UK Covid-19 inquiry — part one

A collection of climate stories mostly

mirror.co.uk

Perhaps we’ve all heard enough about Covid-19 to last a lifetime?

Jaundiced by the whole affair, my only interest of late was in the battle Baroness Hallett, the Chairperson of the inquiry had, to access Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages.

The government finally lost its high court challenge to prevent Johnson’s messages, notebooks and diaries being read in full. They didn’t want to hand over irrelevant content apparently. Hallett argued it was up to her to decide what was relevant or not.

Shame on them and me for being distracted by this fallacious argument when the real story so far, is the conclusion to the first phase of the inquiry and whether the death of 228,000 British citizens could have been prevented?

69 politicians, civil servants and scientists were asked about the UK’s planning for a pandemic and the readiness of our healthcare system.

How prepared were we as a nation and could we have ever known what was about to happen in March 2020?

I’m grateful to openDemocracy who produced this video. They followed proceedings every day of the inquiry and interviewed attendees including the Royal Society for Public Health, the Covid-19…