From the outset it seems that Boris Johnson believes was born to rule, and not in the style of parliamentary democracy, but in an autocratic fashion. The engineered huge parliamentary majority has handed that to him. He chooses how to respond and when to respond. He did not attend the first 5 meetings of the COBR committee, delegating to others. His style in parliament is to deflect and to avoid scrutiny. Now there is a sense that government does not know what it is doing, that there are probably divisions within the government and that we are reeling towards disaster.
To plough through the nonsense we need to understand the manipulations. Boris is hiding behind the science which is selectively being manipulated in order to be ultimately be thrown to the wolves and eventually be the scapegoat for what is government failure. Sadly scientists cannot break rank and come out and say that what is being said and done in their name is nonsense, because they will be marginalised. Even journalists, some long established favourites of the Tories such as Piers Morgan, are now blacklisted by the government because they ask searching questions and take no nonsense. For once the CTs may be right that the system seeks conformity. But this now has become very clear in USA and UK and no where else in the world, science has become politicised and is now the subject of attack, rather than the politicians. So please let us not help Boris and Dominic by attacking science, and let us distinguish between science, real science and the official government sanctioned science.