People who lost loved ones in the pandemic came together to form a campaign group after feeling “abandoned” by the Government, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has heard.
Many of those who have spoken out about their losses have faced abuse online and sometimes in-person from Covid-deniers, piling “trauma on trauma”, Tuesday’s hearing was told.
After evidence from one of the founding members of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group, inquiry chairwoman Baroness Heather Hallett branded such abuse “plain cruel”.
Matt Fowler told the hearing he had helped co-found the campaign group to give voice to those worst impacted by the pandemic, including bereaved, those who had suffered with Covid, key workers, and people from ethnic minorities who had been disproportionately affected.
Giving evidence in the final week of the inquiry’s module one hearings, he said: “To begin with, Jo (Goodman, group co-founder) and I, when we started the organisation, we knew that we wanted to try and do something for change.
“At the time it was difficult to work out exactly what form that was going to take. People were coming to us, they felt that they had been abandoned by the Government and left to deal with their bereavement on their own.”
He said they had tried to “encompass as much of the pandemic’s effects as we can, because it’s important that everything is looked at, we can’t be allowing anybody to be left behind or anything to fall through the gaps”.
Mr Fowler, whose father Ian died with Covid in April 2020, said he and others have had to deal with abuse from anti-mask protesters and vaccine sceptics while coping with their grief.
He said: “That attitude of Covid denial or Covid scepticism, anti-mask protesters, vaccine sceptics, those people have often targeted me and members of the group that I represent. Sometimes they have gone out of the way to seek people out.
“We’ve had people that have made media appearances talking about their loss, who have then being stalked via social media and abused and in some cases threatened. And one of the things that I would like to point out is that had my dad died from something else, say cancer, people wouldn’t be coming to me and saying ‘well, was it really cancer?’.
“It’s something that has been very unique to our loss to be targeted in that way.”
Lady Hallett extended her sympathies for what he and others have had to go through.
She said: “I cannot understand the mentality of people who abused and threatened bereaved people like you. It is just plain cruel. It piles trauma on trauma and I’m sorry there are people like that in the world.
“Your father was obviously a very special man and his death a great loss to you, your family and by the sounds of it the local community. So you’ve done him honour in the work that you’ve done. And I promise I will answer as many of the questions and learn any lessons that I can in the course of this inquiry.”
