Long-term lockdown cannot be the answer

I REALLY cannot let Mr/Ms Turner’s letter of November 26 go unchallenged. It’s hard to know quite where to start when dealing with a letter so patently ill-conceived, but I would point out one thing.

Continuing with a nationwide shutdown, including schools, universities, shops, businesses, restaurants, the high street, theatres, clubs, societies, and all the other enjoyments we pursue on a day-to-day basis, will never reduce infections “to negligible levels”.

Short-term, yes, if we’re all locked up at home and we’re all not mixing and not seeing our families or anybody else, infections will reduce (though never to “negligible levels”) – but unless you are going to go into a state of permanent, long-term lockdown (and I mean years and years of it), it is inevitable that cases will rise the minute you’re allowed outside again.

We have had over 100 years of flu strains to practice on and never once have we seen the need to shut down an entire economy.

Despite sophisticated vaccines, years of development, free vaccination programmes, better health facilities, better treatments and the like, two years ago 55,000 people in this country died from influenza-related issues.

The elderly and the vulnerable to flu are exactly the same people who are vulnerable to Covid – which is why the average age of death of people with – not of – Covid is 82 years old.

I’m assuming that the writer is either retired and on a pension, not in danger of losing their employment, in receipt of full pay as a public servant or alternatively is benefitting from the furlough scheme – a scheme so ruinously expensive that it cannot possibly continue for long enough to see infections reduce “to negligible levels”. How else can one explain the almost total lack of understanding of the economics of lockdown?

STEVE PRICE

Stanmore