Oh, if only we had listened to Richard Horton sooner. That seemed to be the message that the editor-in-chief of the Lancet was trying to get across on Question Time when he lambasted the government for failing to get to grips with the coronavirus crisis.
Yes, if you had tuned in to the popular BBC discussion show last night, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that Horton had spent most of 2020 desperately campaigning for us all to take coronavirus more seriously. He told viewers:
‘Honestly, I’m sorry to say this, but it’s a national scandal. We shouldn’t be in this position. We knew in the last week of January that this was coming. The message from China was absolutely clear that a new virus with pandemic potential was hitting cities, people were being admitted to hospital, admitted to intensive care units and dying.
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