It’s fitting that the intended theme for this column, disruption in optics, has been forced to take a back seat following the revelation that Downing Street special adviser Dominic Cummings admitted to driving 30 miles to a tourist attraction with his partner and child during lockdown to assess whether his vision was good enough to drive.
Like many, I watched the extraordinary press conference on bank holiday Monday in disbelief – and that was before the, quite frankly, insane rationale for the journey to Barnard Castle in the North East. Up until that point, I could almost appreciate his reasoning for making the 260-mile trip to fully isolate on a family farm in Durham. Almost.
Suffering from Covid-19, Cummings claimed that his vision had been affected by the infection and made the trip to assess whether he could drive back to London. I don’t have the word count here to unpack his version of accounts in its entirety, but if true, his actions were incomprehensibly stupid and send a dangerous message to the public.
It might not have been so bad had Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove not doubled down on the matter by appearing on TV the following day and admitting he had also previously driven a car to judge whether his vision was impaired enough to not be behind the wheel. In his defence, Gove added the caveat that he was not an authority on automotive matters. Nor common sense, seemingly.
I cannot possibly accurately judge whether Cummings’ explanation for making that journey to Barnard Castle is true, but between him and Gove, the notion of ensuring a safe standard of eyesight when driving has been thrown under the bus in order to firm up a political narrative.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson also mentioned that his eyesight had been affected by coronavirus, finding Cummings’ story ‘entirely plausible,’ but research from Wuhan found that conjunctivitis as a side effect of Covid-19 was rare – between 1% and 3% of patients. Johnson and Cummings both suffering with conjunctivitis after coronavirus – what are the chances?