What the Covid 'Inquiry' is Really All About

I have been watching sections of the Covid Inquiry and felt like jumping into the never-ending lockdown debate and decrying the terrible treatment of Carl Heneghan. However instead of doing that, I wanted to step back and use the work that the Thinking Coalition has been doing recently on the ever-expanding powers of the State and the new quasi-religions that are developing in Britain to try and explain what the Covid Inquiry is really all about – and this is power.

The context for the ‘inquiry’ is the growing climate cult, the cult of safety and misplaced faith in The Science^TM, especially to ‘defeat’ a virus. What the inquiry is really about is ensuring that the elite’s vision of the biosecurity state (as described by Simon Elmer) is not only not derailed, but is actually institutionalised. To allow this to happen, the inquiry needs to ensure that:

the effectiveness of the draconian powers used by the scientific priesthood (lockdowns) are not subject to serious scrutiny and
the usefulness of models is not questioned.

This means that going forward, the scientific priesthood can oppress the general public at will, given that models using exponential growth will always lead to a predicted catastrophe within a short period of time, measured in days or at most weeks. This gives carte blanche to oppress the population in the name of health, even in the absence of any hard evidence on cases, deaths or hospitalisation.

The other element of the Covid response which is not receiving scrutiny is the implicit but fundamental reversal of the objective of the existing Pandemic Preparedness Strategy (PPS). A key focus of the PPS was how to keep the country operating and being able to cope with a large number of staff absences so that the system (particularly the NHS) serves the citizens. This logic was reversed at some point in March 2020 so that the primary aim of the Covid response was to exclude the possibility of the NHS being under excessive pressure; in this case the citizens serve the system. The central commitment in the PPS was simply discarded.

The U.K. Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic.

This well established response was jettisoned through intense lobbying from Dominic Cummings and various other pressure groups, many Left-leaning. In Cummings’s correspondence with Professor Gowers, the professor creates a ‘back-of-the-envelope’ illustration using assumptions plucked from thin air and not connected to the 100-plus years’ worth of pandemic statistics referred to in PPS. The illustration showed that 800,000 people may need intensive care treatment. In the event 10,000 people needed intensive care treatment over the first wave from March 1st 2020 to August 31st 2020. Professor Gower’s illustration was wrong by a factor of 80 times.

Remember also that the PPS is a planning scenario for 210,000 to 315,000 influenza deaths in a short 15-week period, which is a scenario that was much worse than the Covid experience.

It makes more sense to look at the Covid ‘Inquiry’ in the context of redefining the role of the state and the citizen. To illustrate, I have spilt the protagonists into two main camps, the Traditionalists and the Revolutionaries. Due to differing worldviews those two groups will think differently about almost every subject, including the response to Covid.

The table below illustrates the diametrically opposed views the Traditionalists and the Revolutionaries will likely take on virtually every topic. This means that in many ways, interactions between the groups will probably be confrontational and can only really generate a win-lose outcome.

It is possible to classify the Revolutionaries as having absolute faith in man’s ability to manage nature, including to manage the weather and to defeat viruses. In general, the Traditionalists often believe in higher power(s) and tend to believe that man’s ability to manipulate some natural events is limited. Indeed, Traditionalists can believe that meddling with viruses in gain-of-function research is actually extraordinarily dangerous.

Revolutionaries tend to be arrogant, with a propensity to put a line through accumulated wisdom on the grounds of their superior data, analytical capability and technology. The abandonment of well-established vaccine trial protocols is a particular case in point, where a standard 10-year vaccine development process can allegedly be substituted with a 100-day vaccine development process using new technology.

Given the cult-like beliefs of the Revolutionaries, they need to silence dissenters and they must studiously avoid any real scrutiny of their core beliefs. The core beliefs of the Revolutionaries, which are being fiercely guarded by the biased ‘inquiry’, are:

Covid was a once in a century pandemic.
Covid vaccines are effective.
Lockdowns work.
The costs of lockdowns (and other interventions) don’t particularly matter.

The Thinking Coalition has spent the last two years working with academics like Professor Sucharit Bhakdi and Professor Norman Fenton and looking at data and analysis that blow most of the above assumptions to pieces.

One of the unusual features about the Revolutionaries is that although they seek unlimited coercive powers, when it comes to delivery they are fairly hopeless. That much was clear from (for example) the failure to properly test hospital patients being discharged into care homes despite the fact that public spending sits at £181.7 billion per year on the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

What the ‘inquiry’ has been able to lift the lid on is some of the personal traits of the Revolutionaries, who often seem to hate each other, let alone anyone whose views differ from theirs. A fair number of the Revolutionaries seem to lack basic integrity and are fairly aggressive in pursuing their preferred policy options.

My main conclusion from the ‘inquiry’ is that the protections given to the individual against state overreach need, if anything, to be significantly strengthened. The dysfunction that we have seen indicates that the people with the sharpest elbows get their policies implemented, whilst good and competent scientists are ignored. That is why the Government should not be allowed to impose a lockdown without hard evidence; the people in positions of power simply can’t be trusted with this judgement call using models. Similarly, all related tools of coercion such as vaccine passports which were designed to undermine the absolute right to informed consent need to be similarly banned.

Clearly this is not an outcome that the Revolutionaries are prepared to accept and in this regard, I very much doubt the counsels to the ‘inquiry’ will be standing up for the general public. Presumably, the main players will do very well out of their share of the expected £200,000,000 cost to the public of the ‘inquiry’. I doubt that shrinking the powers of the state is a line of questioning that either Mr. Keith KC or Mr. O’Connor KC will be pursuing.

I believe that what the inquiry is really doing is seeking to institutionalise the mistakes made during Covid and make it even easier for subsequent scientific priesthoods to coerce U.K. citizens. The inquiry does not appear to have much interest in improving the U.K.’s ability to respond to future pandemics given its refusal (so far) to challenge any of the sacred assumptions. This was clearly illustrated by Andrew O’Connor’s KC failure to address the suggestions made by Carl Heneghan on important improvements, particularly in the care home sector.

To my great regret, a large number of people in the U.K. appear happy to surrender their agency to the state. This phenomenon was described in Joost Merloo’s definitive book on totalitarianism:

The ordinary citizen becomes as dependent and obedient as a child. In exchange for giving up his individuality, he obtains some special gratification… the safety of being anonymous, of being merely a cog in the wheel of the all-powerful state.

This is really a battle between power-hungry technocrats and more reasonable people who respect long-established limits to state powers and would prefer to see incremental improvements, rather than the radical changes proposed by the Revolutionaries. That is the real battle.

Alex Kriel is by training a physicist and was an early critic of the Imperial Covid model. He is a founder of the Thinking Coalition, which comprises a group of citizens who are concerned about Government overreach. This article was first published on the Thinking Coalition website. Sign up for updates here.