The COVID-19 Commission of Inquiry has this afternoon published a full report on its first module, assessing the resilience and preparedness of the UK’s response to the pandemic. So far, it has been treated to seemingly pre-determined headlines about how the UK Government failed its citizens by “preparing for the wrong pandemic” and that the country was “ill-prepared”. The impact of austerity meant this was certainly true, but the bigger and as yet unreported story in the report is its sweeping attack on the approach to lockdown itself.
Baroness Hallett’s full report contains notable criticisms of the government’s preferred lockdown policy, which was also adopted around the world. Far from claiming that the UK should have imposed a lockdown earlier and more harshly, as many predicted, Hallett’s team has concluded that “the imposition of a lockdown should be a measure of last resort (…) indeed, there are those who argue that a lockdown should never be imposed.”
Remarkably, the initial media reactions have almost nothing to say about the report’s conclusions on lockdowns, just as the word “lockdown” was not mentioned even once in the WHO’s September 2019 report on non-pharmaceutical interventions in pandemics. This is because, while it has long been believed in these circles that earlier and harsher lockdowns were the solution, that is not the conclusion reached by the report. Instead, Baroness Hallett has concluded that there were devastating failures in imposing the lockdown in the first place.
