Jonathan Van-Tam was urged by police to flee his home after his family received death threats during the pandemic, the Covid inquiry heard.
England’s former deputy chief medical officer – who left his post in March 2022 – became a household name during the government’s response to the health emergency and is known for his calm demeanor and regular use of analogies.
But coming into the public eye as Britain grappled with surging coronavirus infections meant that JVT, as he is affectionately known, was also on the receiving end of violent messages as he challenged the science behind government decision-making tried to explain.
He told the inquiry: ‘I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats slit.
‘I didn’t expect the police to have to say, ‘Are you moving in the middle of the night? Are you going to go away for a few days while we look into this and possibly make some arrests?”
Professor Sir Jonathan, England’s former deputy chief medical officer – who left his post in March 2022 – became a household name during the government’s response to the health emergency and is known for his calm demeanor and regular use of analogies
Sir Jonathan, knighted in the New Year Honors list last year for his services to public health, was a member of the vaccine taskforce during his time as deputy CMO. He said he referred to the ordeal in his testimony because of concerns experts might have about a future pandemic. In the photo, Sir Jonathan will be made a Knight by the current Prince of Wales in June 2022
Sir Jonathan, who was knighted last year, said with his characteristic humor that his family did not leave their home ‘because of the cat’, but added: ‘It was a very stressful time. And my family did not sign for that.’
He said he referred to the ordeal in his testimony because of concerns experts might have about a future pandemic.
“I’m only making this point because I’m so afraid that if there is a future crisis, people won’t want to apply for these positions and jobs because of the implications that come with it,” he said.
Sir Jonathan, known as JVT by colleagues, became a regular figure on TV screens during lockdown as he delivered his expert knowledge at some of the daily coronavirus conferences.
The Boston United fan was known for memorable metaphors such as comparing Covid to a ‘goalkeeper who can be beaten’ and the vaccine rollout to the ‘glide path to land this plane’.
He caused panic and concern across the UK in the early days of the Covid crisis when he admitted the country might have to ‘live with’ the virus for years before a vaccine was found.
He also made headlines in December 2020 when he warned that Britons could be wearing face masks for years to come – even after a successful coronavirus vaccine became available.
The chair of the Covid inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett, previously condemned criminals and trolls who subjected top scientists to abuse during the pandemic.
She made the unusual intervention to comment on the evidence given to the inquiry in June, after Professor Sir Chris Whitty warned that ‘extremely worrying’ threats and intimidation from members of the public could deter experts from helping to a future health crisis.
The harassment of Sir Chris and other leading scientists also came amid a wave of conspiracy theories about the virus.
Last year a thug who taunted Sir Chris while he was held in a restraint was jailed for eight weeks and ordered to pay £1,058 in costs and compensation.
Jonathan Chew, 24, approached England’s chief medical officer as he walked through St James’s Park in Westminster on June 27 last year.
Lady Hallett told Sir Chris she was ‘surprised and sorry’ when she heard of the abuse.
She added: ‘It’s wrong for so many reasons, but I know how upsetting it can be, so I hope people will think twice about it – but of course they never do, right? – before they unnecessarily commit disturbing acts.
“There are so many different ways to express different opinions, why is there personal abuse?”
Sir Jonathan also told the inquiry today that he was overwhelmed by the ‘horrendous’ and ‘very, very intense’ workload at the start of the pandemic, working up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
In further revelations, he admitted that lockdown measures introduced in March 2020 ‘could have been sooner’.
He said: ‘My sort of instinctive reaction was ‘not a day too soon’.
‘In retrospect, I think I reflect that these measures could all have been better at least seven days earlier than they were, possibly a little longer than that.
“So somewhere in the seven to 14 day range that might have been a little more current.”
Jonathan Chew, 24, approached England’s chief medical officer as he walked through St James’s Park in Westminster on June 27, 2021. Footage of the incident, which lasted around 20 seconds and showed Chew with former estate agent Lewis Hughes, was shared widely on social media.
When asked by Baroness Hallett whether there was ‘any chance we could have avoided the mandatory lockdown, or is that impossible to say?’ he also said, “I think it’s largely impossible to say.
‘But I think, on the balance of probabilities, when I look at how contagious this virus turned out to be in places like Italy and France, there were almost certainly no alternatives.
‘My opinion is that we would first no longer have high-intensity care beds.
‘And it is possible that within a few weeks, if we had not acted when we did, we would have reached a position where the number of people needing (hospital) admission with Covid – serious enough to require hospital care – could not have been achieved. allowed.
“With some pretty terrible potential considerations at that point.”
Sir Jonathan also admitted signing a letter to the Cabinet Secretary warning of the risks of reopening the country after the first national lockdown to ‘leave a mark in the sand’.
The May 2020 letter to Simon Case came as ministers were keen to ease restrictions.
He added: ‘There was a risk that if you rebuild a bit and get a lot of momentum, you go into the next wave from a fairly high level and therefore get fewer warnings and therefore more consequences.’
When asked by Hugo Keith KC, the inquiry’s lead lawyer, why this was necessary, Sir Jonathan replied: ‘Because people like you have now come back to it.’
He added: “And it is on record that I was concerned enough to write a formal letter to the Cab Sec (Cabinet Secretary) at this time because of the concerns I have already conveyed to you on the floor.”
“As I said, in order to establish an irrefutable written trail, we wanted to say that this had to be done very carefully.”
Pressed by his response, Baroness Hallett asked whether this indicated that his oral advice was not taken sufficiently seriously.
Sir Jonathan replied: ‘I think this may partly indicate that.
“But it could also partly reflect the kind of fragmentation of decisions across different sectors and therefore possibly because the Cab Sec is not an epidemiologist – as far as I know – and is not able to crystallize the net result of those individual sector liftings. ‘
Addressing the inquiry today, he also said that while Public Health England’s systems are ‘extremely’ accurate, they provide data of the present rather than a prediction of the future.
This means that there is ‘enormous uncertainty’ in the risk assessments.
“It doesn’t give the less experienced reader any idea what the possibilities might be,” he added.