New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, this week announced a Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s Covid response.

‘A Royal Commission of Inquiry … is the right thing to do, given the Covid emergency was the most significant threat to the health of New Zealanders and our economy since the second world war,’ she said.

According to Ardern, an inquiry is also needed because, while every country grappled with the virus, there was no playbook for managing it. (Does anyone want to tell her the WHO did have a pandemic playbook – they just decided to throw it in the bin in early 2020?)

Nonetheless, an inquiry is good news. The inquiry Chair and his team will, no doubt, ruthlessly interrogate the totality of New Zealand’s Covid response. It will be ‘wide-ranging’. No stone will be left unturned. ‘Important lessons’ will be learned. Or will they? There are a few reasons to be less than optimistic about this inquiry.

For starters, the timing of the inquiry is rather too convenient. Due to begin in Feb 2023, the inquiry will not publish its findings until about 8 months after New Zealand’s next general election, in June 2024 – an election that would go the way National and ACT based on current polling. By launching the inquiry now (the terms of reference have already been signed off by the Cabinet), Labour can ensure only the questions they want asked (and already know the answers to, I suspect) are tabled and avoid an inquiry that might be more condemnatory of their handling.

As for those terms of reference. You would think that a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid would consider ‘decisions made by clinicians or by public health authorities during the Covid pandemic’. Well, you’d be wrong. That’s outside the scope.

How about, ‘the specific epidemiology of the Covid virus and its variants’? Nope, not interested.

‘Vaccine efficacy’? Nah.

What about broader questions of government, law, economics? Surely we want to know about the ‘decisions taken by the Reserve Bank’s independent monetary policy committee during the Covid pandemic’, given the cost-of-living crisis Kiwis are now facing? Or ‘adaptations to court procedures by the judiciary during the Covid pandemic’ or ‘adaptations of parliamentary processes during the Covid pandemic’…

The answers, sadly, are no, no and thrice no.

An inquiry is also an excellent way to shut down any questions about Covid (actually, to shut down questions about the negative impacts caused by the government’s response to Covid) in the run-up to the next election. I can hear ministers now… ‘I cannot comment on that at this time because of the ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry that will rigorously examine our response. As I do not want to prejudice or influence that inquiry by speculating here today, I think we should move on to the next question.’ Difficult questions (not that NZ’s MSM generally ask them) can thus be sidestepped and removed from the electorate’s consciousness.

The Royal Commission is to be chaired Australia-based epidemiologist Prof Tony Blakely. His appointment is a curious choice given his public record on Covid matters. He previously called for lockdowns (e.g., in Sydney) and supported Australia and New Zealand’s elimination strategy. In July 2020 he co-authored a paper that included a ten-point plan to maximize the chance of elimination in Victoria. More recently (July 2022), he co-authored another paper that concludes, ‘Elimination of SARS-CoV-2 transmission represented in faithfully constructed agent-based models can be replicated in the real world.’ Try telling that to the millions currently suffering lockdowns or getting welded into their buildings in ostensibly elimination-obsessed China where cases continue to spike nearly 3 years on from the initial outbreak. Prof Blakely has also spoken in favour of vaccine mandates and passports and of masking.

It is also interesting to note that Prof Blakely’s co-authors for the July 2022 elimination paper include Profs Nick Wilson and Michael Baker – two of New Zealand’s most ardent and vocal lockdowners, champions of all sorts of non-pharmaceutical interventions (including vaccine mandates and passports) and elimination strategy cheerleaders. One must wonder how independent the Chair can be given the narrow lens through which he has viewed the past 3 years. Especially when he has worked so closely with those wedded to NZ’s past and current strategy and whose views on handling Covid so closely align with the policies which the NZ government enacted.

Given all this, I’m sure you can understand my scepticism towards this inquiry. Accordingly, let me make a few predictions about the inquiry’s outcome.

I predict it will find the following: New Zealand went ‘hard and early’. This approach saved tens of thousands of lives. The government’s swift, decisive response shows that an initial elimination strategy was the right strategy and that it should be used again when the next pandemic comes along. NPIs were used effectively, and mandates were proportionate.

It will say the government did an exceptional job of communicating with the public, led by strong ministerial leadership. But, of course, there will be a few lessons to be learned. It will suggest a wider range of economic measures to help support people and business during the next pandemic. And that operational activities like PPE procurement and managed isolation should be better coordinated.

Sadly, what the inquiry will not find or report on are the myriad harms caused by NZ’s approach: the lost livelihoods, the people plunged into poverty, the mental health impacts, the lockdown-induced excess deaths, the missed funerals, the societal division, the missed cancer appointments and the economic damage that will mean decreased life expectancy for millions.

To cut a long story short – I suspect the report will claim the response was, overall, excellent and should be repeated next time, except for a few operational and implementational tweaks while not touching on for one second the immense harms caused by the government response. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath. For one thing, it’s hard enough to breathe with this mask on.