Here’s what we can do to prepare for the next pandemic

As the Covid inquiry heats up, Kit Yates explains what the UK can do to ready itself for future disasters

Choosing not to prepare for a given eventuality is an implicit prediction about the future (AFP via Getty Images)

Phase one of the Covid inquiry has begun in earnest. Its remit is pandemic preparedness.

Nominally the guiding ethos of the inquiry is not to lay the blame at anyone’s door, but to learn lessons from the mistakes we made in preparing for the Covid pandemic so that we are better prepared for the next one.

The inquiry shares this premise with my book How to Expect the Unexpected. My focus in the book is to highlight the mistakes people have made when making predictions in the past, to identify the root causes of these failures and to suggest strategies that mean they are not revisited in the future or, better still, are rendered completely unrepeatable.