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The Covid Inquiry

230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment

The Covid Inquiry’s second report has helped expose the UK’s ‘closed club’ approach to dealing with the pandemic – which cost so many people their lives, writes former WHO director Anthony Costello

Professor Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance maintained a ‘calculated silence’ during and after the pandemic
Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP

The Covid-19 Inquiry’s second report, published in November, was a devastating critique of the medical advisors, civil servants, and politicians who led the UK to the worst public health disaster in a century.

With 232,000 deaths, the country experienced a death rate five times higher than the east Asian states that took rapid action to suppress and control the Coronavirus. The figure is five times more than the number of deaths inflicted during the Blitz.

The bereaved need accountability – but they won’t get it from the medical establishment.

‘Made In Britain’: A Crafted Future?

On Kensington High Street, a few doors from the Underground, stands Japan House, London. Part gallery, part boutique, part cultural embassy, it is a masterclass in national self-promotion.
Iain Overton

Notes on Now – Berger Lives On

On 5 November 2026, John Berger will be 100. Technically, he died nine years ago. But an explosion of his writing is being published and republished around the world, including for the first time in Armenian, the 50th language his work will have been translated into.
Anthony Barnett