Until recently, you could be forgiven for forgetting there was a Covid inquiry. Frankly, a great many have forgotten that there was Covid, and you could also be forgiven for thinking that this is exactly the situation the government wants.
Here we are in June 2023 and the inquiry, chaired by Baroness Hallett, began in Spring 2022. Just what the heck have they been doing? There is surely no substance to the rumours that the first few weeks were spent by members of the inquiry visiting all the B&Q stores in the country buying up white paint for, what many of us assume, will be the ultimate whitewashed outcome of the proceedings.
After all, how hard can it be to see what happened in 2020-2021 and beyond, what the outcome was and who was to blame? All the inquiry needs to do is produce a report to that effect and let things take their course. Nothing is ever going to happen to the politicians; they were all to the last man, woman and non-binary person involved, whatever party they belong to. They are hardly going to send themselves to prison.
To date the inquiry has not called a single person to appear in front of it. Thus the reason that we had, largely, forgotten about it. Instead, it has been gathering thousands of documents from every source imaginable, and plans to gather thousands more. Clearly the chair and members of the inquiry have made the classic error of confusing process with outcome.
But now, like Smaug in The Lords of the Rings, the monster has come to life. However, it is not exactly breathing fire wherever it looks, not even a wisp of smoke. It seems to have become infected with Boris derangement syndrome and is asking to see his WhatsApp messages.
This is what has hit the headlines, that and the fact that there has been considerable pushback from the cabinet. Boris, initially reluctant, has now complied and handed over a phone to the government. But crafty old bugger that he is, it appears not to be the one he used during the Covid years. The government is refusing to hand over the phone, the inquiry insists it should and now they are taking the government to court…correction…it’s the other way round, the government is taking the inquiry to court. I’ll bet nobody saw that coming.
So, the Covid inquiry, on the first occasion it has flexed its muscles, is effectively being prevented from doing its job by the very body that set it up. Clearly, the government forgot to write a clause into the terms of reference to the effect that nothing is off limits for the inquiry, except for the people who might actually have been responsible. Clearly an oversight that they are addressing in retrospect.
I cannot be alone in thinking that the inquiry has an easy job, and it goes something like this: a respiratory virus of demonstrably low lethality spread here from China; none of the non-pharmacological measures that were introduced had evidence to support them; no assessment of risk was made; human rights were overridden; and the harms of social and economic lockdown were evident long before they were lifted. Explain!
Surely it is not too late to stop this farcical inquiry and save us all a fortune. There is no update on what the current costs are, but the bill amounted to £85 million in 2022—before it had even started. I previously suggested an alternative ten-point plan for a Covid inquiry and I think they remain valid:
- Did you appoint an arch-catastrophist with a 100% record of always being wrong to predict the likely number of deaths from Covid-19?
- Did you consider the potential for the detrimental effects of lockdown on society, the economy, health and education?
- Was the policy to impose the wearing of face masks evidence-based; and what was the evidence?
- Did you participate in the rollout of untested vaccines?
- Why was the Astrazeneca vaccine withdrawn?
- Are you going to investigate vaccine harms and deaths?
- Was freedom of speech curtailed during the ‘pandemic’ and why?
- Will you publicly rehabilitate people cancelled and persecuted during the ‘pandemic’?
- Who was responsible for the decisions taken during the ‘pandemic’?
- Will prosecutions follow the inquiry; if not, why not?
Investigate that!
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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