Boris Johnson fatefully implied that close contact with COVID-19 patients was nothing to worry about.“I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients,” he said, eight days before the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic.“And I shook hands with everybody.”Johnson rolled back his comments a few days later, but it was one of a series of instances where the U.K.
government was accused of issuing mixed messaging during the pandemic.By the end of March, Johnson and his health secretary, Matt Hancock, had both contracted the virus.Johnson almost died in intensive care, later telling the British public, his situation “could have gone either way.”Contracting the virus may not.