I must admit, I’m really enjoying the Covid Inquiry. Now the Rugby World Cup is over, it’s far more entertaining than anything else on TV. Inspired casting of Dominic Cummings as the evil genius, assisted by Uriah Heap-like Lee Cain. The persecution of the dignified and serene female lead, Ms. Helen MacNamara. Urbane and polished advocate Hugo Keith KC feeds the lines to smoothly serpiginous Simon Stevens – as always, the best politician in the room. There are moments of genuine hilarity as senior civil servants swoon at salty language from Cummings. I strongly suggest they steer away from members of my profession, who are quite capable of expressing dissatisfaction using vocabulary that would make a docker blush. Tension builds inexorably towards the grand entrance of Box Office Boris – don’t forget to tune in, folks.
I do get the feeling however that the Noble Lady Hallet looks slightly bored – quite possibly because she wrote up her conclusions well before the process started and may be finding the performative part a bit tedious.
Because whatever we are watching in Dorland House, 121 Westbourne Terrace, is certainly not an inquiry. This matters, because what we are witnessing is the production of official history. History in its original Greek meaning is defined as an inquiry. An investigation into why things happened, not just a recitation of events.
Dominic Cummings wrote a fascinating 115-page witness statement, which you can access here. There is much of interest in this document. So why did the formidably capable Mr. Keith choose to concentrate on a few hurty words uttered by Cummings and ignore the matters of great substance which had huge relevance to decision making and governance? Mr. Keith is a professional advocate. He is well remunerated for crafting an argument favourable to those who are paying him. I suggest that is precisely what he is doing.
Regular readers will be familiar with my fascination for drilling down into details, but today I’d like to make a broad general observation about Cummings written testimony, which seems to describe a ‘game of two halves’. First half, the Greek chorus aligns in one direction, chanting in unison about herd immunity, focused protection, staying at home if symptomatic, and so on. I like that – its Great Barrington before Great Barrington became a thing. That’s described by the officials as ‘Plan A’.
Then suddenly, around the period from March 9th–15th everything changes. The chorus turns 180 degrees and chants about NHS overwhelm, imminent catastrophe and the imperative for lockdown – or ‘Plan B’ for short. Why?
There is simply too much detail and conflicting information in the mountain of written evidence for one person to tease out the answers – which is precisely why a proper inquiry is needed. My brief reading of the situation reveals a growing sense of panic and fear, driven above all by Professor Ferguson’s graphs of doom, best illustrated in paragraph three of page 32 in Cummings statement. The detail behind this is reflected in an email exchange between Vallance, Whitty and Ferguson dated March 15th.
Ferguson describes a “reasonable worst-case scenario” (RWC). In the RWC, the peak requirement for ICU beds in England is over 180,000, with almost half a million general hospital beds needed for the less critically ill. Think about that. The NHS in England has about 4,700 ICU beds at maximum surge capacity. I haven’t so far seen any detailed reference to the critical supply constraint – the number of ICU trained nurses available. It takes years to train an ICU nurse, so no matter how many ventilators were produced by Dyson, without the nursing staff to go with them, such efforts were meaningless. There is also no detailed commentary on how likely the RWC was. Clearly, if there was a 1% that the RWC would materialise, this may not have been consequential. Yet all of the major players seem to have accepted that the RWC was overwhelmingly likely without lockdown restrictions – why was that? Where was intellectual curiosity amongst our key decision makers?
In retrospect, of course, we know that Ferguson’s numbers were complete nonsense. Yet his interventions were the critical assertions which scuppered the initial plan, loosely referred to as the ‘Swedish approach’. Had we stuck to Plan A, it’s a reasonable inference that the country would be in much better shape than it currently is. Despite this, Ferguson was given the most deferential treatment during his questioning. Again, I ask why?
A proper inquiry would take Ferguson’s modelling apart, line by line. Dissect all the assumptions made. Investigate how the algorithms were set up. Find out who wrote the computer code on which the model was based and what individuals were involved in putting the model together. What inputs were made to derive the RWC and other scenarios? Who decided on those parameters and why? Ferguson is merely the mouthpiece for people who constructed a machine which locked up the entire population for months on end, wrecked the economy and caused massive collateral damage to general healthcare, children’s education and mental health.
A proper inquiry would reveal everything about these backroom people. What their backgrounds and beliefs were. Who paid them. Who guided and motivated them – and why.
That is what a proper inquiry would look like – and we aren’t going to get it because the people setting the terms and conditions of the inquiry don’t want to investigate these matters. Again, I ask why?
Those responsible for the catastrophe of lockdown have already banked their gains – taken the promotions and awards – baubles distributed to incentivise compliance and silence. An inquiry is far too dangerous. An inquiry might raise awkward questions. An inquiry might expose information that did not fit the officially sanctioned version of events. Far preferable to generate a comfortable consensus, even if it is the wrong consensus. Then we can do it all again next time.
Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen – the next show will be starting shortly.
The author, the Daily Sceptic’s in-house doctor, is a former NHS consultant now in private practice.
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Seems like the straw that broke the camel’s back will turn out to be how some allegations regarding one MP’s conduct were handled, on top of some work parties. Not the biggest folly and evil in UK peacetime history – the covid scam. Pathetic.
What’s really odd it around 550 to 600 MPs of all parties have consistently voted for or supported every one of his everyone of his disastrous policies: lockdowns, a terrible Brexit surrender, covid jabs, net zero, draconian attacks on freedom such as online censorship, police bill, unlimited immgration, trying to hand our sovereignty to the World Health Organisation. Massive borrowing and taxation. Spending our non existent money on Ukraine.
They are all his accomplices.
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If only he had the balls to admit that the reason he so vigorously ignored the lockdowns his own government imposed was that they were pointless.
Of course the invasion of France in Henry V was a hugely unrespectable matter, Olivier and Branagh, notwithstanding
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/12/covid-and-shakespeare-the-dark-heart-of-the-national-epic.html
Also, at a military level Johnson is grotesque placing his own country in danger by pointlessly taunting Putin while equally pointlessly arranging to send tens of thousands of Ukrainians to certain death in a war which they can only lose (while pillaging our purses to give to the clown Zelensky to launder). A war criminal certainly. Falstaff turns seriously unfunny Henry IV Part II when he is sent to recruit a regiment and turns it into an extortion racket. The trouble is Johnson is only the most conspicuous member of a class who think like this, and we seemingly have not a single member of Parliament who dissents from this black farce.
I won’t be sorry to see him go – a deeply evil and disgusting individual.
Only to be replaced by someone equally – if not more so – evil and disgusting – which is good because the crazier the government gets, the more people might actually see what a farce the whole system is. Then we can lock the lot of them up and start again. I realise this might take about 50 years given the apathetic stupidity of most people in this country, but still.
(Go on Nadine, stand for PM, you know you want to!).
I can’t stand the bloke but I’d love it if he stayed on for another year or so just to piss the BBC off
That may be cutting your nose off to spite your face, but understandable all the same.
There’s a strong chance whoever replaces him will be worse with regards to Covid
A poseur, posing as a conviction politician but lacking any conviction; a weak, vacillating, wobbling jelly; by far and away the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had.
You know it is difficult to think of many who were not quite ghastly. Obviously Churchill had colossal vision and courage.
Churchill was one of the biggest traitors in our history.
He was utterly owned after Chartwell was saved for him.
I think it’s probably a tie between Bozo and Bliar.
There are many evils which Bliar set in motion – the Supreme Court, the forthcoming Human Rights Bill, the Orwellian “education, education, education”, and there will be many, many more that we and even historians might never learn of. The damage done to this country by this pitiable excuse for a human being is incontovertiably incalculable.
Bozo ties Bliar for his falling in with the Davos Deviants and all the miseries that have followed, too numerous to list here, and none that members are unaware of. However, his relentless push of the C1984 injections will ultimately see him listed amongst the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc.
As this shit show brewed in early 2020 Bozo had the opportunity to aim for a Churchillian apprenticeship but he bottled it and sold himself like Judas. His place amongst the league table of the worst examples of our species ever to inhabit this planet was assured.
Yes if these injections turn out to be as bad as it is looking and if these excess deaths are as a result of lockdowns and jabs. Also if this 400 billion borrowed, wasted spent causes an economic UK disaster and I think that’s what he spent?
And the phoney war on Co2 and the zany net zero. Even if someone else is worse he is guilty as proven.
The coup against him was from the remainers, which started in earnest with C19, they could not believe Thor luck!! And used a perceived threat and their bitterness to sell the British people down the river just to destroy him, he was not astute enough to work it out and became a useful fool as they plotted with macabre glee behind their masks, dictating the covid lockdown guidance just to illustrate that GB can not survive Brexit and needs the EU.
Sadly he played into their hands and dragged the rest of us with him, disgrace.
Go.
Astute and to the point. It was hard to imagine that there would be a rival to the corporate Tony Bliar and then along came Boris.
Thank you.
…by far and away the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had.
And that takes some doing.
Doesn’t it just?
I enjoyed this first-hand account of BJ in his Oxford years. But I don’t believe, given the global and seismic nature of events that have taken place, that we can view what has happened in Britain in a vacuum, which this outlook seems to want to. Covid-19 was surely a coup (by whom is another matter) – Western lawmakers became Vichy governments overnight, and their very survival now seems to rest on their willingness to follow external orders. I do believe that Johnson was at least reluctant to follow these orders because they were antithetical to his ideology, but the harsh truth I believe is that he, like all other Western leaders, is a traitor who handed our wealth, our way of life, our culture and our future to an occupying power.
Uncanny.
I guess the first time I saw Johnson was on TV as President of the Oxford Union going on about his class entitlement and I thought he was a pompous ass. I guess he has a talent when he wants to of connecting with ordinary people for just a few seconds to make them feel important – that is where he trumps other politicians. He probably belonged on the stage.
Tonight’s headline on the BBC news website: “Johnson sacks Gove”.
Sweet. I despise Gove – government covidian in chief.
Yes I enjoyed that headline too. Awful, awful human being.
You can understand why his biological parents gave him away.
We are on a speeding train & we know the brakes don’t work !!…
Savage Jabbit!!.. What a piece of work !! God help us , I can sense that he may eventually land Boris,s job
Oh no please no. That would be too awful for words.
Well Toby, this must have been hard to write for you- kudos for that display of courage and integrity alone-
not least the references to the ever worse looking vaccine program and his rabid Ukraine support aka warmongering.
It’s also quite illuminating for us who have not met him in person, whether we ever fell for him or not. He does have a certain charisma and entertainment value, that is for sure, as otherwise, he would not have been written up by you and his other fellow chattering class members for neither London Mayor nor PM in the first place.
I’ll certainly forgive you for falling for this so visibly lazy narcissist nihilist, not just because his successor will likely be even worse and more authoritarian on Covid and because Brexit looks to be an ever better decision by the day to this Eurotrash Remainer, despite its many overpromises and, sadly now so typically British, totally botched mishandling, but also because you did far more for the country and its truly liberal people than he did and ever will do just by launching this site.
(Even more so before its latest revamp, but that’s a different story.)
Seconded.
Boris’s skills are probably in sussing out what people want to hear, and persuading them (on first impression) his heart is in the right place.
But he has no idea or intention of actually accomplishing anything real. Any sign of trouble, he caves in. He seems to be spineless, unfocused, and overawed by charlatans. No wonder he is Prime Minister.
I doubt he has much idea concept of lying or truth. But in the scale of ethics,
lying about drinks after work, and about being aware of plausible worrying rumours is nowhere near as bad as imposing pointless expensive broken dangerous and futile measures on millions of people, just because he couldn’t stand the heat.
Indeed. It would be interesting to hear him appearing in court as a witness. What would his declaration be? Some of the truth, but not all of it, and some other things as well? He could be a field day for a competent barrister who tried to examine him.
What is going on?
There must have been a fundamental parting of the ways. Sinak and Jabbit are indisputably followers of the Davos agenda, so do their resignations suggest that Bozo has fallen out with the Reset? Or have these two called for his resignation on the grounds that he is not following the Agenda closely enough and “at pace” – a squealy little public service term – and Bozo has rejected their request?
The Davos replacements will have to have sworn allegiance to Bozo and that suggests a virtual civil war in the Tory party.
Or perhaps a show of tory infighting is designed to act as cover for something very nasty on the horizon?
Whatever the answer, we the plebs will be the least of these actors’ considerations.
An enormously capable and likeable man in many ways, but one who always seems to have the opinions of the last person who spoke to him…
I too enjoyed the persona for years, but the reality of government by Stonewall, Greenpeace and the medico-pharma mafia has been nauseating. The sight of him yesterday in front of the committee wearing an AIDS lapel badge with some bloke with a rainbow lanyard prominent in camera right behind him is almost too apt to be true. Finally he was brought down by a gay groper in Pride Month. Someone up there has a sense of humour.
He could have had his Thatcher moment, and told the cabal to sling their hook.
He tried, initially, but folded pretty goddamn quickly.
Politics is not supposed to be a popularity contest. It’s about doing the right thing. And he messed up because he’s a vain crowd pleaser.
Bye Bye, Boris. Maybe you can lift the lid on this horrid scam and genocide in your memoirs. I’ll read them.
“He could have had his Thatcher moment.”
Indeed. He even potentially had an opportunity to look like a Churchillian apprentice but when the God’s came calling he turned them down. Now he will forever be remembered as this country’s biggest traitor and greatest mass murderer.
If he has upset the Davos Deviants his future might not be too bright.
There must be some right kompromat on him. I doubt he was in a position to hold up for long…
As Johnson has
been forceddecided to resign, I fervently hope that he sacks that rat Nadhim Zahawi from his recently acquired coveted post as Chancellor!Do it, prime minister, do it! Please.
I think it’s more our tragedy rather than his.
Possibly.
60mph on a motorway! If we continue on our current trajectory you’d be lucky to 20, and then only if you own a horse.