There was much, rightful discussion of the first publication from the Covid inquiry yesterday. There were also, however, too many claims made that the state had failed.
I made clear that I disagreed on Twitter:
The state did not fail, in my opinion. Ministers directed that the state should fail as a result of their own deliberate choices, and failings, in my opinion. That is something quite different.
Ministers could not, of course, have prevented Covid from happening. They could have fulfilled their most basic duty, to protect people, and they did not.
What, however, is most important is my question. What is going to be different now when the same philosophy and belief underpins this government as it did the last, which ideology let us down so badly? What is the point of this investigation if nothing changes? And has anything changed, or will it? That is what I want to know.
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Hi Richard,
I quite agree that it was deliberate acts, by ministers and officials that lead to the higher than necessary death rate. I my opinion, nothing has changed, and the same thing will happen again, in a pandemic.
This is another reason that regime change is required, for the UK. Your point about PR for English elections would be a good place to start
Regards
Despite the report’s many valid points detailing the failings of the system – even if government had been trying to protect the population- , the Inquiry seems to be colluding with the govt’s ‘its all over’ narrative despite @WHO saying we are still in the pandemic and 5000 having died with covid in the first half of 2024. It doesn’t say we are still in the pandemic.
It hasn’t even had the courage to remedy the main cited failing – that govt was preparing for the ‘wrong kind of pandemic’.
But in the main findings and recommendations, it doesn’t say precisely what kind of pandemic it is. It is a sars virus where transmisson is mainly by airborne aerosols (not droplets) so that clean air , distancing and/or masking is the main indicated protective measures – a message which is still being obliterated by the ‘washing hands’ motif . The @UKHSA is operating as an arm of govt, not an independent public health agency.
It is not ‘seasonal’ like flu , it is not just ‘respiratory’, It can linger in many different organs of the body, and cause many longer term neurologial (‘brainfog’ etc) and cardiovascular (strokes etc), and ‘long covid’ problems. Getting infected multiple times can make things worse. New variants are still arising, vaccines are indicated for the whole population – not the false ‘just protect the vulnerable – and let everyone else get infected, children don’t get it’. This goes against all the basic principles of public health.
Hallett should have said these ‘mistakes’ or deliberate falsehoods, are still being enacted.
A lot to agree with
“…that govt was preparing for the ‘wrong kind of pandemic’…..”
Bollocks. It wasn’t even doing that. A virulent new flu strain (which we’ll almost certainly get sooner or later) will be just as ill-prepared for. The report is pusillanimous if that’s the best it has to say.
There seems little doubt the politicians underperformed, even allowing for the novelty of the situation.
What is not so clear to me is the part played by professional medical and science advisors like Patrick Valance and Jonathan Van Tam. Did they give inadequate advice or were they over ruled?
There is another cost to the pandemic. It enabled the conspiracy theorists to demand too much attention, much of which remains and continues to pollute our politics.
Many think that both of them got a great deal wrong
This is a really important article from the Guardian:-
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/18/covid-inquiry-hallett-prescribes-red-teams-as-antidote-to-flawed-thinking
If this blog is anything it’s an Alternative-Thinking or Critical-Thinking blog. A by-product of critical thinking is that it raises the importance of accountability. Imagine by way of an example a government funded Alternative Thinking TV channel. Imagine this channel putting forward the idea that instead of using base rate manipulation as a way of regulating the economy a varying capital gains tax is used where increases in that tax over a certain minimum rate of return occur. Anathema because taxes are meant to be predictable? But since when has capital speculation been predictable?
The Leeds MMT conference threw up an interesting PDF by Kelton and Fullwiler “To Bond or Not to Bond”:-
https://gimms.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Bonds-or-No-Bonds.pdf
I noticed they used the term Orthodox Money Theory as the opposite of Modern Money Theory. I’d prefer the term IMF – Ignoramus Money Theory – remind you of a backward global organisation that causes a lot of harm?
Thanks