Five years ago this weekend, the nation was plunged into what was expected to be a three-week lockdown. Weeks turned into months and years, lives were upended, and society was reshaped. But with the Covid inquiry rumbling on and the threat of a new pandemic ever present, it is worth reflecting on what happened.
That’s what we did for today’s special episode of Spectator TV. We wanted to look back on the conversations our contributors were having at the time, so this morning’s show starts with an episode from during the pandemic, hosted by Cindy Yu.
She interviews two University of Oxford bioethics professors, Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson, about why – at the time – they felt the pandemic was not as bad as it could get, and whether some lives should be prioritised over others. The extract ends with a discussion of how Covid’s true societal costs should be measured – not just in terms of lives lost, but lives altered: jobs gone, education missed and health problems stored up for the future.
It’s striking to revisit the tone and questions of that time: the uncertainty, the ethical dilemmas, the tension between individual liberty and public health.
Afterwards I’m joined from Washington DC by Kate Andrews, now our US Deputy Editor, but who edited our daily Covid briefing email during the pandemic. We begin on what those societal costs from lost education to mental and physical health problems turned out to be.
We also consider whether the state has learned anything. Did lockdowns go too far? Were they too late? Has the inquiry focused enough on the cost of restrictions, rather than just the virus itself? And will the inquiry genuinely better equip us for the next pandemic, or simply serve as political theatre?
Not all countries took the same approach and Kate describes her time spent in Sweden during the early months of the pandemic and the differences she witnessed there.
Finally, we delve into the economic costs of the pandemic and what it was like to cover it as Spectator journalists.
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