Like Dante’s inferno, Covid denialism is structured in concentric circles. In the first circle are the politicians influenced by denialism and lockdown scepticism, but sporadically resisting it, as Boris Johnson was forced to do when he announced a new national lockdown on 4 January.
In the second circle are the politicians sporadically pushing dodgy science – such as the Covid Recovery Group of Conservative MPs. Their arguments often rest on scientific arguments and viewpoints that have now been discredited, such as that of the physician Karol Sikora, who in June predicted there would be “no second wave”, and modelling published last March claiming that as much as 50 per cent of the UK population had already been infected.
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