From the Independent, you'll have to make your own mind up whether these fit your personal label of scientist:
Meanwhile, scientists voiced concern that the government appeared to be signalling that it was ready to move the UK towards “living with Covid”.
University College London professor Christina Pagel said: “A virus isn’t endemic just because a government minister says it is and just because people want it to be.
“Learning to live with Covid would actually involve some learning. For instance, creating safer environments through mass investment in clean air. Pretending Covid is not a problem is not the same thing.”
Prof Pagel said that the “minimal public health response” to the Omicron variant adopted by the government in England “seems set to doom us to massive surges once or twice a year”.
“If that continues we’ll keep picking off the vulnerable, keep stressing a weakening NHS, [and] create more chronic illness and mass disruption through people off sick every time, with a lower quality of life for all of us,” she added.
GP Dr Helen Salisbury, a member of the Independent Sage group of scientists and medics, said: “People are talking about Covid ‘becoming endemic’ as if this is a good thing.
“TB and smallpox were once endemic in the UK – it doesn’t mean mild, it just means widespread.
“Other countries aren’t throwing in the towel – why has our government given up trying to protect us?”
And Oxford University professor of primary care Trisha Greenhalgh said: “Stop testing, play it down, normalise the deaths, deny the long-term consequences, learn to live with it, mock the scientists... I’m trying to imagine what would’ve happened if we’d taken the same approach to a previous fast-spreading infectious disease, such as smallpox, polio, TB or HIV.”
