Even before the Covid inquiry, still due to get under way this spring, the extraordinary toll of lockdowns and other pandemic measures is becoming clear. As we report today, almost 90,000 cancer cases are likely to have progressed after millions of patients missed out on GP referrals. One oncologist notes that “a deadly timebomb of unnecessary cancer deaths has built up”.

In an attempt to defuse that bomb, the Government is next week to announce a major initiative to cut waiting lists for tests and treatment, partly by rolling out rapid diagnostic clinics into community facilities such as shopping centres. Doing so is a welcome lesson from the pandemic, when it has become clear that the public are willing to embrace home tests that prevent the spread of disease, and more than capable, if required, of carrying them out themselves. Prevention rather than cure, patient responsibility, breaking down the NHS healthcare monopoly: all are key to delivering future medicine to an ageing population with more complex needs, without breaking the nation’s finances.

But the cancer statistics teach a much gloomier lesson, too – that the extraordinarily draconian response to the virus in early 2020 carried equally extraordinary costs. And that, while little was known of the novel virus, such costs were obvious, had anyone in power wanted to know them. But to dare to question lockdowns in the past two years was to question a political orthodoxy which brooked no challenge. 

It takes no Covid enquiry to know that we can never again embark on such dramatic, nationwide policies without a proper assessment of what all the consequences will be.