In spring last year it was clear to those of us who work in global public health that the British government had taken the worst path for handling Covid-19. Ministers had allowed the virus to spread throughout the country without building any kind of surveillance system to detect cases or protecting health workers with adequate PPE. As a result of these decisions, the government then forced the country into a long, harsh lockdown in an attempt to reduce the pressure on the NHS and keep hospital admissions under control. In April 2020 I tweeted: “At what point will the British public realise what has happened over the past 9 weeks?” At the time, I wondered whether the true costs of the government’s decisions would ever be fully reckoned with. Today, the first official report into the government’s handling of the crisis has laid bare these costs. Many of its findings, which draw on days of testimony from witnesses to the health and social care committee and science and technology committee, have long been clear to those of us working in public health. From March 2020, we were trying to make sense of daily policy decisions and press briefings that seemed to be hurtling towards catastrophe. The government’s early plan was to work towards “herd immunity”, which would have meant the majority of the population contracting the virus, developing antibodies and then becoming immune to it. Yet a deliberate herd immunity strategy, when society has no vaccine or effective treatment, has never been used against any infectious disease in history. Ministers pursued this strategy on the premise that a vaccine or treatment would not be available any time soon (vaccines can often take years to develop), and that the virus was “unstoppable”. Their policy choices meant that measures taken by east Asian countries, such as mass testing, tracing, banning large gatherings, face coverings, screening incoming passengers at airports and cancelling non-essential travel, were initially ignored in the UK. Scientists like myself struggled to understand why these policy decisions were being made – and why time was being discounted. Each infection that could be avoided until a vaccine or treatment was developed could mean a life saved. The challenge for every government was to buy time without losing lives, causing healthcare systems to collapse or locking people in their homes indefinitely. In March last year I wrote to a senior government adviser noting: “We need to buy time to get NHS staff protected properly, more equipment and get more data … We need to maintain testing, contact tracing, appropriate social distancing and protect our health workforce who are limited and precious.” Yet there was a general fatalism among ministers and government advisers that little could be done to stop the wave of infections, and that somehow ignoring the problem would make it go away. While other governments started doing their utmost to control infections and communicate the seriousness of Covid-19 to their populations, in March 2020 Britons were being told to wash their hands while singing Happy Birthday and to say goodbye to our loved ones. What stuck in my mind while watching the South Korean, Taiwanese and Danish governments rush to put in place testing and robust tracing was: how much does your government care for its people? How much do your leaders care about you and your loved ones’ lives? I guess many scientists feel like I do now. We don’t want to focus on blame – instead, we want to learn the lessons from these mistakes and work behind the scenes to make sure they aren’t repeated. We are also happy, like everyone else, to see how vaccines and effective clinical trials have produced better ways to treat Covid-19. The NHS and the university sector have been the shining lights during this pandemic. But I can understand that those who lost loved ones to Covid-19, those who faced delayed care from the NHS because it was forced into being a Covid-focused service, and those who lost financially from prolonged restrictions will be angry and want answers. Who in the UK government will stand up and take responsibility now the British public know what has happened? Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh