National lockdowns were given “very little thought” ahead of the pandemic and there was a failure to consider the “potentially massive impact” that restrictions on civil liberties would have, the Covid Inquiry has heard.
As the inquiry held its first full hearing two years after it was first announced, Baroness Heather Hallett, who chairs it, was told the country was not prepared for the pandemic and that local health officials found out details of restrictions at the same time as the public.
Giving an opening statement to the hearing, Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, said there had been “very little debate pre-pandemic” around whether a lockdown might be necessary and how it could be avoided.
The UK is in the midst of a very robust Covid response analysis, lockdowns are the sort of evil petty tyrants live for.
Where are our COVID-19 public inquiries?
“When the time is right, our government will be very open to examining very thoroughly the response of this country to the COVID-19 crisis,” then health minister Patty Hajdu assured Canadians in April 2021. A year later, a Research Co. poll suggested two-thirds of Canadians were keen on seeing a public inquiry into both the federal and provincial governments’ pandemic responses — and rightly so. The list of questions is practically endless, but most are simply variations on a theme: “Why did you do what you did?”; “Did it work?”; And most crucially, “How do we ensure our health-care and long-term care systems are never so vulnerable again?”
