A war of words played out over the first two years of the pandemic. On one side were commentators and scientists opposed to any form of social restriction as a way of keeping infection rates down. On the other, those who argued the government should be pursuing a “zero Covid” policy to eliminate the disease at all costs. Caught between this tug of war were the majority of scientists and the British public.
Sometime last summer, those debates melted into the background with the promise of a “to be continued…” when the statutory inquiry into Covid eventually starts to publish its findings. But the second season of Lockdown Wars has been thrust on us sooner than expected after the Telegraph obtained more than 100,000 pandemic WhatsApp messages. They were passed on by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, who was granted access to them by Matt Hancock while she was co-authoring the former health secretary’s pandemic diaries. She has argued that the public interest in releasing the messages justified breaking her non-disclosure agreement.
