More reports from the UK Government Covid-19 Inquiry today, and lamentable reading too, if you can make it through all 800 pages across two reports released today 2025-11-20. You can find all the reports here.
My Own Timeline
My elderly parents had already gone into isolation in February. Having lived through the 1957-8 H2N2 Influenza pandemic – indeed, my mother having worked through it as a nurse – and having been told by her mother all about the 1918 H1N1 Influenza pandemic, they knew what was coming.
I recall being distinctly uneasy about travelling down to London (from North Wales) early on the morning of Monday 2020-03-16. By the time my train reached Euston at 08:30, the office I was heading for had been shut due to Covid, so I headed for a different one in Westminster for the day. I was intending to stay in Farncombe and commute into London each day, but on Tuesday and Wednesday it felt more sensible to stay put in Farncombe.
Wednesday evening I received a call from a reasonably senior Civil Servant who knew that I lived far away. The gist of the call was this: if you want to get back to Wales, get out now, don’t wait. I was, and remain, grateful for this call. The imposition of a lockdown was clearly expected imminently. It was too late to return that night, but I was on a 6am train to Waterloo. It was normally difficult to even find standing room on this service, but there were just 3 of us in the carriage. It was eerie.
I had intended to avoid the London Underground, but it was so empty I travelled to Euston and was on a mostly empty train heading North at 09:10. It had a feeling of being on the last chopper out of Saigon, and the few of us on the train all heaved a collective sigh of relief as it pulled out of Euston.
“I wasn’t really sure what was going on”
–Me, 2020-03-19, after Paul Hardcastle
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Once home, I watched with amazement as absolutely nothing like a lockdown appeared for several days. Even at the time it made me think of comments by Professor Peter Piot, one of the team who first identified the Ebola virus in 1976.
“This should be a lesson for everybody that you can’t overreact. You can’t overprotect. […] It’s better to be accused of overreacting than to not take all the measures”
Professor Peter Piot, October 2014
Monday 2020-03-23
Finally, action. But, very much as today’s report indicates, “Too little, too late”.
With exponential matters, if you are not in front of the curve, you will never catch up.
Sophie Baskerville 