Unmasked

Thousands of deaths were avoidable. Remember that

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Twenty-three thousand people died in the UK after being infected in the first wave of the pandemic, according to the official report on the second module of the Covid inquiry.

They could have been saved if Boris Johnson's government had ordered a lockdown one week earlier. The number is worth repeating, not just because it's large or because of the devastating inference that even more lives were lost avoidably through delays to the second and third lockdowns. The reality is the exact number is unknowable. It's one thing to debate it - clearly, the data and methodology can lead to different calculations on how many thousands of people died unnecessarily. But it's another thing to discredit it - no one suggests that the delay in responding to the evidence the government had in early 2020 led to anything other than thousands of deaths and a hangover of sickness, grief and scars on young and old, all of which could have been avoided. The main reason the number needs to be remembered is that those who could have saved these lives would rather it were forgotten.