The Covid Inquiry Says We Didn’t Lock Down Hard Enough

Apparently, the only mistake Britain made in 2020 was not locking you in your house sooner.

An 800-page Covid Inquiry report released recently criticised the UK and devolved governments for responding too slowly in the early weeks of the pandemic. Summarising part two of the inquiry, focused on political governance, chair Baroness Hallett said actions “repeatedly amounted to a case of ‘too little, too late’.”

If ministers had pulled the trigger earlier, she argues, the 23 March 2020 national lockdown “may have been avoided” and 23,000 lives could have been saved.

But for many, this represents some sort of fantasy world where the only solution was more lockdown, sooner, harder.

Baroness Fox told the BBC the inquiry “misses the point entirely,” calling lockdowns “a catastrophe” that caused massive long-term damage to society.

“Even the figure, the 23,00 figure is based on modelling, one of the things we might have learnt from that whole period was that modelling was unreliable and I think that we have to say there’s a lack of intellectual curiosity here, ” she said.

Models during lockdowns wildly over-predicted deaths and hospitalisations, yet still formed the backbone of this hindsight scolding.

Meanwhile, the economic damage is colossal: lockdown public spending was about  £410 billion. Government borrowing skyrocketed and debt passed 100% of GDP. The effects are still being felt today.

While this money-printing spree raged, it was young people who bore the brunt: teenagers lost vital years of schooling and social development, children suffered from motor-speaking issues linked to prolonged mask-wearing by parents or at school, rites of passage were cancelled, and neighbourhoods transformed into snitch-zones where neighbours reported neighbours for house parties.

“I also think that the destruction of young people’s capacity to socialise with each other, the fact that we told people never to go back to work, we frightened the nation in other words, I think that is a real problem,” said Fox.

Comedian Abi Roberts pointed to the moral wreckage, including the man scolded by officials for trying to break social dictancing rules to comfort his grieving mother at a funeral.

“Whether you believe in God or not, trampling on the sacred rituals and gatherings that give meaning to life is one of the greatest crimes of all,” she wrote on X.

Why wasn’t this comedian called to the enquiry?