Covid Enquiry

[boatshed bill]

There no way eat out to help out didn’t spread Covid. We went from being told not to go near anyone to it being ok if you were eating. While it was fast moving and unprecedented the rules seemed contradictory.

I always thought that was the biggest pile of bullcrap going.
Helped one sector of industry while loads of others were totally ignored.

[Nori1958]

The thing about pandemics, is that they come again and again.

I only remember two in my lifetime... Aids and Covid..

[bobinho]

Turns out our new PM is as stupid as the last one.

Can't recall anything... can't remember anything... and he's in charge!!!

Doesn't send whatsapp messages and when he does he deletes 'em, or renews his fone every couple of months...

Or is he just a liar like all the others?

[RMutt]

I think a lot of people thought the inquiry would be a waste of time and money.
And if they didn’t before it started, they must certainly think it now given the amount of lies and deceit that have been on show from the main decision makers in place at the time of Covid.
If people were prepared to tell the truth it would help. As it is, what we are learning is almost by default, by what they are not telling us.

[dsr]

I understand and accept we might clash politically but we all know who was/ were responsible for the catastrophe of 2020/2021. A slight error by a KC in no way equates to the sheer, callous incompetence of those who have blood on their hands of hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Indefensible and you know it.

Surely the disease of covid was at least a contributory factor in the deaths?

[GodIsADeeJay81]

How about we start with those at the top.

We had a lying Prime Minister in Johnson.
We have listened to the current unelected PM today lying about how he changed phones and all his WhatsApp’s disappeared.
Michelle Mone and the PPE still not prosecuted.
The contracts award to Conservative donors by friendly MP’s
Matt Hancock
Dealing with those at the top will make dealing those further down the food chain easier to deal with.

We know that’s not how it works though, nobody above will be touched, the enquiry will be published in a few years time. Lessons will be learnt.
People will offer their sanctimonious apologies and we all move on.

Hancock didn’t award any contracts

That was done by a department of which he had no control

[Clovius Boofus]

Hancock didn’t award any contracts

That was done by a department of which he had no control

Matt Hancock's pub landlord was awarded a £40m Covid-related contract. Must be a coincidence.

[RMutt]

Hancock put four ‘business’ ‘ forward on the VIP lane I think.

[Clovius Boofus]

We should be jailing people. Instead, they'll end up in the House of Lords.

[ecc]

I would suggest that there is as much chance of getting to the truth here as there is anywhere else in the world.

I think you're right there TBH.

Mistakes were inevitably made but sadly politicians are only concerned about themselves.

[roperclaret]

I think you're right there TBH.

Mistakes were inevitably made but sadly politicians are only concerned about themselves.

Every single one of them. Career driven.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Matt Hancock's pub landlord was awarded a £40m Covid-related contract. Must be a coincidence.

He didn’t award it though, that’s my point

Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off

Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch

Both of those were orders via official channels

But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything

[timshorts]

I'm hesitant to suggest that the UK needs an inquiry in why we spend so long over inquiries. If I had the chance to set the terms of reference for an inquiry the first item would be the inquiry must be completed within 6 months - and no payments for any of the lawyers involved in the inquiry unless it was completed in 6 months - and was judged to be a meaningful and useful inquiry.

Then you'd get some pretty useless results.

Why would any half-decent lawyer want to waste their time with an arrangement like that? And who is to say or judge whether the result is "meaningful" or "useful". We generally end up with lawyers involved in these types of affairs that have proved their worth elsewhere. If you are talking of barristers, they would not get instructed if they were ****, so you might not like them, but these are (usually) good at their jobs (even if they are pompous sounding *****) . You can probably say similarly for those that provided the scientific advice (except the last bit).

Where the system fails is with the politicians. The route to becoming a politician is for the most part having an ability to brown nose. There is no aptitude test. No specialist exams to take. It helps if you look vaguely appealing, went to the right school and join a little club of two which is perpetuated by the fpp system. A few soundbites that appeal to the lcd masses will do you fine, and, of course, you don't even have to come up with those. Because of the nature of the beast, you are likely to find a disproportionate number who read artsy subjects, disproportionately few with science/maths leaning a-levels, let alone at higher education levels.

But, of course, an understanding of science is not key when trying to win an election. Sociology might be useful when tapping into brexiteers votes with a pretence that they are the ones that want to "stop the boats" - even though they didn't really bother too much about "the boats" until they needed to save their jobs, and thought that this was the best way to get a boost in the polls. It is crass. The only ones who didn't see this coming are those the policy is aimed at.

Phase 2:- use the failure to get the policy working as a means to blame everyone other than those in power and then call an election to get the country to back the Rwanda policy. It's as daft as the snp wanting to make the next election "a referendum on devolution".

Phase 3 - having achieved an election win/majority of Scottish votes, then claim that "the country voted for you" so that you now have a mandate to carry out any crackpot nonsense that was in your manifesto, no matter how ill thought out, whether it has been properly costed, how moral it might be. Etc.

The sooner that we can get rid of fpp, and get a little bit further towards a democratic system, the better. It's hard to agree with Nigel Farage on anything at all, but on that point at least, he is right. Strange, given that this is the system the EU use, and, of course, pretty much all of the western world in some form or other. Of course, the US is less democratic than we are, but look how that works out. I'd rather any of our current three leaders was in charge than trump or Biden.

[timshorts]

He didn’t award it though, that’s my point

Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off

Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch

Both of those were orders via official channels

But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything

Hancock isn't a turkey, he's a scapegoat.

[RMutt]

He didn’t award it though, that’s my point

Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off

Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch

Both of those were orders via official channels

But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything

If all that is the case, you have to then wonder why, legitimate existing and cheaper suppliers were side lined in favour Tory connected companies with often little history of PPE supply?

[Clovius Boofus]

Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.

Desperate enough to give Hancock's pub landlord a multimillion-pound contract. But like you say, nothing to see here .

[IanMcL]

He didn’t award it though, that’s my point

Yes he put people forward for it, but he didn’t sign anything off

Let’s not forget, it was desperate times, we needed PPE.
The French had kept our order for themselves
The stuff from Turkey wasn’t up to scratch

Both of those were orders via official channels

But sure, let’s just focus on a man who didn’t authorise anything

Lest we forget...
The existing UK makers of PPE came forward and offered to scale up to help meet demand.

THEY WERE ALL IGNORED IN FAVOUR OF MATES WHO MADE PHONECALLS AND SECURED CRAP.

[dsr]

If all that is the case, you have to then wonder why, legitimate existing and cheaper suppliers were side lined in favour Tory connected companies with often little history of PPE supply?

If it is proved that the Cabinet sourced all the PPE themselves and the civil servants were not involved, then it will be a scandal. If it is proved that the civil servants were involved but avoided certain suppliers because the minister told them to, it will be a scandal. But if it turns out that the civil service were the ones procuring the PPE but were unable to do it efficiently, then it will still be a scandal, but a different sort of scandal.

[TsarBomba]

The years we struggled with Covid were utterly horrific.

I welcome the opportunity the inquiry will give us to learn and reflect, so that the very serious mistakes made will never be repeated.

And it’s really important that we do learn. So much suffering, and so many lives lost that didn’t need to be. It makes me so angry.

[fidelcastro]

Hopefully it'll come out that making people wear masks in public was completely pointless.

[Colburn_Claret]

Just over 100 years since the last serious global pandemic

Yes scientists and government officials would have various scenarios built up and plans in place but ultimately until it happens, nothing was guaranteed to work

They made mistakes, anyone would in their position, but people were always going to die here in the uk (and other countries) because of modern travel methods etc which helped Covid get around quicker

Mistakes were made by those in charge of the country, the scientists advising them and those required to implement any processes and also by the populace itself

The Enquiry is all about getting all the information together to see what can be learned from it

Hopefully we won’t get another one for another hundred years but we never know and chances are mistakes will be made in the next one.

Just remember, you don’t vote for your local MP based on their experience in the real world, an absolute minority have had “normal” jobs and none of them are experts in the areas where it matters when it comes to a pandemic

Agree totally that its sole concern should be lessons learned for the future.
Sadly it will also be used as a witch hunt, and a blame game.

Mistakes were made, with no data to fall back on that was inevitable, but this country...... Why is it always necessary to pick out the worst of mankind, and feed on it, to open wounds then let them fester. Whatever mistakes were made, no one was to blame.
I cant think of another country in the world that would carry out this sort of enquiry, yet the death rates were the same in practically every major nation, especially throughout Europe.

[fidelcastro]

Agree totally that its sole concern should be lessons learned for the future.
Sadly it will also be used as a witch hunt, and a blame game.

Mistakes were made, with no data to fall back on that was inevitable, but this country...... Why is it always necessary to pick out the worst of mankind, and feed on it, to open wounds then let them fester. Whatever mistakes were made, no one was to blame.
I cant think of another country in the world that would carry out this sort of enquiry, yet the death rates were the same in practically every major nation, especially throughout Europe.

No one was to blame?

Did I just read that?

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Lest we forget...
The existing UK makers of PPE came forward and offered to scale up to help meet demand.

THEY WERE ALL IGNORED IN FAVOUR OF MATES WHO MADE PHONECALLS AND SECURED CRAP.

Who did the ignoring?

The civil service were the ones going through it all and sorting it out
The MP’s weren’t because that would require them to do actual work and that’s not going to happen

The civil service is there for a reason

This inquiry should investigate and highlight the whole process that was used for acquiring PPE

It should also be tasked with seeing why the Covid business loans were being given to brand new businesses, that had zero financial transactions but needed tens of thousands of ££ to apparently help them get through Covid

Sadly it appears to be a witch hunt

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Desperate enough to give Hancock's pub landlord a multimillion-pound contract. But like you say, nothing to see here .

Who awarded the contract?
The MP or the civil service worker?

You’ll find it wasn’t the MP

[dsr]

No one was to blame?

Did I just read that?

I suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.

[fidelcastro]

I suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.

I thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?

I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.

[RMutt]

I suspect the meaning behind "no-one was to blame" is not trying to say that no mistakes were made, but is trying to say that the primary reason why covid struck down so many people around the world was not because of politicians. Obviously doing things differently might have helped - Sweden being a rare outlier example of how things could have been done differently - and that's what the enquiry should be trying to find out. Whether doing things differently would have helped, and in what way differently.

But that process requires Johnson, Sunak et al to be honest about the decisions they made. Once they start lying they open themselves up to the ‘witch hunt’ as people
Try to get at the truth.

[Lowbankclaret]

I only remember two in my lifetime... Aids and Covid..

Think there have been a couple of SARs and Ebola outbreaks that have been contained. They would have been way worse that Covid.

[GodIsADeeJay81]

I thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?

I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.

The care home thing was a disaster
The nhs just wasn’t doing its job properly there and were sending countless vulnerable and infected people into enclosed homes where un-infected and vulnerable people were living

[Colburn_Claret]

I thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?

I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.

You just don't get it.
Even accepting that the common knowledge statement is correct, nobody is to blame unless they had prior knowledge that those actions would have saved lives.
When you are facing a pandemic the likes of which the world had never seen before, all you can do is rely on the advice of experts. Only if it's a first no one is an expert. One scientist says A, another says B. The politician can only toss a coin and hope it lands right.
Search for what we can do better by all means, but blame.....

[taio]

The care home thing was a disaster
The nhs just wasn’t doing its job properly there and were sending countless vulnerable and infected people into enclosed homes where un-infected and vulnerable people were living

It was a tradegy for sure. There wasn't the testing capacity at that stage unfortunately. NHS trusts were instructed by government to discharge as many patients as possible. The alternative would have been even higher hospital acquired Covid infection. All unpalatable scenarios and why an inquiry is important.

[dsr]

I thought it was accepted now that had we locked down a week earlier, countless lives would have been saved?

I also thought it was common knowledge that moving vulnerable old people into care homes from hospital without testing was a huge mistake.

It's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.

How many would have died if we had done it like Sweden? They had higher death tolls that their neighbours at first, but lower death tolls now. How many would have died if our government had pretended it was a bit like flu, like the fruitcake in Brazil? They didn't lock down at all, but Peru did and had twice the number of deaths. Was it right to lock down the schools? Was a lockdown that kept shops open, enough of a lockdown to make an actual difference - or should the shops have been shut? Did lockdown just delay the inevitable because most of us caught the disease anyway, eventually? Was it a mistake not to go for a third lockdown at Christmas 2021? Did banning funerals make an appreciable difference? Did lockdown delay the spread of the virus for long enough to get the vaccine working?

For that matter, does the vaccine make much difference or is it just that omicron variant is less lethal?

Are there procedures in place to get useful statistics if it happens again? Is anyone assessing the quality (which was abysmal) of the modelling used by the scientists? How could they have got more useful data earlier to prove (as we now know)( that children were neither vulnerable to the disease, nor likely spreaders of it? What are the procedures for next time to establish the economic and social costs of lockdown as well as the potential lifesaving costs? How can we assess the value of (say) the life of an old person against the education of a young one? Was it right to tell people to "protect the NHS" or did it resulted in large numbers of cancers and other illnesses being undiagnosed?

If we want to know the answer "did the politicians waffle and prevaricate and run round in circles and fail to make strong decisions", I think we already know that. We don't need a 5-year enquiry to assess whether Boris Johnson was fit to be PM. What we need is a proper assessment of what was done, and proper guidance as to what might be done next time. There are shedloads of more important questions to be asked.

(I agree the point about sending covid-patients into old folks' homes. Bad mistake. They should have had properly dedicated covid hospitals for people who couldn't safely be sent home.)

[fidelcastro]

It's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.

How many would have died if we had done it like Sweden? They had higher death tolls that their neighbours at first, but lower death tolls now. How many would have died if our government had pretended it was a bit like flu, like the fruitcake in Brazil? They didn't lock down at all, but Peru did and had twice the number of deaths. Was it right to lock down the schools? Was a lockdown that kept shops open, enough of a lockdown to make an actual difference - or should the shops have been shut? Did lockdown just delay the inevitable because most of us caught the disease anyway, eventually? Was it a mistake not to go for a third lockdown at Christmas 2021? Did banning funerals make an appreciable difference? Did lockdown delay the spread of the virus for long enough to get the vaccine working?

For that matter, does the vaccine make much difference or is it just that omicron variant is less lethal?

Are there procedures in place to get useful statistics if it happens again? Is anyone assessing the quality (which was abysmal) of the modelling used by the scientists? How could they have got more useful data earlier to prove (as we now know)( that children were neither vulnerable to the disease, nor likely spreaders of it? What are the procedures for next time to establish the economic and social costs of lockdown as well as the potential lifesaving costs? How can we assess the value of (say) the life of an old person against the education of a young one? Was it right to tell people to "protect the NHS" or did it resulted in large numbers of cancers and other illnesses being undiagnosed?

If we want to know the answer "did the politicians waffle and prevaricate and run round in circles and fail to make strong decisions", I think we already know that. We don't need a 5-year enquiry to assess whether Boris Johnson was fit to be PM. What we need is a proper assessment of what was done, and proper guidance as to what might be done next time. There are shedloads of more important questions to be asked.

(I agree the point about sending covid-patients into old folks' homes. Bad mistake. They should have had properly dedicated covid hospitals for people who couldn't safely be sent home.)

I haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.

Boris didn't care and was dismissive of how dangerous it could be. He was more concerned about the damage to the economy... Until he caught the virus himself.

[Andy_G]

Hopefully it'll come out that making people wear masks in public was completely pointless.

Aww, bless. I'm sure that will make lots of selfish people happy.

[fidelcastro]

Aww, bless. I'm sure that will make lots of selfish people happy.

Selfish?

If you really thought they did any good, then carry on wearing it!

[Sproggy]

I haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.

Boris didn't care and was dismissive of how dangerous it could be. He was more concerned about the damage to the economy... Until he caught the virus himself.

Fewer people would have died initially. But what would the longer term costs have been? Would you continue to support industries that had no customers or would you let them fail? Would you extend furlough? Keep schools closed? How long for? Until the economy collapsed? Until we got a vaccine? Between April & June 2020, the UK economy lost about £200 billion.

There were no good solutions. The people making the decisions were in an awful position before we factor in their competence (or lack of it). This enquiry needs to make sure that next time this happens, we’re not flying completely blind.

[dsr]

I haven't time to go through every point there, but of course fewer people would have died if we'd locked down earlier. The delay meant the virus spread like wildfire.

Boris didn't care and was dismissive of how dangerous it could be. He was more concerned about the damage to the economy... Until he caught the virus himself.

They weren't "points", they were questions.

But I think you're wrong to assume that lockdown, be it earlier or later, harder or softer, will automatically reduce deaths. Like I said, it didn't in Peru - they had one of the hardest lockdowns but when it was eventually released (it had to be, because people had no money) the number of deaths went through the roof - double that of Brazil. It was originally suggested both by the politicians and by the scientists, with reference to the UK's existing pandemic plan, that lockdown would be counter-=productive. Then they changed their minds. Were they right, or was the original plan right? Sweden followed a similar plan to the UK's original plan, and it worked pretty well. Would it have worked for us?

Incidentally, on 18th March SAGE recommended closing schools but not yet closing restaurants, cinemas, etc. The schools were closed at the end of the day on 19th March and full(ish) lockdown on 23rd March. If criticism is to be made for not locking down soon enough, it should probably be directed at SAGE for not recommending it sooner.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... march-2020

[Woodleyclaret]

A total waste of money and massive hypocrisy on our governments part. We research and develop biological warfare in Wiltshire The virus was released by the lab in China to test its effectiveness but got out of control .We didn't need any blame game, finger pointing ,after the horse has bolted, enquiry

[Nori1958]

Think there have been a couple of SARs and Ebola outbreaks that have been contained. They would have been way worse that Covid.

Contained being the important part

The poster I was replying to, who said that pandemics keep coming again and again was clearly wrong.

[RicardoMontalban]

Think there have been a couple of SARs and Ebola outbreaks that have been contained. They would have been way worse that Covid.

One of the things that marked Covid-19 out from other potential outbreaks was the ease of transmission. It was passed on much more easily than either of those two, for example people showing no symptoms but carrying the virus could still be highly infectious. I think I’m right in saying this wasn’t the case with SARS which is a similar coronavirus.

That was the thought process behind mask wearing. Not to protect people from catching it, but from passing it on.

[Bordeauxclaret]

If all that is the case, you have to then wonder why, legitimate existing and cheaper suppliers were side lined in favour Tory connected companies with often little history of PPE supply?

This is the thing. If they’d exhausted all possibilities with existing suppliers and then turned to all these companies with no experience in PPE, who often had been set up days earlier and just happened to be linked to people in power then maybe there could be an argument.



But they didn’t and I’m sure it’s just all a big coincidence.

[evensteadiereddie]

A total waste of money and massive hypocrisy on our governments part. We research and develop biological warfare in Wiltshire The virus was released by the lab in China to test its effectiveness but got out of control .We didn't need any blame game, finger pointing ,after the horse has bolted, enquiry

I think any government incompetence and corruption, especially on such a huge scale, is worthy of scrutiny.

[Clovius Boofus]

Who awarded the contract?
The MP or the civil service worker?

You’ll find it wasn’t the MP

Okay then. The 'civil service worker' must have been looking through the Good Beer Guide for West Suffolk when they chose Matt Hancock's pub landlord to supply PPE. Now will that suffice for you, or do you still wish to continue with your usual insufferable pedantic quibbling?

[GodIsADeeJay81]

Okay then. The 'civil service worker' must have been looking through the Good Beer Guide for West Suffolk when they chose Matt Hancock's pub landlord to supply PPE. Now will that suffice for you, or do you still wish to continue with your usual insufferable pedantic quibbling?

Awww what’s up?

Would you rather I just agreed with you regardless of it’s factual or not?

Nah, not the way it should be done

I know some of you are desperate to blame just individuals but it’s not the case
Shall we blame an MP for all the business loans given to brand new businesses that had zero trading history but needed the gov loans?
No, of course we shouldn’t, but you probably would

Calls me insufferable yet you’re unable to structure an argument to support your claim

[Clovius Boofus]

There's none so blind as those who will not see.

[Hipper]

Then you'd get some pretty useless results.

Why would any half-decent lawyer want to waste their time with an arrangement like that? And who is to say or judge whether the result is "meaningful" or "useful". We generally end up with lawyers involved in these types of affairs that have proved their worth elsewhere. If you are talking of barristers, they would not get instructed if they were ****, so you might not like them, but these are (usually) good at their jobs (even if they are pompous sounding *****) . You can probably say similarly for those that provided the scientific advice (except the last bit).

Where the system fails is with the politicians. The route to becoming a politician is for the most part having an ability to brown nose. There is no aptitude test. No specialist exams to take. It helps if you look vaguely appealing, went to the right school and join a little club of two which is perpetuated by the fpp system. A few soundbites that appeal to the lcd masses will do you fine, and, of course, you don't even have to come up with those. Because of the nature of the beast, you are likely to find a disproportionate number who read artsy subjects, disproportionately few with science/maths leaning a-levels, let alone at higher education levels.

But, of course, an understanding of science is not key when trying to win an election. Sociology might be useful when tapping into brexiteers votes with a pretence that they are the ones that want to "stop the boats" - even though they didn't really bother too much about "the boats" until they needed to save their jobs, and thought that this was the best way to get a boost in the polls. It is crass. The only ones who didn't see this coming are those the policy is aimed at.

Phase 2:- use the failure to get the policy working as a means to blame everyone other than those in power and then call an election to get the country to back the Rwanda policy. It's as daft as the snp wanting to make the next election "a referendum on devolution".

Phase 3 - having achieved an election win/majority of Scottish votes, then claim that "the country voted for you" so that you now have a mandate to carry out any crackpot nonsense that was in your manifesto, no matter how ill thought out, whether it has been properly costed, how moral it might be. Etc.

The sooner that we can get rid of fpp, and get a little bit further towards a democratic system, the better. It's hard to agree with Nigel Farage on anything at all, but on that point at least, he is right. Strange, given that this is the system the EU use, and, of course, pretty much all of the western world in some form or other. Of course, the US is less democratic than we are, but look how that works out. I'd rather any of our current three leaders was in charge than trump or Biden.

MPs and degrees:

https://studee.com/media/mps-and-their-degrees-media/

If you think about it, the sort of people Prime Ministers and some other senior ministers have to deal with (the Putins and bin Salmans of this world) require someone versed in the dirty arts of politics. Therefore it is necessary to have a system that brings such people (or at best, people who can cope with it) to the fore in this country if we want to operate on the world stage, which we do. It is also clear unfortunately that you need horrible people (or ones that can act horribly) like Cummings or Mandelson to get things done in this country.

In most cases politicians start off with good intentions (and lots of hard work) but it seems that in order to 'climb the greasy pole' you have to adapt.

We of course have the opportunity to become politicians ourselves. It's not a closed shop.

I agree about First Passed the Post (FFP) but logic tells me we shouldn't have Royalty or Church involved in politics either yet most people seem OK about it.

[Colburn_Claret]

There's none so blind as those who will not see.

Then there's those that only see what they WANT to see.

[MalaysiaMo]

It's certainly not common knowledge that locking down earlier would have saved lives, or indeed whether lockdown saved lives at all. That's what the enquiry is meant to find out, but I suspect that like you, they have made their mind up already.

How many would have died if we had done it like Sweden? They had higher death tolls that their neighbours at first, but lower death tolls now. How many would have died if our government had pretended it was a bit like flu, like the fruitcake in Brazil? They didn't lock down at all, but Peru did and had twice the number of deaths. Was it right to lock down the schools? Was a lockdown that kept shops open, enough of a lockdown to make an actual difference - or should the shops have been shut? Did lockdown just delay the inevitable because most of us caught the disease anyway, eventually? Was it a mistake not to go for a third lockdown at Christmas 2021? Did banning funerals make an appreciable difference? Did lockdown delay the spread of the virus for long enough to get the vaccine working?

For that matter, does the vaccine make much difference or is it just that omicron variant is less lethal?

Are there procedures in place to get useful statistics if it happens again? Is anyone assessing the quality (which was abysmal) of the modelling used by the scientists? How could they have got more useful data earlier to prove (as we now know)( that children were neither vulnerable to the disease, nor likely spreaders of it? What are the procedures for next time to establish the economic and social costs of lockdown as well as the potential lifesaving costs? How can we assess the value of (say) the life of an old person against the education of a young one? Was it right to tell people to "protect the NHS" or did it resulted in large numbers of cancers and other illnesses being undiagnosed?

If we want to know the answer "did the politicians waffle and prevaricate and run round in circles and fail to make strong decisions", I think we already know that. We don't need a 5-year enquiry to assess whether Boris Johnson was fit to be PM. What we need is a proper assessment of what was done, and proper guidance as to what might be done next time. There are shedloads of more important questions to be asked.

(I agree the point about sending covid-patients into old folks' homes. Bad mistake. They should have had properly dedicated covid hospitals for people who couldn't safely be sent home.)

I really do not get this facination with Sweden. Why not compare with other Scandinavian countries - all of which did lock down and all of which had far lower per capita rates of COVID mortality than Sweden - e.g Norway = 242 deaths per million population, Denmark = 558 deaths per million, Finland = 310 deaths per million, Sweden = 1406 deaths per million ....

Compare UK's COVID mortality rate - 2636 deaths per million - with the OECD average of 1634 deaths per million, and something was clearly amiss in the UK's response to COVID. Why was our rate so much higher than that of France (1836 deaths per million) and Germany (1342 deaths per million)? It was even higher than Italy's (2319 deaths per million) , despite the UK having about 2 weeks of additional time to prepare ....

At the same time, the UK's economy was hit harder than many OECD countries. Compare with Ireland - 1186 deaths per million and 20% increase in GDP since COVID.

That question "why?" is surely what the current enquiry is about - or should be. It has to be partly due to incompetence and prolonged underfunding of essential services.

[evensteadiereddie]

You would have thought being an island and er, having taken back control, we should have performed far better.

[dsr]

I really do not get this facination with Sweden. Why not compare with other Scandinavian countries - all of which did lock down and all of which had far lower per capita rates of COVID mortality than Sweden - e.g Norway = 242 deaths per million population, Denmark = 558 deaths per million, Finland = 310 deaths per million, Sweden = 1406 deaths per million ....

Compare UK's COVID mortality rate - 2636 deaths per million - with the OECD average of 1634 deaths per million, and something was clearly amiss in the UK's response to COVID. Why was our rate so much higher than that of France (1836 deaths per million) and Germany (1342 deaths per million)? It was even higher than Italy's (2319 deaths per million) , despite the UK having about 2 weeks of additional time to prepare ....

At the same time, the UK's economy was hit harder than many OECD countries. Compare with Ireland - 1186 deaths per million and 20% increase in GDP since COVID.

That question "why?" is surely what the current enquiry is about - or should be. It has to be partly due to incompetence and prolonged underfunding of essential services.

The fascination with Sweden is that their excess mortality over the three years 2020-22, so I am told, is third lowest in Europe. The suggestion has been made that doing it their way has lead to fewer long term problems, both economically and medically, than doing it with strict lockdown. I would like to see this suggestion tested. (I understand a fair chunk of Sweden's excess mortality during covid was because they made the same mistake we did about sending covid-infected people into old folks' homes. I don't know whether Denmark, Noway, Finland made the same mistake, though.)

Why was our rate so much higher than France and Germany's, and for that matter Norway's and Denmark's? An excellent question. I hope the enquiry addresses that issue. One thing I am certain about, it was not higher because of the tone of the whatsapp messages or the use of swearing or the dysfunction at number 10 or the illegal parties. It was higher because of the decisions that were made. The way the decisions were made is not relevant to the deaths and the spread of disease. It is the actual decisions and their results that are of overwhelming interest.

We know the government was incompetent and an enquiry proving that is not needed.