Dr Hilary Jones cut a bemused figure on Good Morning Britain today after landlord Rod Humphris repeated his concerns over the effectiveness of lockdowns on the show.
The co-owner of The Raven pub in Bath made the news after giving Sir Keir Starmer a piece of his mind following a visit to the city.
He furiously threw Starmer out of his pub due to his anger at him “failing this country” and not holding the government to account on its pandemic response.
He asked Starmer, “Do you understand we have f* our economy because old people are dying?”, before becoming quite animated.
Keir Starmer is told to leave the Raven. The team ducked inside after a confrontation pic.twitter.com/UujAx8gnbd
— Stephen Sumner (@StephenSumner15) April 19, 2021
Appearing on GMB this morning the pub landlord repeated his concerns over the effectiveness of lockdown, citing Texas, Sweden, Tanzania and Belarus as cases for relaxing restrictions.
The US state in question has recorded almost three million cases of coronavirus so far with close to 50,000 deaths, while Sweden, once heralded as a model country among lockdown sceptics, now has one of the highest Covid case rates in Europe.
Needless to say, Dr Hilary was less than amused by the comments, telling Humphris that he should “stick to pulling pints rather than advising the government about policy on the biggest public health issue for the last 100 years”.
He went on to cite the spiralling situation in Brazil and India before asking:
“If we ignore the pandemic and say the lockdown doesn’t work, how do you think this spreads in the first place? It spreads through person-to-person contact, and if you look at all the countries that locked down earlier they have had better health outcomes and better economies.
“It’s very simple. Look at every peak we’ve had. We went into lockdown and the case numbers came down.”
Watch the clip in full below:
.@DrHilaryJones clashes with a pub landlord who told Keir Starmer he ‘failed this country’ for not opposing lockdown. pic.twitter.com/nxEPtrAe8Q
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) April 20, 2021
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