The aims of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry are far-reaching. They include:
- preparedness and resilience;
- how decisions were made, communicated, recorded, and implemented;
- decision-making between the Governments of the U.K.
However, the Inquiry does not specifically intend to address two fundamental questions: Why was the Government’s action plan and the detailed planning document on which it was based disregarded? And why were ethical considerations not factored in when decisions of fundamental social importance were being made?
The policy documents are clear enough. For example:
There is similarity between COVID-19 and influenza (both are respiratory infections), but also some important differences. Consequently, contingency plans developed for pandemic influenza, and lessons learned from previous outbreaks, provide a useful starting point for the development of an effective response plan to COVID-19.
The U.K. Influenza Preparedness Strategy 2011 includes 14 references to ethics, yet ethics was never mentioned in any Government briefing by its expert advisers.
Section 3.3 of the Preparedness Strategy states that pandemic preparedness and response will “continue to be based on both evidence and ethical principles”. Section 3.19 says:
People are more likely to understand and accept the need for, and the consequences of, difficult decisions if these have been made in an open, transparent and inclusive way. National and local preparations for an influenza pandemic should therefore be based on widely held ethical values, and the choices that may become necessary should be discussed openly as plans are developed, so that they reflect what most people will accept as proportionate and fair.
This recommendation was itself based on a Department of Health ‘ethical framework’ drawn up in 2007. One section of this document says:
Those making decisions will:
- involve people to the greatest extent possible in aspects of planning that affect them
- take into account all relevant views expressed
- try to ensure that particular groups are not excluded from becoming involved. Some people may find it harder to access communications or services than others, and decision-makers need to think about how to ensure that they can express their views and have a fair opportunity to get their needs for treatment or care met
- take into account any disproportionate impact of the decision on particular groups of people.
Section 4.3 is ethically explicit:
During a pandemic, the Government will need to make final decisions and issue advice on the application of specific measures in the light of emerging scientific evidence and data. In doing so, the ethical framework and in particular the principles of precaution (which assists in ensuring that harm is minimised), proportionality and flexibility will apply throughout. No additional restrictions, such as restrictions to public events will be placed on the public unless it is absolutely necessary to protect the health of the public and then only for so long as it is appropriate.
Yet the measures taken during the pandemic – two national lockdowns, allowing spectator sport only behind closed doors if at all, confining students to Halls of Residence, closing leisure facilities for months, banning all but ‘essential travel’, severely restricting attendance at funerals, prohibiting visits to dying relatives in care homes, closing schools and mandating the use of ineffective masks – did not by any stretch reflect “widely held ethical values”, or support the “continuation of everyday activities”. Nor were the measures “proportionate”, “fair”, “inclusive”, “transparent” or egalitarian under any reasonable understanding of these terms.
The reasons for such an extraordinary overreaction have been considered at length in this and similar publications. But perhaps at bottom it is disturbingly simple. Annexe B of the action plan offers a possible insight:
The U.K. health departments’ preparations and response are developed with expert advice, ensuring that staff, patients and the wider public can be confident that our plans are developed and implemented using the best available evidence. These groups include:
- the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – chaired by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and co-chaired by the CMO for England – provides scientific and technical advice to support government decision makers during emergencies, ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice is made available to decision makers to support U.K. cross-Government decisions in the U.K. Cabinet Office Briefing Room
- the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) is an expert committee of DHSC and advises the CMOs and, through the CMOs, ministers, DHSC and other Government departments, and the devolved administrations. It provides scientific risk assessment and mitigation advice on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory virus threats and on options for their management.
The annexe continues in a similar vein, listing the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP), the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M), the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), FCO Travel Advice and tellingly concludes with: “The actions we are taking to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak are being informed by the advice of these committees.”
But not by anyone experienced in ethics, or indeed any non-quantitative form of decision-making. Perhaps the cause of the massively disproportionate response to a mostly harmless virus was simply that few if any of the key decision makers understood the nature and importance of ethics, human rights and the moral basis of liberal society.
If so, then it is of paramount importance that the Inquiry makes balanced recommendations in this regard and insists on a far wider focus in future.
Dr. David Seedhouse is Honorary Professor of Deliberative Practice at Aston University and the creator of Our Decision Too, a free website of participatory democracy which welcomes new members.
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The Inquiry is intended to conclude that although mistakes were made by non-expert politicians (who had more concern for their own careers than anything else) the lockdowns were the right policy; thousands of lives were saved and the collateral damage was unfortunate but necessary.
However “lessons will be learned” and it is therefore best that the decisions over pandemic policy should be transferred to the expert $cientists at the WHO.
It’s not going to ask, let alone report, on any moral or ethical considerations; or Civil and Human Rights. You don’t ask questions when you don’t want to know the answer.
I’ve not read the article but there is one word which would refute all of what you just said; Sweden.
They can re-write the facts and embellish their version of the truth all they like but evidence is evidence. Not much more to be said is there?
Think of the millions of pounds and countless hours that could be saved by your analysis. Common sense is very uncommon sadly.
There was no pandemic.
A lot of elderly folks in nursing homes up and down the land were force-fed midazolam.
That is not a pandemic. It’s murder. Mass murder.
And there’s just an awful lot of people trying to justify their decision for not doing as Sweden did. Proven now irrefutably to be the best approach. But how to explain the massive amount of damage caused by decisions you were personally responsible for making? The guilty have nowhere to hide during this inquiry as far as I’m concerned. The spotlight is on their diabolical policies which amounted to democide, plain and simple.
Ethics? There was no consideration whatsoever.
There was no pandemic. The government lied, that was unethical.
They used interrogation techniques to brainwash the population so that the susceptible, probably 80%, were terrified. That was unethical.
The most trusting / gullible, probably 20% of the population, will never fully recover. That was unethical.
The government banned or were silent about treatments such as IVM, HCQ, vit D, vit C, quercetin, zinc etc etc. That was unethical.
The government / NHS despatched the frail before their time with midazolam. That was unethical
The government / NHS jabbed children with an experimental substance even though children were at no risk from the disease. That was unethical.
The government shut down schools and denied education. That was unethical.
The police reverted to tactics unbecoming from Great Britain. That was unethical.
Robbing the taxpayer blind to pay for this farce? That was unethical.
Censorship of alternate views? That was unethical.
The government are unlikely to recognise or acknowledge ethical considerations unless it bites them in the ar$e; you cannot barter ethics. Unless these morons experience consequences for their decision making, it will just get worse and worse.
Well said
The other crime committed by the government is that they broke numerous domestic & international laws under the guise of ‘safety’.
Human rights laws, common law, the Magna Carta, the Nuremburg Code. All traduced & tossed aside by a corrupt & captured legislature who make the law but have absolutely no understanding or knowledge of the law. Or if they do – they do not give a stuff.
That they are not even asking questions about the lawfulness of their actions speaks volumes.
…what happened to ethics during the ‘spamdemic? Exactly the same thing that was happening before and after…..
The question is … are there any ethical entities left..? I’m wracking my brain..and coming up empty….
PLandemics have no ethics
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Leaflets t.me/MillionLightPaperAndLeaflet
There was no pandemic
The first question the inquiry should be asking is “was there a pandemic, or some other unusual event”?
Other worthwhile areas for debate woukd be what is the proper value to give to the ability to get in with normal life, and what are the proper limits of state power.
Neither of these things will be discussed. Worse than that, there is a clear consensus in favour of the state keeping us safe. That is the way the pendulum has swung. Long after we’re all gone it will hopefully swing back the other way. The ideal solution is to allocate some land to people like us and form new countries.
There is no common ground.
Ethical principles were not just ditched but absolutely destroyed by our masters. Obviously the extraordinarily expensive enquiry should be considering that as a matter of urgency if only to whitewash the evidence.
From the minute they employed nudge units, sophisticated psychological manipulation, censorship and cancellation all hope of ethical decision making went out of the window.
I agree ethical decision making was not there.
People have been saying that this inquiry will be a whitewash and I think they may be right.
Reading a summary of the first two weeks of the inquiry I am not sure the right questions are being asked. People’s statements continue along the same narrative we have been hearing since 2020 and the statements go unchallenged.
Baroness Hallett and the Covid inquiry council are the only people who can ask them questions. I can understand this from a procedural point of view, but one has to ask if they have the expertise or inclination to ask the right questions.
Time will tell…..
The most disgusting unethical aspect of our Government and the medical fraternity’s behaviour was the imposition of injection mandates of an experimental drug.
Followed by the deliberate suppression of early treatments using Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin. Followed by the coercion to inject pregnant women and our children. Their behaviour demands retribution.
Our worst enemy couldn’t have done a better job of abusing and harming the British public during the plandemic. Our medical institutions, Government organisations and advisors are corrupted and unfit for purpose.
Be careful what you ask for:
Germany had and has a national ethics council, Ethikrat, and even some on a state level, like in Bavaria.
It was very involved and high-profile during the ‘pandemic’.
And it/they just zealously rubber-stamped all government policies.
Any of the very few members daring to voice criticism were quickly expelled and replaced.