Hello and welcome to a special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.

Now, in fact, this is an extra, extra special edition because you will be hearing the abridged audio from an event that the spectator did earlier this week called the Alternative COVID Inquiry.

Now, as the official COVID inquiry finally comes to an end, we got

together a group of experts to discuss some of the big outstanding questions. Questions like,

did lockdowns actually work? Were they ever justified? Was the government's response lawful?

And did the scientists get everything right? And perhaps most importantly, how do we go about

insulating ourselves for the next eventual pandemic? Now, this discussion that you're going to be

hearing was chaired by the spectators commissioning editor, Lara Brown, and she was joined by

the science writer and journalist Matt Ridley, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the

University of Oxford, Sinatra Gupta.

There was also Jonathan Sumpion, writer and former Supreme Court Justice.

Christopher Snowden, IEA journalist, and Tom Whipple, the science writer and special correspondent at the Times.

Now, we pick up the event, as each panelist was making their opening statements,

so we will begin with Jonathan Sumpson.

This evening shouldn't really be necessary. The reason why it is, is that the patent inadequacy of the reports so far produced by the official inquiry at great public expense.

But Lady Hallett has retraced in minute detail the inadequacies of the decision-makers, but

has said remarkably little about the inadequacy of their decisions. She takes at face value models

like those of Professor Ferguson based on completely unrealistic assumptions about human behavior

and treats them as accurate statements of fact.

She ignores the experience of other places which declined to impose draconian remedies that had been chosen by the UK.

She doesn't address the many authoritative studies which show that there is no significant correlation

between the severity of non-pharmaceutical interventions and mortality.

...