The pedestrian and excruciatingly irrelevant nature of the Covid Public Inquiry means that the critical lessons should be fast tracked by another route.
Is it not bizarre that the underlying assumption of the CPI seems to be that lockdowns are the solution to stop a pandemic? A lockdown requires, if people are not to be penniless, that somehow Government subsidises people to stay at home, such as by a form of furlough: if there is a Covid like pandemic in the foreseeable future, will not a lockdown be impossible because there will be no possibility of funds being available to finance it, the UK being borrowed to the hilt? The idea the Government will spend what it takes to save the NHS and lives will be a complete fiction.
Is it not frustrating that the big lessons have not been clearly published already and the country is not being comforted by implementation of the remedies required. The following paragraphs appeared in The Covid Inquiry Circus:
“LESSONS – The remit of the CPI is to learn the lessons so that the UK is better equipped to handle future pandemics. Have not Government Departments, the NHS, each NHS Trust, Care homes, the Treasury, Public Health England, local councils, Mayors of cities, educational establishments and all other institutions materially involved in the challenges of the pandemic already done their assessments of what went well and what could be done better for the future? Have not scientists and relevant experts, health professionals, made their suggestions by now? It is even reasonable to expect that the main things to improve are already being implemented. For example, how to improve protection of the most vulnerable seems a most urgent topic, and then maybe lockdowns can be made less likely.? Would it not be a good idea for all those institutions and people to publish in an orderly way their conclusions and action plans? Or if they have no such plans or have done nothing, to explain why?
After all there could be another pandemic before the report of CPI is published in 2026. Indeed, if such things were published now, perhaps the CPI could wrap up its findings sooner. If in fact any of the institutions mentioned above have not identified the main improvements to be made already, that may provide the answer as to what really went wrong in the pandemic: too much incompetence at the top and lack of leadership, ignoring 10 Downing Street.”
On 31 December 2020 Sherbhert published Looking Forward with Lessons from 2020, a discussion of some core lessons.
If lockdowns are to be avoided, a system to safeguard the vulnerable which is reasonable, affordable and balanced, even if not foolproof, is surely needed but was not a real option in the pandemic in 2020. Can that not be designed now? Has it been?
If nothing else cannot a group of scientists and health experts be assembled and agree the health lessons to recommend changes which can be costed?
Or does the UK seriously have to wait until a bunch of lawyers have satisfied themselves that Every Voice has been heard, and every story of grief revealed? Lead interrogator Hugo Keith uses the premise that the UK had one of the worst excess death records to underpin his conclusion that, if the Government had not made so many mistakes, material numbers of deaths would have been avoided. A wrong premise, also echoed by so many members of the public wanting to pin their loved one’s death on a Minister or the system generally. It is clear from the Lancet survey in 2022 that probably in Europe the UK was ahead of Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and a host of other countries, and was about average in the world league table. And it is also clear that different countries have such different characteristics that they are hard to compare properly – the UK people are too fat, its population is more densely packed together than many, the UK is good at record keeping; health services vary immensely and so on. The CPI is unlikely to be the source of great improvements for the future if this is the quality of their approach.
The big lessons must be fast-tracked: the lesser ones probably do not really matter.
