let's talk right now about well the covid inquiry and very closely related a new report coming out on Thursday looking at the NHS it progress is in Decline for the first time in 50 years are these two subjects by any chance related well let's talk to Carl henan he's professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford and joins us good afternoon to you hi Julia good afternoon lovely to talk to you let's start with covid of course I do think these things are very closely related and of course we've got the covid inquir this is the third module they're looking at looking at different impacts of different different aspects of the of covid policy and this one is all about Healthcare healthare at the time uh PP mask the policy of uh of of trying to stop covid within hospitals but also the impact on long-term Health Care as well um what do you expect that we're going to learn from this well this is the third module of nine Julia so look and the remit is quite broad as you said how hospitals responded infections in hospitals do not resuscitate audience Tri tools for denying care what about the N Andale hospitals in fact one good thing is they're going to even ask the question was it right to protect the NHS was that a good question but one question I'd asked you we've been talking about money and money is is spare we're now talking about 160 million we've spent so far there are about 280 civil servants working on this about 190,000 pound a day I just think look this is going to run right through till December again this module huge expense are we going to learn anything I'm not sure however I do think in this next few months there'll be some real moments who will get me back on because I think there are going to be people who subm pieces of research evidence opinions that we go really and I think that's important the second thing I'd say is I wonder what's starting to happen in the inquiry if they're starting to realize have to get more and more information they're starting to question things and going but you know it's a bit more uncertain than all those modelers and advisers say actually there were lots of really difficult and complex things that were going on that didn't seem quite right a good example of that will be the do not resuscitate orders that were used in March April that were wielded out too fast and I think we have to have serious questions about those issues but will we learn anything I don't know when it's gonna I think is Oak produced the most amount of information with those Revelations from Matt hanock the then Health secretary's WhatsApp messages we saw what was going on in government and how completely chaotic and and just on a whim that most of the decisions were made um and that I think is what's most telling Al of course we don't have the whatsapps from March 2020 when the massive change in opinion on whether we were going to lock down which we weren't going to do publicly stated and then suddenly everything changed and we still don't have the evidence for all of that but the big concern about the co inquiry from lots of people I know particularly those of us who campaigned against lockdowns and certainly them continuing repeated lockdowns and children out of school mask mandates all of that was is there seems to be so much um focus and emphasis on sort of title tattle and who liked who and who didn't like who and people Point scoring as opposed to getting to the bottom of things and that was something you and I and many others who campaigned against a lot of the policies wanted at the time which was you know again I supported it I assumed they had evidence for a lockdown so I thought it was a good idea at the beginning didn't occur to me that they didn't have evidence I I that was mindblowing to me but it it is just extraordinary how you know how how how the co inquiry has got to the bottom of the the absolute I mean just incredibly low level of debate and information exchange that was going on in government and in the NHS at that time and and subsequently because it's a judge Le inquiry is taking sort of expert opinion what I think should happen now Julia is they should set out a review of the evidence of the collateral damage of lockdowns because if anybody's not convinced as we still sit here with an economy that's in TAS looking at our children's education people are talking about the crisis in hospitals if you set out that evidence clear and says if you lock down here's the short medium long-term consequences you would look at it and go what a disaster over decision but at the time it's like you've got a credit card and you can Max it out you just go and spend but there'll come a day when you've got to repay that debt and we are going to be repaying this debt for decades to come and this inquiry is not prepared to take the evidence and say let's look at the collateral impact of these restrictions on lockdown and let's compare them to somewhere like Sweden that didn't do that and what frustrates me the most is when matter of times people will say to me on social media or you know people might chat to in a in a bar or a party and they'll say yes but we didn't know then what we know now actually if you go back and look at the statements made by Professor Chris witty and uh and and S Patrick Valance um they will make if you look back at mid-march week or two before we actually lock down they were saying everything that we know now we had that we knew it was elderly people that were most impacted we knew a lot about how it spread we knew that closing schools wouldn't save lives we knew that you know they knew all of this they knew that the vast majority of people would not be severely affected and yet they did it anyway and I find it extraordinary how many people the majority people in this country still think it was the right thing to do because I think what happened here is they got panicked into the hysteria to foot flop their argument and in doing so then spent a lot of time defending that status quo position and and and this is a real issue that needs to be addressed because you go look if we're going to just you have all this 300 million pound inquiry but what's going to happen is in an near of 24-hour news social media you're just going to panic and flip the switch and lock us down again what is the point of the inquiry yeah you don't ask the sentral question which you're right it was very clear early on there were lots of mistakes being made because people people were telling you remember this one two weeks two weeks to flatten the curve that's all you need and you had people like Barack Obama on social media telling you within two weeks we lock down and everything will be fine and the exact opposite happened but also we knew that that we I mean literally all I I watched back recently a press conference on the number 10 press conferences where genuinely they were saying no no you see how if you just lock down it'll just come back you're doing is delaying it and then it would just come back again I mean they knew that they knew that but they did it anyway look this of course all leads in you talked about the collateral damage collateral damage massive impact on NHS waiting list the waiting list were already massive and growing before Co so let's not give a free pass to the conservative government on that over the years um but we've got a big report coming out on Thursday this all I think will very much link and this is a report by Lord ariser he's a surgeon he's a former labor Health Minister and this week this report is going to say the NHS progress is going backwards for the first time in 50 years in terms of people waiting particularly children in A&E routine Services grinding to a halt during the pandemic and the knock on effect of that but also just you know the progress on tackling deaths from heart disease and long waights for treatment basically saying we are going backwards not forwards for the first time what do you make of that as someone who's not just a professor dealing with the theory of this you work in A&E you know most weeks so I think for the rhetoric of 50 years is is actually a sideshow because it's a distractor I can go back to 1997 when we was spending 37 billion in the NHS and actually as he came in then people were strewn across the corridors outside in ambulances there was no social media and 24-hour news people ignored it unless they were actually people so there has been times where it's been bad we've had times where there's been investment and things have been fixed so in the ughs we fixed the waiting list where we sit now you're right it was about over 4 million the waiting list and it's ballooned to 7.6 million but the problem now is we've got this insa appetite for healthare and with that we've got the insatable appetite that we can prevent all illness without doing the basics eat a little bit less exercise a little bit more drink a little bit less Julie you know the rules they're personal anybody this is my basic rule anybody who gives you a simple fix to a highly complex problem will be wrong and watch this week what's going to happen is unfortunately the health secretary is going to come forward and say Here's the solution actually what we need to do is stabilize the first thing you got to do is stabilize the waiting list the Emergency Care yeah I would also have some priorities I do feel I would have a priority about councel care I would like to see a priority that says anybody who has a diagnosis will be seen and treated within one week and that's our priority some things will have to go on the back burone of that low value don't provide an evidence-based approach but here we've got something where we can make a real difference to you do you want to support it would we pay a little bit more tax for that I suspect we would do I think we absolutely would Carl oh thank you so much there's so much more I want to talk to you about we'd have to leave it there times's against us but come on again soon I know you will Carl henan professor of evidence-based medicine University of oord thank you for that it's bring in Theo Ashwood listening to all of that um look you going back to co you were someone we mentioned on the show we mentioned it before you actually you know you were hit I mean I caught it in March 2020 I was UN well for a month I I mean I was really knocked out by nothing like you you WI you know High dependency W in in hospital for a week and you you in your 30s 38 slim healthy you didn't take any of the boxes for people who were supposed to be so we know look we know that diseases can hit horribly um does that does that actually sort of color your your views on this issue and on covid policy at all I think my frustration is that I try and try take a balanced view because whilst I recognize what happened to me and it was extraordinary what happened to me given my age and how fit and healthy I was I also recognize the effect it happened because of speaking to family members and friends the effect of the various policies that were introduced what happened on them you somebody fairly close to very to my father lost their life because they were diagnosed um they had pancreatic cancer and they couldn't get an appointment at um their GP to get the diagnosis and in the end they only ended up living a matter of months and they could have had potentially a couple of years but every time they tried to get an appointment to their GP they were just turned away too risky to come in because of Co no the pancreatic cancer will get you first so so you would you would hope that one of the lessons that would be learned from this is not just speaking to necessarily the victims of those who suffered from covid and they absolutely need to be heard in this inquiry but also the victims of those who lost you know who lost loved ones who didn't get the treatment and and and I'm sorry but genuinely that the co family members breed I'm I'm I'm really sorry for anyone who's lost a loved one but we've all lost loved ones the idea that these people somehow have have a greater moral status than every body else when you've got someone saying it's absolutely awful that my you know my 98-year-old mother was in a care home and died of covid and she was killed I mean with all due respect 98y olds in Care Homes do actually have a habit of dying but to to Carl's point there was never a conversation about that there was never an open conversation about how we have that not I'm not saying it doesn't matter no exactly not saying oh we don't care about old people but we must also care about everyone else I got I I've got friends who you know didn't get their M their mamogram routin mamogram so they cancer their breast cancer was discovered years later I mean you know given a choice between a 98y old in a care home and a a young woman with breast c yeah you know I I know who I choose to prioritize I'm sorry I know and it Ain the 98y old and we had a situation where number 10 was just taking information from the scientists and and number 10 you know the central government is like a bicycle wheel it's like a hub of a bicycle wheel needs to take information in from lots of different people not just from one and going and not being panicked by 24-hour social media go you we hey I'm saying we could do this for years we did do it for years