What can we hope to learn from the Covid inquiry?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2023
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Within the sessions, WhatsApp messages revealed that Dame Angela McLean – who at the time was chief scientific advisor to Ministry of Defence – sent a secret message referring to Rishi Sunak as 'Dr Death the chancellor' in reference to the public health impacts of the 'eat out to help out' scheme. What were some of the other revelations? Did we get any clarity on how these mathematical models were produced and implemented? And what can we hope to learn from what promises to be a long and protracted inquiry?
Oscar Edmondson speaks to Kate Andrews and Michael Simmons.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews |
| 0:05.5 | of unrivaled authority. Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription |
| 0:11.6 | in print and online. Plus a £20 Amazon gift voucher. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.co.uk |
| 0:20.4 | forward slash voucher. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the spectator's daily politics |
| 0:29.7 | podcast. I'm Oscar Edonson and I'm joined today by Kate Andrews and Michael Simmons. |
| 0:35.6 | So this week we've had some interesting developments in the public COVID-19 inquiry, |
| 0:40.8 | which we thought we'd discuss on this Saturday's shots. But first, Michael, I thought |
| 0:44.2 | would be a good idea to remind listeners exactly what this inquiry is. It's sort of scope and why |
| 0:50.1 | it's been set up. So the inquiry is looking into how prepared the country and the government were |
| 0:58.0 | for COVID. What decisions we made in COVID and how COVID and the lockdowns affected different |
| 1:04.6 | people in society is split into six modules and the module that they're looking in at the moment |
| 1:09.8 | is called core UK decision making and political governance. Now from my watching of some of the |
| 1:16.3 | hearings, that section can really be bowled down to why didn't we lock down harder in sooner. |
| 1:21.4 | That's kind of the vibe of this module. And this week specifically, they've been mostly speaking |
| 1:26.7 | to people involved with Sage and a lot of the people involved with Spymo and Spymo were the |
| 1:32.1 | modeling group which had some of the names that you'll be familiar with, such as Nell Ferguson, |
| 1:36.5 | who produced the models that essentially led to the country locking down. So that's what the |
| 1:40.4 | inquiry is looking at at the moment. Great. And Kate, can you take us through some of maybe the big |
| 1:45.6 | revelations that we've had so far? Well, I think probably the biggest moment this week was Ferguson's |
| 1:52.4 | testimony in which you had questioning that had a lot to do with his own personal response to the |
| 1:59.3 | week's leading up to pandemic. But also, well, I found much more interesting questions about his |
| 2:04.1 | kinds of communication with government. Now, there have been a lot of complaints we've heard from |
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