Laura Dodsworth is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller A State of Fear: how the U.K. Government weaponised fear during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article first appeared on her excellent Substack page, which is well worth subscribing to.
The first COVID-19 inquiry public hearing will be held today, following the preliminary hearings which began in February. The inquiry will call witnesses to give evidence under oath and they will then be questioned by barristers and the chair, Baroness Hallett.
There is no deadline for the inquiry’s conclusion. It is an eye-wateringly expensive investigation, currently estimated to cost £114 million, but it will potentially run to more than the Bloody Sunday inquiry which was nearly £200 million. Sixty-three lawyers are working directly for the inquiry and a further 100 are named as representatives. MP Graham Stringer has commented that this is a “very expensive and very bloated” inquiry and it may be used to “kick things into [the] very long grass”.
It is important not to pre-judge the outcome of the inquiry, but it has been increasingly difficult to be hopeful for the inquiry’s fairness and value for money. After the imbalance of the modules and core participants, the first serious dark cloud to descend was the lamentable list of 150 questions put by Baroness Hallett to Boris Johnson. Now, they are only questions and we don’t have the answers yet, but to give you an idea, question 45 was particularly chilling:
45. To what extent did the U.K. Government have regard during the period January to March 2020 to the response of other countries to COVID-19? Did you consider taking more stringent measures in response to COVID-19 such as those seen in, for example, Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand etc.? What, if any, assumptions were made about how such measures would (or would not) work in the U.K.?
Why not Sweden? It did not impose strict lockdowns or close schools for under 16s and currently has the one of the world’s lowest excess mortality figures. This inquiry appears to favour stringency above existing pandemic planning, minimum economic and social disruption and low excess deaths.
But there was worse to come. If you thought that the curtain had closed on Covid safety pantomime, think again. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer has tweeted that the COVID-19 inquiry policy is for staff and visitors to take weekly lateral flow tests if they attend daily, and test in advance for individual days. The inquiry’s Covid policy goes further than Government recommendations, asking those who test positive to stay away. The largely pointless face masks are welcome. The air will be purified, sanitising stations available and a “disinfectant fogging treatment will be used on the surfaces in the hearing room, viewing room and other rooms each evening”.
While some of the attendees who have lost loved ones to Covid may appreciate these gestures, they are nevertheless gestures. The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, for instance, does not publish such a “thorough” Covid policy.
Psychologists found lockdown in itself was a primary reason why so many people were willing to abide by the rules from the start – believing the threat must be very severe if the Government was willing to impose such drastic measures. In other words, “if the Government is doing this, it must be really bad”. This supposition was reinforced by a concerted behavioural psychology campaign, a blitzkrieg of advertising, Downing Street briefings, unbalanced media coverage, the Covid death data dashboard, the most punitive laws and fines since the Dark Ages and the ongoing restrictions, tiers, rules and isolating lockdowns.
And now the people running the inquiry think we need more lateral flow tests and masks. The country has been institutionalised by Covid fearmongering and the inmates are now running the asylum inquiry.
After dressing up in masks, taking weekly lateral flow tests for years and processing the answers to biased questions, the inmates at the inquiry will simply deduce that the walls were not built early or high enough. Next time there is a pandemic, people will be able to say “Baroness Hallett’s report stated that the U.K. Government didn’t lock down fast – or hard – enough. We won’t make that mistake again!” There will be no redemption, just a long, hard sentence, swiftly imposed. Once again, lives will be ruined, not saved.
It would be better to have no inquiry than this inquiry.
These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Nuff time passes, you get so you depend on ’em. That’s institutionalised.’
From The Shawshank Redemption
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Depressing but not surprising.
The UK establishment seems completely committed to erecting a global biosecurity regime. Presumably it thinks it can control it, benefit from it, make lots of money from it.
The rest of us are expendable pawns.
Fake tests against a fake scamdemic which was initiated 3 years ago….death rate close to 0 in real terms. The Black Death was shorter lived than the Rona.
Are they required to wear their baby shit catchers over their ugly stupid faces as well?
I see in the screen shot above that they actually state you should wear a diaper if that makes you feel comfortable LOL clown world
“It is important not to pre-judge the outcome of the inquiry”
I think I disagree. The whole thing is invalid on its face because as far as I am aware they are not questioning the assumption that there was a pandemic about which something needed to be done.
Exactly.
The best way to make sure a prisoner cannot escape is to ensure he doesn’t realise he is imprisoned.
I wonder it anyone with good credentials will declare “no confidence” and refuse to turn up on that basis.
Presumably some of the witnesses will have irrational fears. Not to cater for these would exclude them. To cater for the fears does not necessarily indicate a lack of impartiality. However, it would be a good idea if we saw a *brief* and clear account from the organisers what their remit is. I cannot imagine this inquiry settling anything.
Excluding some irrationals would be a good thing and speed up the process.
They exclude themselves. Societal norms established since time immemorial are that colds etc are just part of life and we are social animals and we just have to live with it. Throwing that wisdom out of the window was where we went wrong with covid.
As to impartiality, if you think any such circus could be impartial I think you are rather optimistic. But it’s not really about “impartiality”, it’s about questioning assumptions. As I posted earlier, they have accepted that there was a “pandemic” about which something needed to be done. From that point on, all is lost. The inquiry itself is just one more part of the Big Lie that covid was exceptional.
This (face masking) is a so-called safety behaviour which means some meaningless ritual employed by people suffering from pathologic anxiety because they wrongly believe it will keep them safe from what they’re afraid of. That’s bad for them because it reinforces the notion that there is actually something to be afraid of. They’ll end up believing that the reason why they didn’t fall prey to the terrible danger was because of the ritual instead of realizing that the danger is imaginary (that’s a laymen’s – mine – rendering about some textbook stuff about anxiety disorder).
People suffering from irrational fears need help to get rid of them and not politically interested parties trying to exploit them for their own ends.
I wasn’t planning to take the inquiry seriously but now it begins with utter farce.
That’s a farce which would absolutely love to become a drama on the national or even international stage again, in line with the hopes of the leader of the WHO that they’ll still manage to find a way to resurrect their beloved pandemic.
I expect a bloke to fall out of a cupboard with his trousers around his ankles and a woman dressed as a french maid to appear sometime in the process
possibly another movie featuring Hancock and his bit, or possibly Johnson
It’s all psychological nudging. From the way the question is phrased, to the advice to test, just to remind and reinforce “the danger” in case any of the attendees have dared slip back into normal behaviour and open their eyes.
I can’t see any lawyer biting the hand that’s going to feed them extremely well for the duration of this pantomime and actually applying logical and critical thought, oh dear me, no way….
Shakespeare had it spot on. “The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers” Henry VI, Part II, Act 4, Scene 2.
And as they charge by the minute how does it benefit them to speed up the process?
It’s not an Inquiry, it’s a Whitewash
This has There’s a deadly pandemic ongoing and we must take sensible precautions against it! written all over it and the sensible precaustions are exactly what used to be mandated for all of the population, Test, test, test, quarantine those testing positive, wear face masks. The wording also makes it pretty clear that the people behind this believe the change of government policy from January last year(!) was a grievous error they’d like to see rectified.
Considering the actual situation in the UK since then, it would be more appropriate to move the inquiry to a lunatic’s asylum and respectfully ask all participiants to take up residence there until experts become convinced they’ve managed to sort out the differences between what they believe to be true and what’s actually true to no longer pose a risk to themselves and other humans around them.
One could also film the proceedings of the inquiry and whatever social life members of this group consider acceptable to them and air them on the BBC as COVID Big Brother: Here’s what happens when you put a bunch of masked goons into a house they cannot easily escape from and ask them to spend their time discussing a pandemic which doesn’t exist outside of their imagination. That would force them to remain in-character all the time until they’re ready to give this up voluntarily.
The inquiry is seen as a continuation of the gravy train, lots of lovely public lucre for the KCs because let’s face it what other gainful employment is there for most of them?
We know that the fundamental questions will not be answered, perhaps not even be considered.
As for the hygiene and testing measures, they will achieve nothing and are a good indicator of the integrity of what is going to unfold.
And once again, this time with gusto; ”There was no pandemic!!” Just the removal of ”enormous numbers of deaths and illness” from the original definition. That’s when the PsyOp really came into its own as it was essential, same with the fraudulent mass testing farce. Well everybody knows the script by now; if the facts don’t fit the narrative just change the facts. Corruption, fraud and lies are the new ‘Truth/Reality’ in Clown World. Anyone still presiding over the implementation of this absolute garbage theatre is an out and out charlatan because it makes a complete mockery of all that is logical and rational, based on a considerable body of sound evidence, in this world. I don’t like having my intelligence insulted and nor should anyone else.
https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1668568875271692288
There are 114 million arguments against the optimistic assumption that the pandemic revenant has really been safely buried this time. If we’re lucky, that just the last ditch attempt of COVID-fracking the taxpayer to cause some money to spill out of him. If we’re not, this is Episode IV – A New Hope and shall ultimatively leads us through Episode VII – The Sars-CoV2 Reawakens to Episode IX – The Rise Of The Maskwanker.
Absolutely Mogs.
If I remember correctly when the inquiry was announced some of those nasty anti-“vaxxer” people started shouting :
It’ll be a whitewash.
It’ll be a cover up.
A waste of money.
Well it looks like those nasty “anti-vaxxers” have been proved correct once again and the pantomime has barely started.
I think those nasty “anti-vaxxers” are on to something…or even on something.
Whatever I’m on its not mRNA-based.
Speaking of government fraud and corruption, Prof Fenton has found more in the shape of hugely inflated ‘Covid deaths’.
”And, of course, there is other data which confirm that the figures for total deaths with covid on their death certificate must be a massive exaggeration of the true number of covid deaths. Consider, for example, the total (mentioned above) of 151,088 deaths in England up to 31 Dec 2021 with covid on the death certificate. This figure is non-sensical given this response to an FOI asking for number of deaths where covid was the only cause mentioned on the death certificate. The response confirmed that less than 5% of all officially classified covid deaths in England and Wales up to 31 Dec 2021 listed covid as the only cause of death on the death certificate.
What can we conclude from all of this?
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/the-uk-governments-flawed-covid-death?r=53evw&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
This is costing hundreds of millions to the tax payer in order for the Government, its advisors, Pharma etc to absolve themselves of what they did, and what they continue to do. The outright ignorance or is it still pretence that a test which all other organisations gave up over a year ago, which has been denounced by its own inventor as unfit for the purpose it was being used for, is still being required for a virus that is and never was a danger to over 99.9 percent of the population. The fact that they will be knowingly asking people to test, when the majority of them will have had not one, or two but possibly multiple injections of the magic failed elixir, demonstrates that they know it does’nt and never did work.
But still they continue with the contempt that they have always treated the public with, by continuing with this charade.
Its another Iraq war inquiry, where the gulity like Blair go on to more riches and even greater influence at ruining our lives so their’s can be enriched,.
And testing for a bloody seasonal respiratory virus in summer, for Pete’s sake!! I don’t think they could make themselves look any more foolish and unprofessional if they wore a badge proudly proclaiming ”I’m a science-denying space cadet”, although they’ll probably wear face muzzles anyway and that will do the job just as adequately. I saw a woman outside a shop today, 30deg summers day, in a sodding surgical mask. I nearly crashed my bike I was so gobsmacked. It’s so seldom a sight now it must be months since I saw such a pitiful excuse for a member of the human race. Evidently my ‘mask rage’ still bubbles beneath the surface then.
Your not alone in the mask hatred, or in the dismay of the credulity of those who wear them. Earlier this year I was standing on a mole in a harbour watching the effects of a very strong wind encouraging the seas into a frenzied state, and there was a woman wearing a mask being fed air at 50mph straight from the Atlantic Ocean. You also see the occasional pleb drive a car, just the driver with no passengers, that’s how much psychological damage that has been done..
That was a bit tough on the mole, Nige
My thoughts exactly!
I haven’t ever seen one.
Hi Guys, standing on a mole sounds better than standing on a groin, and yep the mole was getting a bit of a pounding, but it is a tough old beast.
Groyne??!!
Very eloquently put.
I’m trying to think of any previous public enquiry..where anything of any substance came out of it…? If I think of one I’ll let you know!
In relation to medical matters I immediately thought of the ‘contaminated blood scandal’….when in the 1970’s and 80’s people requiring blood transfusions were infected with HIV and Hepatitis B….from infected plasma (why is always the USA?)
If this one goes on the same timescale…around 30 years….I’ll be dead before they come up with their final analysis!!
The story is very similar..thousands died..BigPharma covered it up for years, as did the CDC and other medical bodies…
In 2017 Prime Minister Theresa May announced that a statutory public inquiry would be held into the contaminated blood scandal. The inquiry officially opened in 2018 and hearings lasted from April 2019 to January 2023.
As far as I’m aware the report has still not been finalised…
Until 2022, no compensation had ever been paid to victims of the contaminated blood scandal in the UK. While this was welcome news, many groups of people seriously affected by the scandal were excluded from this payment, such as bereaved parents, siblings and children….
….and NO ONE has ever been prosecuted…..
NUMBER 2….Iraq/Chilcott Enquiry….concluded that Tony Blair should face the International Criminal Court….….the reality is that he is now Sir Tony….and NO ONE has ever been prosecuted…..
So I’m pretty sure I already know what the outcome of this ‘inquiry’ will be…..
I believe it is the responsibility of those commenting on here to call out this farce at every opportunity and at no point should we refer to “the inquiry.”
Pantomime yes, charade, farce, comedy, grotesque insult or whatever is deemed appropriate but never…
“the inquiry.”
Yes..although in my head I say it with that Australian inflection that goes up at the end..like they’re always asking a question..enguiryyyyy? LOL!
Got it.
Yes, the Biden White House is demanding unjabbed people wear masks on the premises. A timely reminder that they’re trying to sneak these restriction back in under the radar! I’ve never taken a test, never worn a mask and intend to keep it that way.
We know the inquiry is going to be a cover-up that will say we should all have been put in masks and locked down in January 2020 (by which time I’d already had the virus, but they’ll deny it was here then) and lockdowns were a brilliant idea. I’m afraid, even as a conservative, I’ve reached the point with the current institutions that I feel they all need burning down, because there’s nothing to save!
I agree with the article and almost all the comments. Is there any way we can show our contempt for this charade?
The Inquiry has 3 purposes:
Laura is right. No Inquiry would be a far better than this sham.
COVID Inquiry run by Covid enforcers
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Will one, Andrew Bridgen MP be called to testify?
Within minutes of listening to a report about this staged posturing on World at One BBC Radio 4 yesterday it was obvious that the object of the entire exercise is to lay the dunnage for the WHO Constitution. The biased script, masked cast and carefully crafted setting is aimed at making a case for more, harsher and earlier lockdowns. I heard at least one snide reference to anti-vaxxers, but no concern for the victims of vaccine injury, and the mood-music was unambiguous: we’ll get it right by doing more next time. I think this point about the (still little-known!) WHO Constitution, which has been made in these comments already, cannot be over-emphasized and should take priority over all the rest of the smoke and mirrors spewing forth. We are not fooled. The money should have gone to those whose lives and businesses were ruined by the vicious and unnecessary actions of those who perpetrated this awful crime. So many of these victims have never been compensated.
I think this nonsense shows what the outcome will be. Useless nonsense. Please stop now, don’t spend our money!