the man who led the nhs until 2021, simon stevens, told the hearing that he wanted to discourage the idea that the secretary of state should decide that. fortunately, he said, this horrible dilemma never crystallized. let's talk to our editor. some astonishing evidence emerging at the covid inquiry, and the very idea that a health secretary, a politician, could be in a position to decide who should live and who should die. >> yes. the background to this is in february 2020 a group of officials had modeled the likely worse case scenario for covid-19. at the time, there were not that manycases in the u.k. there was a general sense amongst the public of life as usual. but these officials had carried out their worst case scenario exercise and concluded there might be 840,000 deaths over four months. in the wake of that, we heard today, there had been discussion about some very difficult choices if hospitals were overwhelmed in that scenario and whether, frankly, some patients should be given treatment enabling them to survive but others would not be so fortunate, would not get the treatm