It is more than three and a half years since Scotland reported its first known Covid case: a Tayside resident who had recently returned from a trip to northern Italy and, by March 1 2020, was being isolated in hospital as a precaution following a positive test.

This was Scotland's 'Patient Zero'. By April 1, the country was in lockdown and a total of 60 people in Scotland were known to have died as a result of Covid infections, 135 were in intensive care, and nearly 2000 had tested positive.

It was the beginning of a rollercoaster of stress and uncertainty as families were cut off from loved ones in care homes, schools were closed, businesses went under, and frontline health and social workers found themselves grappling with a potentially deadly new pathogen with - initially - no known effective treatments and, at times, substandard PPE.

For the next two years, social distancing, facemasks, and self-isolation became the norm.

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By the end of August this year, Covid had been logged as the underlying cause of death for nearly 24,500 people in Scotland, although the number of fatalities has been roughly halving year-on-year - from 16,429 in 2020 to 4,832 in 2021, then 2,315 in 2022 and 891 in the first eight months of 2023 - as the cumulative effect of vaccinations and infections has built up immunity.

This is little comfort to the tens of thousands of Scots left debilitated by long Covid, however, or those whose quality of life has nosedived after waiting years for hospital treatment such as joint replacements or hernia repairs.

The Herald:

On Tuesday, the Scottish Covid Inquiry will finally get underway in a bid to take stock of what happened, why, and the lessons to be learned.

Its first module, on health and social care, will open with two days of statements from legal representatives for the core participants, including Care Home Relatives Scotland, the Scottish Healthcare Workers' Coalition, Scottish Vaccine Injury Group, Scottish Covid Bereaved, Long Covid Kids Scotland, Public Health Scotland and the STUC.

On Thursday, proceedings will pause while the UK Covid Inquiry holds a preliminary hearing for its investigations into political and administrative decision-making in Scotland.

READ MORE: Scottish Covid inquiry lawyer - Vaccine injured face 'horrific' stigma 

The Scottish and UK Covid inquiries are running in tandem but, as far as possible, trying to avoid any overlaps in their timetable or topics inasmuch as the Scottish inquiry is limited to devolved matters.

The UK inquiry began in June and has already provided some intriguing insights into the turfwars which engulfed the UK Government, the despair of its scientific advisors, and the shortcomings in pandemic preparedness.

So what have we learned so far?

A recurring theme is the contradiction between the public messaging at the time that government decisions were "following the science" and an apparent disregard for scientific advice behind the scenes.

The Herald:

Diary entries disclosed to the inquiry by Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK Government's chief scientific advisor during the pandemic, described "bipolar" and "completely inconsistent" decision-making in Downing Street.

In one example relating to advice around one- and two-metre rules for social distancing, Sir Patrick bemoaned the "chaos as usual" at Number 10, adding that it is "abundantly clear that no one in No 10 or the Cabinet Office really read or is taking time to understand the science advice on two metres".

In another entry relating to a review of one and two metre distancing advice, he observed that someone in the Number 10 Cabinet Office "has completely rewritten the science advice as though it’s the definitive version. They’ve just cherry picked. Quite extraordinary.”

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon tells UK Covid inquiry 'we didn't get everything right'

It has also emerged that neither Sir Patrick nor his counterpart as chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, were consulted by then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, over his summer 2020 “eat out to help out’” scheme.

According to their witness statements, had they been asked, both "would have advised it was highly likely to increase transmission”.

Prof Dame Angela McLean, then the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, went further - dubbing Mr Sunak "Dr Death" in a Whatsapp exchange with fellow scientists.

Giving evidence this week, Sage member John Edmunds - a professor of infectious disease epidemiology - told the inquiry he was "still angry" that public money had been spent on the initiative when the Government "could have just given" the cash instead to struggling pubs and restaurants.

He said: “It was one thing taking your foot off the brake, which is what we’d been doing by easing the restrictions, but to put the foot on the accelerator seemed to me perverse."

The Herald:

The inquiry has also learned that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed long Covid as "bollocks" and "Gulf War Syndrome stuff", that Mr Johnson's partner Carrie was described by civil servants as the "real person in charge", and that the UK was woefully under-prepared for anything other than a flu pandemic with no expectation that a SARS-style test, trace and isolate model would be needed.

Scotland's pandemic health secretary Jeane Freeman said PPE supplies "came close to running out". Cue a flurry of social media posts from GPs, care workers and clinicians querying the "almost" when they had received shipments of converted binbags and out-of-date respirator masks.

READ MORE: Is NHS Scotland Covid-ready for winter? Questions over Covid testing and the vaccine rollout

The role of austerity has also come up, with former PM David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne both insisting that it helped by freeing up £400 billion for the pandemic response.

This is not a view echoed by any of the public health experts, including the esteemed Professor Sir Michael Marmot who noted that the UK's stalling in life expectancy in the decade leading up to the pandemic was "more marked [than] any other rich country except Iceland and the US".

Disproportionate death tolls in the poorest communities were "entirely predictable", he said, because the UK had entered the pandemic with its public services "depleted", health inequalities widening, and a health service which had been inadequately funded after 2010.

“Pre-pandemic, the number of people waiting for NHS treatment was already twice as high as it had been in 2009," he said.

In that sense, Patient Zero was a turning point; but the UK - and Scotland's - problems began long before.