It is 15 months since Sweden’s Coronavirus Commission presented its final report. The 770-page document analysed how the country handled the pandemic and came up with numerous suggestions for how things might have been done better. The initial response, it concluded, was too slow, but the report vindicated the decision to make social distancing measures voluntary rather than compulsory.
Why, then, has it taken the UK’s own Covid inquiry so long even to get going? In two weeks’ time the chair of the inquiry, Baroness Hallett, will finally start to hear evidence for module one – which looks at Britain’s pandemic preparedness – but she has said that she expects to be collecting evidence for three more years. And then of course the report will have to be written. Perhaps by the tenth anniversary of the outbreak we may finally have some answers.
The lockdown WhatsApp messages show what happens when a small group is given too much power
Meanwhile, the same apparatus that failed Britain so badly is still in place.
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