Counterfire writers give their reactions to Terina Hine’s book detailing how a corrupt and incompetent government put profit ahead of lives during the pandemic

January 2020, news filtering out of China indicated a new disease had been discovered and that it was causing significant illness and high death rates amongst those infected. Over the next few months, the disease (Covid-19) spread rapidly across the globe. Over the following few years, the pandemic would impact on all our lives in myriad ways. Hundreds of thousands of people across the world died of it. Countless others were left with long-term illnesses. Loneliness and isolation impacted on people’s mental health and the crisis drove others further into desperate poverty.

Four years after the crisis started, Terina Hine’s new book A People’s History of Covid reminds us of the scale of the crisis, but does so in a way which makes it clear that the origins of the health crisis, and responses to it, were deeply shaped by the interests of governments and the priorities of a system which puts profit and free markets above the interests of people and their wellbeing.

Hine’s book is well written, thorough and very accessible. She covers some difficult topics (like the social conditions that more easily enable ‘zoonosis’ – how pathogens jump from species to species – in ways that are easily understandable. She tackles the question ‘why were UK morbidity rates amongst the worst in the Western world’ in a way which makes it clear the blame lies at the door of the bumbling, incompetent Johnson government.

She reminds us that, whilst it’s true Covid could kill anyone, you were far more likely to be severely ill or to die if you were working class, poor, black or employed in poorly paid ‘essential’ labour: the social conditions of life and labour are a key factor in determining your health outcomes, and Covid-19 merely offered an acute example of this general assertion. And she shows that the crisis was used to curtail our civil liberties and to try to restrict our rights to protest by the introduction of rules and regulations that were enforced on us, but ignored by those at the top who partied their way through the various lockdowns.

Finally, Hine shows that for some unscrupulous operators at the top of society or with links to the upper echelons of the Tory party, the crisis offered an opportunity to enrich themselves in a series of dodgy deals and get-rich-quick schemes.

The Covid-19 pandemic touched all our lives, but Terina Hine has done us all a great service by showing that in unequal and unjust societies, the impact of such health crises will be felt unequally and unjustly.

Michael Lavalette

As an NHS nurse who worked on the frontline during Covid, I’m very grateful for Terina Hine’s comprehensive and transparent account. As a society, we are still a long way from processing the trauma of what happened, but Terina aids the process by giving voice to the often unexpressed, relentless fear with which we became accustomed to living.

Chapter 2, ‘Chaos, Confusion and Contempt’ charts the litany of failures of the government to even comprehend the unfolding disaster, let alone manage it. These failures cost thousands of lives, needlessly. I think of my colleague ‘Grace’ who devotedly attended Covid patients without the proper PPE, because it was unavailable, until she herself was taken ill. ‘Grace’, because she was 60 years of age, wasn’t offered any cutting-edge treatments, rather she was left to die, victim of a ruthless triage system, which judged some as more worthy of saving than others. The figures show that it was international healthcare staff like ‘Grace’ who bore the brunt of the fatalities within the NHS.

Chapter 4, ‘I Didn’t Come to Work to Die’ contrasts the lies, spin and negligence of the government with the reality of conditions in the NHS. Spin such as Boris Johnson’s claim that ‘We have all the PPE we need’ and ‘we won’t bow to pressure to enforce a draconian shut down of our society’ are exposed for what they are.

The fact is that the Pandemic Modelling Exercise ‘Cygness’, held in 2016 and attended by then Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, had fully laid out protocols for such an eventuality, but these were somehow never referred to. There were Cobra planning meetings held, but Boris Johnson arrogantly avoided attending them. He opted instead to attend an international rugby event at Twickenham, where he ostentatiously shook hands all round him, in a schoolboyish gesture of defiance to this foreign threat which dared threaten ‘Great’ Britain. Meanwhile the bodies piled high and we ran out of body bags, let alone PPE.

The NHS itself also has a case to answer for the enormity of the catastrophe. Infection control guidance was downgraded by Public Health England in response to shortages. So, staff were threatened with disciplinary action if we wore goggles. On challenging this, I was told: ‘It will give the wrong message’, translatable to, ‘If others see you wearing them, everyone will want them and we haven’t got them’. It took a few months of this murderous charade before it was officially conceded that eye protection was critical against an airborne infection like Covid. Meanwhile, we had sourced our own protection from SDM Leyland, Amazon or wherever. Non NHS friends sent consignments of goggles in the post. A medical colleague based in China even sent a large consignment of PPE.

Thanks Terina Hine, for this gruelling but essential read.

Ellen Grogan

In September 2020, I was one of the many thousands of students who had been sold a lie and moved back to my university town. We were promised that campuses would be safe, and that we’d be back to regular in-person classes. Within about two weeks, I contracted Covid with my whole household, despite following the government’s rules.

My university, the University of Manchester, offered no help, and – like thousands of other students in the city – I had no way of getting food, and no access to mental-health support.

That month, a University of Manchester student took his own life in his halls of accommodation. His flatmates, who had known him just a few weeks, found his body. I remembered him often during my time as a student activist, especially during campaigns for better mental-health support and better housing.

A week and a half later, Manchester University erected fences around their halls of accommodation and for the next nine months, students were locked inside their flats and left alone to deal with it.

Terina’s book is an excellent retelling of the pandemic. It perfectly captures the fear, anger and confusion we all felt during those difficult years, with crucial analysis.

This is an incredibly important book: although the pandemic is well within memory for most of us, it is surprising how much has already been pushed to the back of our minds. In reading this book, you are reminded of the utter contempt that the Tories have for us, and just how eager they were to put profit before the lives of hundreds of thousands of working people.

I recommend this book to everyone who suffered in 2020 and 2021 as the government consistently ignored their own rules and put their economic interests before lives: that is to say, I recommend this book to everyone.

Lucy Nichols

Terina’s book brilliantly evokes the fear and paranoia that stalked Britian in the spring of 2020. The sense of dread was partly due to growing awareness of the global spread of a new and deadly virus, but also the knowledge that a Tory government led by the most corrupt and venal prime minister of our times was spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with a crisis on this scale. At the further-education college where I work, I vividly recall going to see the principal on Monday 16 March, along with other union reps, and pleading with him to close the college as soon as possible. Thankfully, he perceived the gravity of the situation, and we were sent home the following morning for what turned out to be months of online provision. This was almost a week before Johnson announced the national lockdown on 23 March. As Terina points out, Johnson’s delay at that time is estimated to have cost about 30 000 lives. I have never been prouder to be a union rep than at that time, knowing that our swift action played a definite role in safeguarding the lives of staff and students at the college and their families.

Incredibly, it still took a few weeks for the DFE to confirm there would be no public exams that summer and that teachers would be asked to provide assessed grades instead. The silver lining to the black cloud of the pandemic in education was the knowledge that GCSE and ‘A’ Level students that year would not have to endure the annual stress of preparing for high-stakes examinations, which often have a destructive effect on their mental health. Instead, online lessons actually provided the opportunity to have more relaxed and productive discussions with learners in which they had an outlet to express their anxieties about the nightmarish situation we were all enduring. The mental toughness and mutual support displayed by colleagues and students during that awful time is something I will never forget, and was in stark contrast to the depravities we now know Johnson and his cronies were committing inside Downing Street.

Sean Ledwith