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(This is not to say that the inquiry will necessarily get everything right, or that it should be the limit of the discussion. But it's weird that it hardly gets mentioned.)

That’s ‘we’re-not-allowed-to-talk-about-isms’ of all stripes

in many cases, the more sayable, the braver you are

Absolutely this.

Not just covid. It's also reflected in the way they do an "eww, gross, nerd stuff" preface every time they "report" on taxes, trade, jobs etc. Where they want to be able to cover these things *as they impact party politics* without having to sully themselves with material economic substance.

hmm we may be at odds over the meaning of "this".

An possible point re why so much less coverage than Leveson is that it turned up plenty of juicy, but ultimately inconsequential revelations for media to talk about itself/famous people. Whereas the Covid stuff is either complicated common sense or so enraging we don't want to go there again.

Genuinely I think people have just forgotten it's happening. And then a lot of the rest of the response is, as you say, a response to a collective trauma, and a fear that the worst parts of it will happen again next time, even worse.

A grief counsellor friend told me theres no 'normal' way to grieve, because every grief response is normal -and that's ok I reckon people are grieving in different degrees- for loved ones; for trauma experiences, or only for "what might have been" If so, not all of it is rational. And that's ok

There's something in there about what happens when a diagnosis elides into an identity (cf ME/CFS). So people become upset by someone 'just asking questions' because they feel it not as a query about their diagnosis, but who they are.

* made me, not “maybe me” 🤦‍♂️

The inquiry might produce answers Mr Huffington on the sofa might not like.

Agree there’s nothing wrong with stating counterfactuals given arbitrarily fixed antecedent params. However, they’re only policy-relevant if those params are realistic. And i.a. the chair and secretary have neither much scientific background nor any apparent inclination to acquire it.

Yes, I was thinking it odd that the COVID inquiry isn't / wasn't mentioned at all in this and many similar discussions.

look you can’t expect professional journalists to do a whole bunch of reading and research, I mean who has the time when there is so many opinion pices to bash out for clicks.

Kind of. My theory is more about book-keeping than conspiracy. £10 billion is definitely lost from one column, but not gained anywhere else.

The main takeaway is that those who kicked the inquiry can so far down the road face such little scrutiny from the press who protected them whilst they were selling us all short. Announcing a delayed public inquiry is the equivalent of an expensive invisibility cloak.