughed and said, "You are right.
Chaos is people looking at me ”.
The administration collapsed when the government had Covid and was "in its death bed," according to Cummings, who this Wednesday continued to declare late afternoon in the House of Commons.
It is the
most dangerous
testimony
for the prime minister in his entire administration.
Cummings said he traveled to Durham to safeguard his family from threats to their safety in front of their home.
Only the prime minister knew about those moves and he now has no regrets that he did not reveal it and that it did not end in a public relations fiasco.
He was extremely ill and
thought he was going to die
of coronavirus.
The statement by Dominic Cummings coincided with the Wednesday interpellation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said that
"he has not lost faith"
in his Secretary of Health and that "none of his decisions have been easy in the pandemic."
Paris, correspondent
ap
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