The disaster of lockdown

We have just endured the longest three weeks of our lives, by which I am referring to the ‘sombrero squashing’ three weeks of lockdown that began in March 2020. Along with a host of other restrictions, however vestigial, this endured until February 2022 and, as I write, it is still not completely over. Civil service office blocks, many businesses and universities remain empty of staff. A few frightened rabbits cling to their face masks and we hear reports of people who have not taken public transport for the duration and some who are only now plucking up the courage to leave their houses.

The shock of lockdown endures. We were shocked because it had never previously happened. That august and infallible body the World Health Organisation did not recommend it and, for goodness’ sake, we had a Conservative government led by a libertarian Prime Minister. But lockdown came. It wreaked havoc with lives, businesses, jobs, education and the economy. People remain frightened and mental health problems across all ages have increased. In my own city of Hull, the average death rate of people taking their final plunge from the Humber Bridge is less than one. This was surpassed in a single month in 2021 when six people jumped to their death. Inflation is at a thirty year high and tipped to increase, with selected prices displaying double figure inflation. The government continues to throw money at problems of its own making. We took action, allegedly, to ‘save the NHS’. But the NHS, still lauded as the best in the world, the ‘jewel in the crown’ and so on is on its knees. Many of us will die before we ever see the inside of a hospital again.

But it was worth it, I hear people say. We had to fight a ‘nasty virus’, a ‘killer virus’ even. So what else were the government to do? Well, quite apart from the fact that the novel coronavirus was not as nasty as predicted and killed the usual suspects, the answer to the question is that the government should have done nothing. It is now abundantly clear that it was all a waste of time. A recent document—as yet not peer reviewed—published with the Johns Hopkins University logo by an international team of economists concluded that lockdowns only reduced Covid-19 mortality by 0.2% and there was no effect of non-pharmacological interventions (wearing face masks). Quarantine fared better, as could be expected, but with only a 2.9% effect on Covid-19 mortality. In the words of the authors, governments: “have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” It was also interesting to note that governments had imposed these measures because they saw other governments doing it and not through any response to their local situations. What started in China spread, along with the virus, to the rest of the world. In retrospect it should be of grave concern how easily totalitarianism could be exported.

While many of us were saying this early in 2020, nobody in power listened. There was no evidence then that economic lockdown would work and, even if they did, the collateral damage was likely to outweigh any benefits. Lord Sumption, one of the heroes of the pandemic, repeatedly said that such a draconian policy which risked ruin but also violated fundamental freedoms, should never have been implemented without some assessment of the likely detrimental effects.

Such an assessment never took place. Instead, spurred by SAGE and the modelling of a man who had never been right in the past (with foot and mouth and BSE scandals on his CV) Professor Neil Ferguson, we were told to expect millions of deaths and to gain huge benefits from lockdown and combined measures. These same people, buoyed by their success at subjugating the population subsequently added further layers of measures, none based on evidence, such as social distancing and face masks. They were on a proverbial ‘roll’ and just did not know where to stop. They still do not. However, Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, having either rediscovered his libertarian roots or a quick fix to win back popularity, has seen the light and called a halt to most of the nonsense. It will not be truly over until everyone is back to work and education and the threat of compulsory vaccination is completely lifted from all health workers. We must never make this mistake again.