The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Another pandemic is coming. This time we have to be ready
As we look back over the span of this Parliament, it’s easy to forget that we’re now four years on from its defining moment – the first Covid lockdown. Almost everything that has followed has been dictated by that event. The terrible death toll across the globe is the abiding legacy, with families ripped apart by tragedy. We’ve also seen jobs and businesses not just disrupted, but in many cases lost forever. Children’s education was effectively put on hold, while students lounged in their bedrooms – missing out on the chance to mix with their peers at university. States had to step in to offer unprecedented support, with levels of borrowing not seen since the Second World War, placing a huge strain on the public finances.
The rapid vaccine rollouts, and the fortitude of people across the world means that, in many ways, it is a story of exceptional human resilience. And having served in Cabinet as attorney general when those impossible choices were made in 2020 and 2021, I’m of the view that Boris Johnson took the only decision available to him at the time, especially with regard to the first lockdown in spring 2020.
However, it is highly probable that we will see another pandemic in the years to come. Countries the world over were unprepared for Covid and grappled in real time with the toughest of decisions, using what data and science was available to them at the time. In the future, can we strike a better balance in a similar scenario?
Firstly, it was clear from the start that closing schools would damage children’s education. Millions suffered because of this disruption to their studies. We must better support our children to attend school safely in any future similar event, while protecting the more vulnerable.
Secondly, the furlough scheme rightly supported many of those who were unable to work. But with the advent of home working for many office jobs, could the support not be targeted more precisely at those unable to carry out their jobs at all? Decisions taken in 2020 and 2021 were unprecedented in their scale and nature – ministers did the best they could, in good faith. But with a clear eye, in the future we must better discern which companies and individuals warrant support and those who can carry on unassisted.
Thirdly, how can we better protect the vulnerable, namely the elderly and those more at risk from disease in a set of circumstances similar to Covid? The state was ill-prepared for such a mass health crisis and we cannot allow our elderly, those in care homes and the vulnerable to be placed at such risk in a future pandemic. But patients were also dying alone with their relatives prevented from being by their side. Was such a harsh approach absolutely essential? Could we not ensure that relatives have an enforceable right to challenge such decisions in the future?
Fundamentally, there is still a lack of understanding of whether what we did actually contained the spread of the virus or not. It will be years before the Covid Inquiry reports, but what we need now is a clearer epidemiological assessment of the value of lockdown. At the time, sceptics were cast out and the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) advice was accepted as gospel. We now know that the WHO got it wrong during the pandemic, so we must maintain a healthy scepticism of its proposed “Pandemic Treaty” to ensure that our Government has the freedom to depart from its advice in the future. We must improve modelling and protect legitimate scientific challenge next time around.
And for governments, there is a need to consider the balance between ensuring we save as many lives as possible, while protecting civil liberties and freedoms. Will the next pandemic be like Covid, in which the elderly and vulnerable are disproportionately impacted? Most viruses are airborne, but not all, so what would our potential responses look like to a different sort of public health crisis? We must be much better prepared and able to take better decisions to protect us all, and that includes protecting our freedoms.