"I actually think that lockdowns were a catastrophe." Baroness Fox says the Covid inquiry has "done a disservice" and "has limited itself in a very narrow way" - pointing to a "lack of intellectual curiosity" in its investigation. #Newsnight

Why platform Claire Fox? It was Boris Johnson who made her a Baroness and it was totally undeserved.

A professional contrarian, bullshitter and opposer of rational views.

Ahh yes who wouldn't take advice from an unelected nobody over epidemiologists who spend years researching patterns, causes & control of diseases & other health related events ?? Give me strength 🙄

If only you had allowed those early dissenting voices like Fox, Lord Symptom, Peter Hitchens, and a clutch of others onto BBC programmes to debate lockdown policy in earnest. When it most mattered, BBC covid coverage was shamefully one-sided and propagandistic.

Meanwhile, here’s Baroness Fox as a former MEP for the Brexit Party sitting next to a man who is about to be sentenced for 8 counts of accepting bribes from Russia

@BBCPolitics And her expertise is? A 2:2 at university of Warwick in English and American literature? Really? Come on, this is the same balance as having Nigel Lawson on to discuss climate change.

Why on earth have you invited her on…? What could she possibly add to our understanding of this…? Words fail me… you’ve completely destroyed @BBCNewsnight

Another nonentity invited onto Newsnight!

That would be Claire Fox, expert in the spread of communicable disease is it? Come on BBC - its not hard. Get in experts in their field, stop "two siding" everything, give them time and space to explain. Thats all you have to do to be credible.

Clare is 100% right about this.

Fox championed the guys who guided Florida to its third wave which despite being post vaccine was even deadlier than the others

There are universities chock full of experts on epidemiology, but fûck that, lets get Claire Fox....

Indeed. It failed to question why countries like Sweden achieved better results without lockdowns, furlough or financial ruinous measures. It failed to narrow focus to deaths because of Covid from deaths including Covid. It failed to consider any better alternatives. It’s a day late, a dollar short and ensures we do the same faster & harder next time. What a nonsense.

@acadofideas

@BBCPolitics The problem with libertarians (of both left & right) is they’ll never agree that infringement of individuals freedoms for the greater good is ever justified. Fox doesn’t care whether others die, so long as she’s not forced to wear masks, stay at home, social distance, vaccinate.

Without a vaccine combined with a lack of preparedness, it would have been irresponsible not to lock down as advised by scientists.

Sensible as ever. The media should be heavily criticised. Many who were hysterical cheerleaders of all the crazy actions that were happening all over Europe, are now commenting on this stupid Inquiry as if they behaved well throughout, they didn't. Their hysteria was a part of it

Nice to see the BBC platforming yet another Reform Covid minimiser who thinks the problem was not that a quarter of a million died but that lockdowns were so boring. Such a refreshing change from 5 years of that.

Evil hag.

Koch spokesperson says what.

She backed Gaddafi - she denied the Bosnian-Serb genocide - she backed IRA murders - the woman is raving lunatic and the establishment should not listen to this marxist crackpot Fox is extremely dangerous

Oh my god Newsnight. Why oh why oh why do you EVER listen to that woman. The woman who marched with Tommy Robinson. Who supported the IRA. This is NOT balance. BBC get a bloody life. Every other person on the planet would have more sensible things to say than her.

Brexit accusing others of a lack of 'intellectual curiosity'.. How quaint

Why are you still platforming people who are wrong time and time again and literally for making the country poorer, more divided or contributing to so many covid deaths through incompetence or greed?

Well said @Fox_Claire. What a scandalous waste of time and money, just to funnel millions to lawyers. The special factors at play were the asymptomatic transmission and the age profile of vulnerable people. Given the vast majority of young people were never at risk, and closing schools and universities devastated young lives, what alternatives might have been considered? When lack of indoor ventilation was an early obvious cause, why were people banned from going outside, all outdoor seating sealed off and police chasing people down who went for walks? Why were Nightingale hospitals built but never used? How should that capacity have been managed so cancer and other diseases were less affected? Why has the world-leading sewage monitoring capacity the UK developed for pandemic/disease tracking now been shut down by Whitehall bureaucrats? How should the movement of patients between hospitals and care homes have been handled differently to reduce deaths? Given rates of infection were dropping before any lockdowns, was draconian legal lockdown ever necessary? Should people have been trusted to make their own choices? What strategies were used by other nations and what lessons can be learned? And many more...

Love this woman. Not afraid to question the collective narrative. It wasn’t an investigation but a confirmation for those who have the ear of the puppet. All very predictable. You can’t talk about death causation from Covid when you don’t look at the outlier of Sweden

‘Baroness’ Fox Now an Unelected Bureaucrat in the HoL for life due to her championing of Brexit which was all about ridding ourselves of the Unelected Bureaucrats of the EU At least one persons done alright from it then

Call me mental if you will, but a crap degree in American and English Literature doesn't really make Claire Fox an expert on either the epidemiology, or the economics, of a pandemic. Why the are you giving her airtime? She is completely unqualified to have a useful opinion.

The only disservice the @covidinquiryuk could be accused of doing is not issuing clear direction that Johnson, Hancock, and others should be arrested, charged with democide and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

@Fox_Claire please ask the question why Sweden didn't have lockdowns yet better outcomes than the UK and other EU countries. The Covid inquiry is an expensive whitewash

Here we go, Robbie Cobb's BBC News attacking the Covid Inquiry in order to protect right-wing criminals like Johnson. Wheeling out the most hideous fascist ghouls (like Fox) that they can find.

I'm quite prepared to believe that a delayed first lockdown cost 20K lives due to dither and confusion at the top of government, and that Boris Johnson was exactly the wrong character type to be in charge at a moment like that. I also think that emptying hospital wards of the un-tested elderly and so 'seeding' Covid into old people's homes was a cruel and fatal mistake. But I also recall a world class independent UK vaccination programme that had us protected several weeks before most EU citizens, and also a testing regime that went from literally nothing to getting tests through the door for free a day after asking the app for one. So how many lives were saved by those examples of good governance and where do they weigh in the balance?

Fox was nominated for a peerage by guess who? Boris Johnson.

This pretend, pseudo intellectual isn't worth listening to. She spouts weak self-justifying, and often contrarian views to merely appear intellectual. Nothing.

We waited years and it cost the public purse £250 million pounds for Baroness Hallett’s prejudiced Covid report, where she shamefully relied on extremely dodgy Ferguson-modelled data. We now need an inquiry into this inquiry.