The shutdown sceptics have lost the argument

Scientists need a manifesto to convince the public that there is nothing extreme about opposing lockdown

Aspectre is haunting the world – the spectre of lockdownism. In contrast, herd immunity is dead as a doornail. The world has dismissed the Great Barrington Declaration – a petition for natural immunity launched by Harvard and Oxford scientists in Massachusetts – as the champagne-soused tantrum of intellectually arrogant libertarians. While rival experts tore at Barrington’s “dangerous” and “alt-right” agenda, the WHO landed the killer blow, declaring herd immunity “immoral”.

Despite attempts to articulate an alternative to lockdown anchored in scientific rigour and basic human values, sceptics have lost the argument, and urgently need a new manifesto for the cause. A second wave of shutdowns appears inevitable. The priority now is to win the argument not today but in six months’ time.

Spring 2021 could change the course of history. If no vaccine materialises by then, seasonal lockdowns threaten to become institutionalised, enforced by intricate surveillance and draconian laws. The stuff of science fiction now looks plausible. It isn’t strictly true that the world “can’t afford” endless lockdowns. The scale of debt doesn’t matter so much as the cost of servicing it. Lockdowns are thus feasible as long as interest rates are low. Besides, how the outlandish can dull into the ordinary! As the handshake reflex makes way for the “facemask-keys-wallet” ritual, the new normal becomes normality itself to our subconsciouses.

With the stakes so high, lockdown-sceptics must self-criticise remorselessly. Why have opponents so successfully smeared protecting the vulnerable as “letting the virus rip”? We failed to articulate that shielding is centrist rather than extremist. It would still leave over-65s under house arrest, care homes without Christmas visits, and pubs struggling due to distancing.

We also made the rookie error of basing arguments on values and assumptions that the majority do not share. We cried “freedom!” and were shocked at those who readily surrendered theirs. We forgot that humanity has always more highly prized values like honour, glory, a yearning for protection and a desire to belong. As the sociologist Orlando Patterson argues, freedom is not a universal value but a quirk of Western history; a dialectical response to largescale slavery in antiquity, reinforced by Judeo-christian “slave religions”. While freedom clings for dear life to the frontier spirit of the American Dream, its potency in state-revering Europe is fading.

We also didn’t foresee mass revulsion towards economic arguments. The economy is mostly seen as an abstract problem, tomorrow’s problem, a dirty problem. The economic discipline’s desiccated phraseology and fixation with units of value and utility have turned off many. Its historic neglect of urgent macro-questions like the interplay between wealth and health has made the field near irrelevant.

A four-point lockdown-sceptic manifesto could build on these hard lessons. First, our arguments need to tap into real human nature, rather than a fairytale version of it. We need to engage with man’s terror of death and anxiety about risk rather than indulge in fantasies about his so-called love of liberty or desire to truly live.

The priority, then, is to ensure the world knows about every person that the next lockdown drives to suicide, every woman whose skull is smashed in by their partner, every cancer patient who dies because they weren’t treated. It is striking that the only official projections of the lockdown death toll (74,000 – compared with around 50,000 dying with Covid-19) had to be leaked. Perhaps through a global research network, we can track the human cost of lockdown.

And on the subject of risk, we need to hold leaders to account on their gambles. They are betting millions of lives on the 33 per cent likelihood that a given clinical trial will yield a vaccine. China and Russia are putting millions more in the developing world at risk, as they snap up contracts to roll out poorly tested vaccines.

Second, lockdown-sceptics must stimulate a more sophisticated discussion about shielding, rather than get bogged down in a herd immunity debate. We simply don’t yet know whether people are building lasting natural immunity, but critics are luring us into a trap as they talk up a false choice between natural and vaccine immunity. The solution likely involves both. The question is how to shield people in the meantime.

Third, lockdown-scepticism needs insights from public health, rather than just a few brave epidemiologists, for a detailed plan. Do we need to retrain out-of-work graduates for live-in posts in care home bubbles? With hospital trusts badly hit by the first wave now complaining about a lack of ICU beds, how can we improve capacity? Given that 70 per cent of Covid transmission happens in the home, should the state pay ailing hoteliers to make their properties isolation centres?

Fourth, lockdown-sceptics can knock Imperial College off its perch with superior modelling. Experts are starting to dabble in “compartmental” models, which may help anticipate super-spreading events in care homes and hospitals. But these projects need more funding to go mainstream.

If lockdown-sceptics do these four things, we can move the dial. We must reflect, reassess and regroup. Locked Down Citizens of All Countries, Unite!