Devi Sridhar: ‘Scotland is a victim of its own success’

Throughout the pandemic, few things have been certain but Devi Sridhar’s omnipresent opining is one of them. The Scottish Covid advisor has rarely been off our screens during the pandemic, becoming something of a pin-up girl to the SNP for her repeated jibes at the Westminster government, her demands for more power which Holyrood already had and her effusive praise for First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘wise words’ and ‘strong leadership’. Not to mention of course her suggestion that an independent Scotland would have done better against Covid.

The appointment of a new UK Health Secretary in Sajid Javid offered Sridhar a fresh target to aim at. In an article for the Mail on Sunday, Javid explained his thinking on unlocking Britain, writing that: ‘No date we choose will ever come without risk, so we have to take a broad and balanced view. We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu.