“I think I’m right in saying that the prime minister gave up science at 15,” he said. “I think he’d be the first to admit it wasn’t his forte and that he struggled with the concepts and we did need to repeat them – often.”
In extracts from his diary that were relayed to the inquiry, Vallance said Johnson was “bamboozled” by the graphs and data and that watching him “get his head round stats is awful.”
During the pandemic, Vallance was a highly visible presence in the UK He and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, would flank Johnson in numerous daily Covid-19 press briefings from the prime minister’s offices on Downing Street.
Vallance, who stepped down from his role as the British government’s chief scientific adviser earlier this year, said Johnson’s struggles were not unique and that many leaders had problems in understanding the scientific evidence and advice, especially in the first stages of the pandemic in early 2020.
It was hard work sometimes to try and make sure that he had understood what a particular graph or piece of data was saying