Lockdown will put our NHS in more jeoardy

ACCORDING to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures the death rate among working age people from Covid-19 is less than 7%.

So, 93% of all Covid-19 fatalities occurred to people over the age of 60. Just 306 of the 51,435 deaths (a rate of 6 per 1,000) recorded by ONS over the course of the pandemic have occurred to people under the age of 40.

Many people of working age were given the opportunity to work from home during the pandemic. Therefore, all the statistical evidence would suggest that there was no requirement for lockdown and the undemocratic intrusion into people’s daily lives that followed.

As a consequence of lockdown and the furloughing of 9.5m people, government borrowing is now estimated by ONS at £300bn for 2020/21, up from £55bn. It is going to take a generation to bring this level of public borrowing back under control.

Furthermore, ONS figures reveal a total of 730,000 people lost their jobs between March and July whilst mainly on lockdown. Economists are predicting unemployment could touch four million by Christmas. When people lose their jobs, the government loses income tax receipts from these workers.

Prior to the pandemic, with government borrowing at £55bn, the political debate was about finding extra funding, year on year, for our NHS. If it was difficult then, it is virtually impossible now and in the future due to our economic predicament.

When Johnson claimed to protect the NHS by putting us all in lockdown, would he not have known that the consequent economic fallout would leave the NHS in long term jeopardy?

Staunch proponents of government policy have all been duped!

Robert Parker