The Hallett report was released today and told us exactly what we had already worked out.
However, it was good to see that it did not try to obfuscate and pretend everything was fine apart from some dreadful bad luck.
Indeed with alarming honesty it blamed the Ministers for “failing their citizens” by preparing for the wrong pandemic and being hampered by groupthink and bureaucracy.
Baroness Hallett says that the lack of preparation led to many deaths and a cost to the economy and that the plans for a flu epidemic were inadequate for the pandemic when it struck causing over 235,000 deaths.
You can read all the details elsewhere.
Here, I wish to highlight that the planning for a flu epidemic had been explored in 2016 and involved many different departments across the Government in an operation called Cygnus (little swan).
It concluded that the Government was very ill-prepared for such an event as a flu virus escaping from SE Asia.
It would appear that extensive discussions were reminiscent of Yes Minister after A and B options were discussed, with the question “Are there any other C based options?” Yes minister, do nothing and hope it never happens.
It would appear that this was the main conclusion. However, what should be emphasised here is that the Chief Medical Officer at the time, Sally Davis, was assured that the WHO would prevent such an outbreak from ever reaching Europe, so no need to overprepare then.
However, the WHO was a very different animal after it was hijacked by China and a very compliant non-medic put in charge, namely Tedros Gebreyesus, who when alerted to what was a new outbreak of severe respiratory disease was by all accounts severely constrained by China.
It could be argued that had the WHO done its job unhindered then the outbreak should have been contained.
The important point to be aware of here is that the virus SARS-2 was very much a typical respiratory virus except more infectious and deadly.
This was because, as my colleagues and I pointed out at the time, it had been over-engineered to be super-infectious to human cells in the Wuhan laboratory from which it had clearly escaped. Nevertheless, there was no evidence that it spread any differently from the classical flu virus.
This meant that it should not have been regarded as anything else and that there should have been no need to abandon the strategy as Matt Hancock did without meaningful consultation. I will never forgive him for shouting my colleagues and I down for supporting the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) in autumn 2020, which said it was an airborne virus that was no threat to the young and that natural immunity was the logical way forward. The GBD also said patients suffering from early symptoms should be treated without delay with standard time-honoured treatments, namely Vitamin D3, aspirin gargles, intra-nasal interferon sprays, Becotide (the asthma spray) and dexamethasone when chest inflammation was apparent. Hancock will be remembered forever by his colleagues for proclaiming that “I decide who dies!”
As to accuracy, I must take issue with 235,000 dead claim made by Hallett. I do not believe this for a minute, knowing that hospital patients with terminal disease were tested until proved Covid positive so that they died from Covid and nothing else. Also, the time span here includes all those who died from the dreadful effects of the lockdown, the failure of the NHS and those excess deaths that did not appear until the vaccine programme had been rolled out for several months.
I was delighted to see that this report addressed the fact that the negative impact of lockdowns had not been thought through. Obviously not, as if they had we would not have imposed lockdown, which we did even before stopping flights from Wuhan – still arriving in the U.K. three weeks in.
Baroness Hallett criticises a total lack of leadership in this regard, which is what we had and still have. Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock are rightly named.
However, what about the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Science Officer, who started out saying some straightforward truths, such as emphasising the role of natural immunity and the deaths being mainly in the old and at risk. Why then did they not stand against lockdown more vigorously? Anders Tegnell of Sweden did stand firm and was rewarded with the lowest excess deaths in Europe and the Western world.
Overall, the inquiry has come to the right conclusions and now needs to explore the outcome of the vaccine inquiry section, which was delayed until after the election.
Angus Dalgleish is an expert in immunology and Professor of Oncology at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London.
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