The coronavirus pandemic has ‘unleashed state corruption on a grand scale’ that is ‘harmful to public health’, a scathing editorial in medical journal the venerated British Medical Journal says.

Referencing a bombshell story in the Guardian which revealed that Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s departed chief adviser sat in on SAGE meetings, ‘the leak revealed inappropriate involvement of government advisers’, and exposed ‘under-representation from public health, clinical care, women and ethnic minorities’.

The editorial goes on to criticise Public Health England’s work on Covid-19 and inequality, ‘a section was initially withheld’ and the blocking of a government scientist from speaking to media because of a ‘difficult political landscape.

Finally, it points the finger at Operation Moonshot, which depends on immediate and wide availability of accurate rapid diagnostic tests and the questionable logic of mass screening.

The coronavirus pandemic has ‘unleashed state corruption on a grand scale’ that is ‘harmful to public health’, a scathing editorial in the British Medical Journal has said.

In an unusually political intervention for the highly-respected scientific publication, it warns that politicians are ‘suppressing science’ and accuses the government of ‘opportunistic embezzlement’.

‘The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency, a time when it is even more important to safeguard science,’ the article, penned by executive editor Kamran Abbasi, says.

It zeroes in on four examples of ‘suppression of science or scientists’. Firstly, the secrecy that initially surrounded the membership and deliberations of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), which were initially secret until a press leak forced transparency. Source