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Coronavirus: Downing Street press conference October 22nd; ENGLAND: London: Westminster: Downing Street: INT Press conference part 1 of 11 Boris Johnson MP (Prime Minister), Rishi Sunak MP (Chancellor) and Patrick Vallance (Chief Scientific Advisor) entering press conference / Boris Johnson MP (Prime Minister) statement SOT. - I am very glad to be joined today not just by Sir Patrick Vallance but by the Chancellor Rishi Sunak who is going to tell us more in a moment about our latest package to help this country in its battle with Covid. And I want to thank Rishi for measures that will protect people’s livelihoods and protect jobs and which will help us to deliver our overwhelming objective of getting the virus under control while keeping pupils in education and keeping the UK economy moving forward. I know that there are some people who will say that this economic objective is so important that we should stop all measures to control the virus and stop restrictions of any kind on our social lives or on the way we run our businesses. We can’t do that because alas the maths is inescapable. We would face many thousands more deaths. And no, to answer one commonly posed question, we would not be able to insulate the elderly and the vulnerable. Not in a society with so many multigenerational households. No country has been able to do that. And an uncontrolled expansion in the number of Covid patients would mean that the NHS would have even less capacity to treat heart patients and cancer patients and to deal with all our other medical needs. So that’s why we reject that extreme laissez-faire approach. And then there are others who say on the contrary that we need now to lock the whole place down from John O’ Groats to Lands’ End. Turn the lights out, shut up shop. Close schools and universities and go back to the same kind of lockdown we had in March and April and May. And I have to say I don’t believe that is the right course now. Not ...