Boris Johnson's Coronavirus Response Is a Fiasco

For the past few weeks, anglophile Italians like me have looked at the British response to the Covid-19 epidemic with a mixture of horror and dismay. It was like watching a train crash in slow motion. Having lived through the past few weeks here in Milan, I could see exactly how this would end.

The British government had the privilege of more time to slow down the epidemic and to organize an effective response. The data suggest that Britain is a couple of weeks behind Italy in terms of the coronavirus’s spread and a week behind the rest of continental Europe. Yet Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his scientific and political advisers preferred to act gradually, only taking the blandest of measures. Unnamed senior government officials even had the gall to brief prominent journalists that Italy’s draconian measures were unscientific and populist.