Will a non-partisan international commission examine if Covid-response was a bigger disaster than the pandemic?

By Bharat Dogra 

COVID-19 times were extremely important in recent history. Even now ordinary people as well as scholars continue to speak in terms of pre and post COVID times as well as COVID times. Millions recall this as the most distressing and traumatic times.

However there has been a big debate regarding whether the major share of the enormous distress was caused by the pandemic itself, or by the pandemic response characterized by draconian measures.

Those who supported these measures have stated that COVID-19 causing so much mortality indicates how deadly this was and this mortality would have been even higher, significantly so, if the draconian measures had not been put in place in most parts of the world. This can broadly be called the establishment view, even though a few of the authorities did not strictly follow this.

On the other hand some critics of this establishment view have stated that the pandemic itself was not at all as threatening as to justify such draconian measures as enforced lockdowns for long periods. Several of these critics have argued that the enforced lockdowns for long periods disrupted ordinary essential medical services and created mass unemployment, deprivation and mental health crises. These critics say that it is this unjustified response which caused a huge part of the excess mortality seen during COVID times in most places, with some of these critics also questioning the high fatality rates attributed to the pandemic itself in most establishment discussion. Several critics also allege that compulsory mass vaccination with vaccines created in unprecedented hurry also proved very harmful as the safety and efficacy of this could not be tested applying the required standards. Some critics have related certain aspects of the COVID-response with unethical profiteering of various kinds, with unprecedented increase in the wealth of several billionaires and certain kinds of big businesses, even as there was huge disruption of smaller ones.

Questions regarding all this were raised all through the COVID period despite those raising these questions facing a lot of difficulties and even victimization. 

It is important to note that thousands of doctors, scientists and researchers came forward to join this opposition despite their careers being threatened by this. There was the Great Barrington Declaration involving prominent scientists one of whom, Jay Bhattacharya, faced much unfair criticism at that time but is now on road to heading the National Institute of Health in the USA. There were important statements by the German Network of Evidence-based Medicine. Then there was the International COVID Summit and the Physicians Declaration which followed it, involving thousands of doctors and scientists, reflecting the growing unease in the medical community regarding what was taking place. At the individual level also several leading scientists, researchers and doctors raised important questions regarding the establishment view and pandemic response. These efforts and voices had at least some policy impact and helped to place some restraint on certain excesses.

Now that the extraordinary pressures and circumstances of those times do not exist, it is still important to settle the debates in favor of whatever is the truth, or most evidence-based factual position. It is certainly more than a question of settling whether X was right or whether Y was right. It is a question of future safety for billions of people. In fact once international treaties on pandemics are being pushed, the chances increase even more of certain kinds of draconian policies being imposed on all people without adequate chance of evidence-based response linked to the real situation that is being seen all around them by people.

Hence it is important to set up a non-partisan and independent international commission which can very carefully examine all important aspects of COVID response as well as debates relating to its early stage and pandemic declaration. On this basis recommendations which in future can maximize safety and minimize risks and distress can be made.

Pandemics in certain conditions become the cause for enforcing huge shutdowns and disrupting normal functioning of societies for long periods, and so one must be extremely careful to ensure that such possibilities are not misused for any narrow or ulterior motive by powerful interests. Hence transparency, accountability and counter-checks should be built into the decision processes.

Similarly in terms of minimizing the risks of pandemics, this commission should examine means of reducing environmental risks as well as lab-leak risks.

There are powerful interests which are not in favor of such transparency and accountability, and hence the possibility of an independent, non-partisan commission on such a sensitive issue was rather remote till recently. However in the process of recent changes in the USA with Robert Kennedy Jr. becoming Health Secretary and Jay Bhattacharya on the way to another senior position, as they had been pleading in the past for alternative views to be heard and for transparency on these issues, such possibility of independent and non-partisan re-examination of all related issues are not so remote now. So this is a good time for increasing such efforts, with commitment to a safer future which avoids costly mistakes which may have been made in the past.

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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, and Man over Machine