Sorry to disagree. Early March a lot of European nations already were in shutdown or openly discussing it. The numbers were already very high. People knew. The British government made the decision to keep things as they were were for longer then most other European nations (very much like the Swedes). The continent did discuss that at length in newspapers and the news. They only turned around when people dropped like flies, the NHS was at it’s very limit and Boris experienced it himself. Wiliam’s comment didn’t go uncriticised then. Even by fans. And that was well deserved. The joke was unlucky and uneducated then and highly inappropriate in retrospective. I always said he should have addressed it, even without addressing it directly. I do wonder how it worked though. Because it seemed they just went about their live as normal, doing zoom calls together, kids at home and fully staffed. Shouldn’t he quarantine to make sure neither his family or staff could catch it while he was still infectious? I also don’t see that there would have been a panic if people would have known. Charles gave regular updates. His health always seemed to be ok. The BRF has enough positions in the line of succession. That’s the whole point. Kate would have probably filled in for George if necessary. Thankfully they are all ok but if not, this wouldn’t have been the end of the BRF or the UK. And honestly, he should have rested instead of going on. COVID can come with severe long term effects, better make sure you recover as well as possible. Especially if you want to be head of state at one point. Your people deserve your best.
Kate and Wiliam are great, but they are not above missteps and criticism.
This coming out now, looks bad in my opinion. He should have been transparent. People will go and search for everything he did while infectious and properly find something questionable (as you would find with anyone under the looking glass). The mere fact, that this didn’t come from them makes me wonder who actually played this card.