The British Covid inquiry was supposed to uncover and debate the mistakes made by the government during the pandemic years. And yet, many of the figures now proven to have been voicing legitimate concerns about lockdowns, vaccine mandates and the country’s future post-Covid were nowhere to be seen. Join UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, Oxford professor of theoretical epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, Swedish journalist and author of ‘The Herd’ Johan Anderberg and author of ‘The Covid Consensus’ Thomas Fazi, for an alternative take on the UK’s pandemic legacy.
You can watch the full event above.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI’m a little surprised that Mr. Fazi couldn’t find a reason (or source) for the adoption of one narrative after investigation and writing 500 pages. I generally agree with Ms. Gupta’s position, and there are many fundamental inconsistencies of logic, as she puts it, that remain unchallenged.
Before I illustrate just three of these issues, some context: I was first in my community to wear a mask and one of the first to stop wearing a mask when the information changed.
Ivermectin
I have no proof – either way – of Ivermectin’s possible effectiveness against Covid, but as it has been used 100’s of millions of times safely for other illness I couldn’t see any harm in having it around in case. I asked my Doctor and she told me that she had been told (all Doctors had been told) that they could not prescribe it. There then followed a smear campaign falsely aligning the use of Human Ivermectin (no longer available) to Horse Ivermectin. Who was behind this?
Impossible rates of non-infection
Initially, the earliest USA based case was identified in Santa Clara, California, later another case even earlier in Washington State. The initial rates of infection – described as “exponential” – and graphed by the British university were accepted by most as a scary reality. Yet 3 months after the first West coast infection very few people were infected (under 2% of what would have been predicted) What could explain this huge anomaly – I wrote to several media organisations with detailed mathemmatical explanation and graphs and recived only one reply from the LA Times (who said that they too were puzzled). ZERO reportage on this and later (when a possible explanation around “strains” of virus came to light) again ZERO discussion/media
Wearing a mask outside
Aware of bias, I read and listen to media from many perspectives, including NPR – who must have repeated the “follow the science” mantra dozens of times a day. A year and a bit in the science was clear that the virus – a) spread by small droplets so masks were largely ineffectual and b) was exceedingly difficult to catch outside while walking or running (many scientific reasons). Yep NPR continued to have officials on categorically lying about this for more than 9 months afterwards.
There are so many more of these matters – vaccinating Children for example….
Shouldn’t an inquiry focus on each of these in detail and get to the bottom of who pushed the false narratives?
Odd that all the commenters are not interested in this? Anyhow…. Controversial virus-hunting scientist skewered at US COVID-origins hearingarticle in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01305-z?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=52cfde5305-nature-briefing-daily-20240502&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-52cfde5305-52557180