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I'm seeing some wild over-reactions to this. What he's saying is demonstrably true. 1/ thread. https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1381919420101066752
The UK entered lockdown a few days after Ireland. Portugal followed a week or so later. The trajectories of cases and deaths were very similar in all three countries despite the UK vaccinating 50% of its population and the others only vaccinating 15%. 2/
In the UK, 80% of the decline in cases had occurred by mid-February when the vaccines could have had only a marginal effect. Case numbers fell sharply among the under-60s who had barely been vaccinated at all. 3/
This doesn't mean the vaccines don't work and Johnson was not implying that. It just means that the lockdown was sufficient. It was indeed responsible for the bulk of the work. We'll never know what effect vaccines alone would have had. 4/
In Israel, most lockdown restrictions ended early in March and cases have continued to fall. In a country that had four waves in succession, this strongly suggests that the vaccine is behind the recent decline. 5/
Whether we'll have another wave in the next few months remains to be seen. There are certainly enough unvaccinated people to create one, but Johnson has said that won't be enough to change the roadmap because the vaccines will greatly reduce the impact. 6/ https://www.itv.com/news/2021-04-13/covid-deaths-will-rise-as-pubs-hairdressers-and-shops-reopen-boris-johnson-warns
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