Was lockdown worth it? That’s the basic question the Covid Inquiry should be asking, says Lord Frost in the Telegraph. But it’s increasingly clear that it has predetermined the answer and is just going through the motions. Here’s an excerpt.
I felt vindicated this month when I heard Prof. Mark Woolhouse say – in one of the few revealing points to emerge so far from the sorry spectacle of the Covid Inquiry – that “in the build-up to that November lockdown in England, as far as I could see, SAGE was simply telling the Government it should lock down … There’s good evidence now that that lockdown was not strictly necessary … I think Government was not given, in the build-up to that lockdown, the full range of policy options it should have been given.”
Prof. Woolhouse makes this general point on two or three occasions. You might think it interesting enough to deserve discussion. But no. “Thank you Professor.” And counsel moves on.
I am afraid that it seems to many of those watching the hearings or reading the transcripts of the inquiry that its Chair, Lady Hallett, and the lead counsel, Hugo Keith, are basing their approach on a particular, preconceived, view of the story of the pandemic lockdowns. That is that Covid was obviously dangerous, that lockdowns were the correct solution to the problem, and that the only real question is the timeliness of the Government’s actions, not their merits.
That is certainly the consensus view. It is convenient for many because it allows attention to be focused on the failings of Boris Johnson personally, rather than on those of the Government machine and the people who ran it. That doesn’t make it correct. I have a view on the subject from my own experience – which is that we would have been better off following the Swedish approach – but I don’t claim a monopoly on wisdom. I am willing to be proved wrong. But sadly this inquiry seems unlikely to help me in this one way or the other.
That’s obvious from the direction of questioning of other main witnesses. So far there has been no serious examination of the modelling and why it turned out, repeatedly, to be so wrong. Prof. Neil Ferguson refers briefly to Sweden in passing in his written evidence, but only to dismiss it as a comparator – yet he was not asked about this at all.
Prof. Carl Heneghan tried to bring Sweden into the discussion, but unsuccessfully; the lead counsel seemingly more interested in sneering at his intellectual credentials. And we can’t be sure that Lady Hallett even understands the concept of trade-offs, since, on the issue of masking, she asked one witness: “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”
And who knows when this inquiry will actually conclude? Let’s not forget that it took Lord Saville 12 years to investigate the events of 15 minutes in Londonderry in 1972, so perhaps we should be looking to the next century before the inquiry’s vast, meandering, and often irrelevant terms of reference have been properly considered.
All this time and effort would have been better spent on focusing on the only important question, the one thing I really want to know. It is whether lockdowns were the right response to a disease with a fatality rate of somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5%.
If we can be confident of the answer to this question, then if we are hit again, we will have a better idea of what to do. But all the efforts to allocate blame, all the email and WhatsApp archaeology, all the rush to point the finger, just make it less likely we will get that answer. Key witnesses will look to protect themselves. No one is going to admit willingly, “in retrospect, I think I got that wrong”. Yet without that we will never discover what was right.
Worth reading in full.
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There is so, so much to be concerned about here. Riot police bussed in from other areas – who ordered that and why? What information or directives were they given and by whom? The policeman recorded as saying “arrest anyone” – well, was he acting under orders (if so, from whom?) or is he a renegade clearly unfit to be a police officer? I think there clearly needs to be a full public enquiry here – and senior police and politicians brought to account if they sought to pre-influence or prejudice what happened here.
But it’s not going to happen. If the government can’t be bothered to investigate why hundreds of children were repeatedly raped and abused by “men of a certain religion” while police, teachers and social workers stood by and did nothing then what hope has the average white person?
What sort of a hell-hole of a country have we suddenly decended into while the Prime Minister is more concerned about who pays for his suits, how he can get free tickets to Taylor Swift concerts and how he can jump the queue at tourist events? Have we truly become North Korea? That is a rhetorical question – we have.
There is no hope. Get out now while you can.
My sincere apologies to these “men of a certain religion” who were clearly “engaged in a bit of innocent fun” if I inadvertently misgendered them. I was taught at school that only men had beards, but clearly I was misinformed and am stupid as everybody know that a man with a beard may choose to self identify as a woman or any of another 100 or so genders at a time of their choosing. Anyone who disagrees is a far-right extremist.
I just don’t want to be thrown in the gulag for such a heinous crime as this.
But then again, we don’t need to be thrown in the gulag as the gulag is coming to us.
Join the FSU. As you haven’t mentioned the religion, but presumably not Christianity, they would have a definition problem if they came after you. It has recently been revealed that a large number of “allegedly Christian Priests” are also involved in such goings on. These have NOT been ignored, all very strange.
Another excellent edition. The treachery that affects many of our institutions is a malignancy that is proving, and will prove to be, very difficult to excise. Thank god for people like your guest, who have the wherewithal to challenge this iniquity.
The rest of us must support such people. We must also support those institutions, and media outlets, who on a daily basis, refuse to accept what is happening to this country.
There should be no conditions on peaceful protest.
I attended the farmers protest and noted the ridiculous number of vans full of police. There was noi need for them at all and they must have ben paid overtime for sleeping. Farmers, rural people and sympathisers cannot be put into any demographic associated with rioting or violence.
It was nothing more than state intimidation.
I hope he wins his damages claim. Remember to add the value of lost time and lost opportunities. Demand to see the evidence the officers relied upon when arresting and when threatening to charge with a further offence.
If he needs help with legal fees please start a fund raiser.
Sue the Independent as well as their report was insulting and offensive and likely libellous.
Go against the individual officers as well as the force itself.
The husband should make a complaint of GBH – actual bodily harm.
Even if the arresting officers had been wrongly informed about the circumstances they were not entitled to arrest without making enquiries. One question to this mn would have made it clear the warnings and rules had not been comunicated.
Good idea
I really do notthink living and working in harmony is compatible with multi-culturalism which the elites still embrace.
The unity seen in the USA cannot happen here because the elites and all their many agents regard diversity (which is a lack of harmony by definition) as a good thing, almost an essential aspect of Britain in the future.
On sentencing, I note that a Pakistani Muslim rapist of multiple offences was released after two and a half years whereas social media posts resulted in a similar sentence. Two tier or what!
And the rapist then costtax payers £lots appealing against deportation and he is still here.