COVID-19
COVID-19 inquiry in UK asks whether ‘terrible consequences’ could have been avoided
By Jill Lawless in London
LONDON (AP) — A mammoth three-year public inquiry into the U.K. government’s handling of the response to COVID-19 opened Tuesday by asking whether suffering and death could have been avoided with better planning.
Lawyer Hugo Keith, who is counsel to the inquiry, said the coronavirus pandemic had brought “death and illness on an unprecedented scale” in modern Britain. He said that COVID-19 has been recorded as a cause of death for 226,977 people in the U.K.
“The key issue is whether that impact was inevitable,” Keith said. “Were those terrible consequences inexorable, or were they avoidable or capable of mitigation?”
A group of people who lost relatives to COVID-19 held pictures of their loved one outside the inquiry venue, an anonymous London office building. The first day of public hearings began with a 17-minute video in which people described the devastating impact of the pandemic on them and their loved ones.
Britain’s pandemic death toll is one of the highest in Europe, and the decisions of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government have been endlessly debated. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold an inquiry after pressure from bereaved families.
The inquiry, led by retired judge Heather Hallett, is due to hold hearings until 2026. It is due to investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded and what lessons can be learned for the future.
Senior scientists and officials including Johnson are expected to appear as witnesses. Hallett, who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath, is currently in a legal battle with the government over her request to see an unedited trove of notebooks, diaries and WhatsApp messages between Johnson and other officials.
U.K. public inquiries are often thorough, but rarely quick. An inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath began in 2009 and issued its 2.6-million word report in 2016.
Hallett says she will release findings after each section rather than waiting until hearings conclude.
Keith said the first section would look at whether British planning relied too heavily on the mistaken assumption a future pandemic would resemble influenza.
He said that at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the government had said that “the United Kingdom was well prepared to respond in a way that offered substantial protection to the public.”
“Even at this stage, before hearing the evidence, it is apparent that we might not have been very well prepared at all,” he said.
Keith also said planning for Britain’s exit from the European Union after voters backed Brexit in a 2016 referendum distracted resources from work to prepare for potential pandemics.
“That departure required an enormous amount of planning and preparation, particularly to address what were likely to be the severe consequences of a no-deal exit on food and medicine supplies, travel and transport, business borders and so on,” he said.
“It is clear that such planning, from 2018 onwards, crowded out and prevented some or perhaps a majority of the improvements that central government itself understood were required to be made to resilience planning and preparedness.”
COVID-19
Freedom Convoy leaders’ sentencing judgment delayed, Crown wants them jailed for two years

Fr0m LifeSiteNews
Years after their arrests, Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are still awaiting their sentencing after being found ‘guilty’ of mischief.
The sentencing for Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber has been further delayed, according to the protest organizers.
“In our trial, the longest mischief trial of all time, we set hearing dates to set hearing dates,” quipped Lich, drawing attention to the fact that the initial sentencing date of April 16 has passed and there is still not a rescheduled date.
Earlier this month, both Lich and Barber were found guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest and as social media influencers, despite the non-violent nature of the demonstration.
Barber noted earlier this month that the Crown is seeking a two-year jail sentence against him and is also looking to seize the truck he used in the protest. As a result, his legal team asked for a stay of proceedings.
Barber, along with his legal team, have argued that all proceedings should be stopped because he “sought advice from lawyers, police and a Superior Court Judge” regarding the legality of the 2022 protest. If his application is granted, Barber would avoid any jail time.
Lich has argued that the Crown asking for a two-year jail sentence is “not about the rule of law” but rather “about crushing a Canadian symbol of Hope.”
Lich and Barber were arrested on February 17, 2022, in Ottawa for their roles in leading the popular Freedom Convoy protest against COVID mandates. During COVID, Canadians were subjected to vaccine mandates, mask mandates, extensive lockdowns and even the closure of churches.
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.” During the clear-out, an elderly lady was trampled by a police horse and many who donated to the cause had their bank accounts frozen.
The actions taken by the Trudeau government were publicly supported by Mark Carney at the time, who on Monday won re-election and is slated to form a minority government.
COVID-19
Former Australian state premier accused of lying about justification for COVID lockdowns

Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria
From LifeSiteNews
By David James
Monica Smit said she is launching a private criminal prosecution against Daniel Andrews based on ‘new evidence proving they enforced lockdowns without medical advice or evidence.’
The fiercest opponent of the former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews during the COVID crisis was activist Monica Smit. The government responded to her advocacy by arresting her for participating in anti-lockdown protests. When she refused to sign her bail conditions she was made, in effect, a political prisoner for 22 days.
Smit subsequently won a case against the Victoria Police for illegal imprisonment, setting an important precedent. But in a vicious legal maneuver, the judge ensured that Smit would be punished again. She awarded Smit $4,000 in damages which was less than the amount offered in pre-trial mediation. It meant that, despite her victory, Smit was liable for Victoria Police’s legal costs of $250,000. It was not a good day for Australian justice.
There is a chance that the tables will be reversed. Smit has announced she is launching a private criminal prosecution against Andrews and his cabinet based on “new evidence proving they enforced lockdowns without medical advice or evidence.”
The revelation that the savage lockdown policies made little sense from a health perspective is hardly a surprise. Very little of what happened made medical sense. For one thing, according to the Worldometer, about four-fifths of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 had no symptoms. Yet for the first time in medical history healthy people were treated as sick.
The culpability of the Victorian government is nevertheless progressively becoming clearer. It has emerged that the Andrews government did not seek medical advice for its curfew policies, the longest in the Western world. Andrews repeatedly lied when he said at press conferences that he was following heath advice.
David Davis, leader of the right wing opposition Liberal Party, has made public a document recording an exchange between two senior health officials. It shows that the ban on people leaving their homes after dark was implemented without any formal input from health authorities.
Davis acquired the email exchange, between Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton and his deputy Finn Romanes, under a Freedom of Information request. It occurred two-and-a-half hours after the curfew was announced.
Romanes explained he had been off work for two days and was not aware of any “key conversations and considerations” about the curfew and had not “seen any specific written assessment of the requirement” for one.
He added: “The idea of a curfew has not arisen from public health advice in the first instance. In this way, the action of issuing a curfew is a mirror to the State of Disaster and is not occurring on public health advice but is a decision taken by Cabinet.” Sutton responded with: “Your assessment is correct as I understand it.”
The scale of the deceptions is becoming harder for most Australians to avoid if they are paying attention. The mainstream media, for example, is now running stories that the virus originated in a laboratory. Those who have memories will recall that in 2020 anyone suggesting that the virus was artificially made were accused of anti-China racism, especially the state broadcasters SBS and the ABC. Likewise, most politicians and academics dismissed the lab leak theory. To say the least, no one is holding up their hand to take responsibility for their errors.
The email exchange, compelling evidence of the malfeasance of the Andrews government, raises further questions. If Smit’s lawyers can get Andrews to respond under oath, one ought to be: “If you were lying about following medical advice, then why were you in such a hurry to impose such severe measures and attack dissenters?”
It remains a puzzle. Why did otherwise inconsequential politicians suddenly turn into dictatorial monsters with no concern for what their constituents thought?
The most likely explanation is that they were told it was a biowarfare attack and were terrified, ditching health advice and applying military protocols. The mechanism for this was documented in a speech by Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts.
If so, was an egregious error of judgement. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed, 2020 and 2021 had the lowest level of respiratory diseases since records have been kept. There was never a pandemic.
There needs to be an explanation to the Australian people of why they lost their liberty and basic rights. A private prosecution might achieve this. Smit writes: “Those responsible should face jail time, nothing less. The latest revelation of ‘document 34‘ is just the beginning. A public criminal trial will expose truths beyond our imagination.”
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