The lesson they're determined to ignore: lockdown was a disaster, writes infectious diseases expert Kevin Bardosh
At 240 pages thick, the first official report from the near two-year-long Covid Inquiry is certainly weighty, but at its core are just two central messages.
They are that the Government prepared for the wrong pandemic and that the plans Britain put in place in case of a widespread influenza outbreak were inadequate and largely irrelevant in the face of the
coronavirus.
It's a message trumpeted time and again in language that veers from alarmist to authoritarian, with talk of 'radical reform' and 'major overhauls' in the way we prepare for future pandemics.
But this is based on a dangerous fallacy – the wrong-headed belief that it is the Government's job to avoid any and all untimely deaths during an outbreak and that we can in some way 'stop' pandemics in their tracks.
A noble sentiment but, alas, neither is possible nor realistic.
The idea that human populations can ever be completely protected from a new virus in whatever form is one based on an illusion of control that does not exist in the real world.
It also ignores basic facts about how viruses and immunity work. The truth is that the mitigation and suppression of any pandemic that might head our way is an imperfect art.
Yet this report proceeds from the basic assumption that more 'preparedness' is needed, and largely ignores the terrible harm that resulted from the effects of panic and overzealous government restrictions when Covid struck.
Its tone is set from the start – framed by quotations from grieving families. Of course, the deaths of loved ones are incredibly sad. But citing them in this way brings the inevitable sense that, had the Government been more diligent, such deaths could have been avoided. This is not true.
Time and again, the report's authors refer to countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, which took early and stringent measures including rapid border restrictions and localised lockdowns, strict testing, 'contact-tracing' and quarantines.
Yet our own Health Security Agency found little evidence that 'test, trace and isolate' – the mantra we came to rely upon in the UK – was effective.
Meanwhile, the example of Sweden – a country that took a far more relaxed, voluntary-based response to the pandemic, trusting its citizens to use their common sense and maintain social distancing – is largely ignored in the report, despite that, overall, Sweden had a lower percentage of excess deaths than the UK.
Did Britain prepare for the 'wrong pandemic' when it drew up its detailed plans in 2011? Absolutely not.
Influenza mutates unpredictably and is a sensible model upon which to have based our responses. An influenza pandemic would have been no less dangerous than the Covid outbreak of 2020. Were our carefully laid plans irrelevant? Again, no.
Britain's original strategy recognised that preparing for a pandemic was not just about reducing the immediate effect of Covid on the health of the population, but also about minimising the negative impacts of government action on our society.
This is the approach that the Swedes adopted, but which we, unfortunately, abandoned at an early stage. Baroness Hallett's report and recommendations are not all bad.
We can be thankful that the Inquiry acknowledges the widespread social damage caused by Covid and the repeated lockdowns – damage which barely needs to be set out here, living as we are under the desperate consequences of NHS backlogs, mental health and child development crises.
But the most important lesson from Covid – that Britain's experimental policy of closing down society failed to control the virus and caused more harm than good – is never seriously considered. We must hope that future reports do better.
