Member's statement: COVID Day of Reflection

Member's statement by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 10 March 2025.

MLA: Ms Paula Bradshaw
Party at the time: Alliance Party
Date: 10 March 2025
Type: Member's statement
Business: Members' Statements
Heading: COVID Day of Reflection
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4840802

Text

The COVID Day of Reflection is important not just because of the huge sense of loss that we all feel but because of how we should better prepare ourselves for when, inevitably, the next pandemic strikes. It is a day when we think about the families and friends of the 3,445 people who died here in Northern Ireland directly as a result of the virus. It is also a day when we reflect on the sacrifices of our health and social care staff and front-line workers and the many volunteers who made that dreadful period just a little bit less distressing for us all, particularly those who were most vulnerable and marginalised right across our society. We will all feel the sense of loss arising from the COVID pandemic in different ways. Some of us who lost loved ones during the pandemic, whether or not it was directly as a result of the virus, feel the loss of that loved one because of our inability to even bury that person with the full dignity and proper send-off that they deserved. That sense is not just about loss during the pandemic but applies to the lost opportunities and the sense that we were severely restricted from the lives that we wanted to lead. Educational, social, economic and countless other opportunities were lost. We also know that the impact on the health of the general population was profound and troubling. Life expectancy declined, mental health worsened and we are still living with the consequences of the social breakdown that we all experienced. It is easy to play the blame game, but it is probably unhelpful. What is helpful, however, is to consider how we prepare for the next pandemic. Although the COVID pandemic came a century after the previous pandemic of a similar global scale, in a world where we are so interconnected now, we should expect the next one to happen before too long. The UK COVID inquiry notes early in its module 1 report:
"in reality, the UK was ill prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency".
There were two specific reasons for that. One was that the UK lacked resilience; there had been a slowdown in health improvement and health inequalities had worsened. In other words: the population was already simply sicker than in most comparable countries, and thus it was always likely that we would suffer worse than elsewhere. The other reason was that the UK — and others, it must be said — prepared for the wrong pandemic, basing assumptions on what would usually happen in a flu pandemic.
Today, we must all reflect on what happened in the past, but we must also commit to improving in the future.

453 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.

Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.03 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.

This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.

Jev’s structured answers

Probability that each statement is true of this text (0 = no, 1 = yes). A criterion counts as met at 0.60 or above.
Question	Probability	Met?
Identity framing	0.03	No
Sectarian or communal antagonism	0.02	No
Cultural grievance politics	0.02	No
Dog-whistle messaging	0.02	No
Controversy escalation	0.03	No
Legitimate policy scrutiny	0.49	No
Overall judgement	0.03	At or below not-flagging threshold

Context and attribution (stance)
Option	Probability
No identity-based framing (chosen)	1.00
Reports or questions it	0.00
Criticises or condemns it	0.00
Adopts it	0.00

Subject area (top five)
Subject	Probability
No identity-related subject	0.72
Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits	0.21
Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues	0.03
Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups	0.02
Parades, bonfires and commemorations	0.01

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:02 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification