Long covid: Researchers “extremely angry” at Boris Johnson’s “bollocks” comment

Clinicians who led research on long covid from early on in the pandemic and who met government members to discuss the condition have expressed sadness and anger after messages emerged in which the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, described the condition as “bollocks.”

During a UK Covid-19 Inquiry session on long covid on 13 October researchers were shown a memo provided to Johnson in October 2020 that discussed a report on long covid and its symptoms.1 On it he had written: “Bollocks. This is Gulf War syndrome stuff.” In February 2021 Johnson wrote in a WhatsApp message, “Do we really believe in long covid? . . . I bet it’s complete Gulf War syndrome stuff.”

Chris Brightling and Rachael Evans, two of the investigators leading the Post-Hospitalisation Covid (Phosp-Covid) study,2 a national study looking at the long term effects of covid-19 on hospital patients, said they were “shocked” and “angry” by the messages and raised concerns over how much Johnson’s views had influenced the government’s decision making.

Brightling, professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Leicester, pointed out that the October memo was around the same time that the government was meeting people who had long covid and with academics such as himself who were researching the condition. He told the inquiry, “I’m deeply saddened and extremely angry at the same time. There are people in this room and people who are watching who have either suffered with long covid themselves or their loved ones have. I would be surprised if there are people in this room who do not at least know somebody who’s had long covid.”

Brightling said that for Johnson to have continued holding that belief for at least several months and suggesting that long covid was “something that could continue to be ignored, out of all the things that we see, it’s yet another unbelievable thing.” He added, “What I don’t know is how much this influenced the activity from government, but you would expect that, if the prime minister’s view was such, it may well have had an influence on other people in government.”

Evans, clinical associate professor and honorary consultant respiratory physician also at the University of Leicester, echoed this sentiment. “It’s shocking and just feels disappointing. We’ve already heard that some clinicians weren’t believing [patients]. But to see that your own prime minister has written something like that, I just can’t begin to get how people living through it feel.”

Evans added that at the time those notes were written she and colleagues were “already feeding back very clear descriptions of what this illness looked like, even if we didn’t know exactly what was causing it.” She said, “It was a very real—and is a very real—phenomenon.”

Long covid or post-covid syndrome encompasses a range of symptoms, including fatigue, heart palpitations, joint pain, and respiratory problems, that last longer than four weeks after an acute infection with SARS-CoV-2. The Office for National Statistics has estimated that around 1.9 million people in the UK have long covid.

Doctors who have experienced long covid have previously told The BMJ that it stopped them being able to work or play with their children and in some cases led to them having to sell their homes because of loss of earnings.3