Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar's views about how governments should deal with public health crises are broadly the same as those of Dominic Cummings. Both men are frustrated autocrats who believed that from Day One we needed ‘a command-and-control structure’
Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar is a distinguished epidemiologist, a member of the
Sage scientific committee, the director of the Wellcome Trust health research charity and an influential government adviser. He is also the most hawkish of
lockdown hawks, and he has written a book with journalist Anjana Ahuja, called
Spike. It is a revealing read.
Spike is basically about Farrar himself: how he saw it all coming, how he personally forced the Chinese government to release the genetic sequence of the
Covid-19 virus that allowed scientists to develop a vaccine, how he warned the world of imminent doom, how the Government could have saved lives by treasuring his words more, and how he risked assassination by the Chinese ('If anything happens to me, this is what you need to know', he told friends).
The talk is all of wars, battle plans, and people heading for precipices. All this is a bit melodramatic and self-obsessed for my taste. but Farrar is a distinguished scientist who means well. He is terrifyingly sincere and really does have the interest of mankind at heart. Therein lies the problem.
There are few more obsessive fanatics than the technocrat who is convinced that he is reordering an imperfect world for its own good.
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