The biased Covid inquiry will be of no use when we next face the outbreak of some – probably Chinese – variant of flu
ONE of the exciting events you may have missed this week was the appearance of the First Minister for Wales before the Covid inquiry.
Yes, I know, I know. You’re gutted.
If only you’d have known, you’d have got some friends round, opened a few beers and settled down to watch Mark Drakeford talking 50 shades of s**t.
Actually, this should be compulsory viewing for anyone who is thinking of voting Labour.
Because what the Welsh are suffering now will almost certainly be the fate of the entire country by the end of the year.
Drakeford has already got the population up in arms over his stupid 20mph speed limits everywhere.
And he was at the inquiry self-justifying his decisions to lock down pretty much every hour that God sends.
If Drakeford had his way, Wales would still be in lockdown.
Trouble is, though, it looks more and more like the awful people running this inquiry AGREE with him.
I always suspected that we weren’t going to hear the full truth from this phenom-enally expensive inquiry.
You could tell that from the opening statements from Lady Hallett, whose inquiry it is.
They are focused pretty much solely on hammering the Government for not having locked down sooner.
And they have little time for anyone who suggests that the social costs of locking down may have outweighed — many, many times over — the health benefits.
So it’s a biased inquiry and of scant use for determining what happens when we next face the outbreak of some — probably Chinese — variant of flu.
Who says this? Well, I did, just now, in that previous sentence.
But you don’t need to take my word for it.
A group of some of the UK’s most eminent scientists are also convinced the inquiry has made up its mind before it has heard all the evidence.
And 55 of these people have signed a letter saying as much.
Those signing serve at our top universities.
Two of the more prominent names are Dr Kevin Bardosh, from Edinburgh University, an expert in infections.
And Professor Sunetra Gupta, an epidemiologist from Oxford University.
Part of the letter reads: “Very few scien-tists with an alternative position have been asked to testify, and the inquiry has been confrontational rather than inquisitorial in its questioning of these views.
“The inquiry has not seriously quest-ioned the hypotheses and assumptions offered to government, especially from government-appointed modellers, which were used to justify Covid policies.
“Neither has it seriously examined the social and economic costs of lockdown.”
Costly decisions
The scientists are rightly worried the drastic measures we took to shut up shop have had a really bad effect on our country.
Quite apart from the economy being wrecked and children not getting their lessons in school.
We still haven’t properly gone back to work.
An awful lot of people, many in the public sector (natch) don’t seem to ever want to work again.
Then there’s the damage to health caused by isolation at home.
The effect on our immune systems.
And the terrible numbers of really serious illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease, which were not treated or remained undiagnosed during the pandemic.
As the scientists declare, these are the sorts of things we need to hear being discussed.