Herd immunity ‘more effective’ than social distancing – experts
:: Covid lockdown led to more deaths, says UK study
A NEW study in the UK casts doubt on the effectiveness of social distancing and closing schools versus building up ‘herd immunity’ against Covid-19.
Shutting schools and preventing youngsters from mingling may have had the effect of actually killing more people, the study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) claims.
The notion of developing herd immunity versus lockdowns and social distancing has been a controversial part of the debate over tackling Covid-19 since the earliest days of the pandemic.
The debate is back to the fore as several European countries including Ireland face the prospect of heading back into severe lockdowns.
Now experts have re-analysed the modelling from Imperial College London that led to the UK lockdown, which happened shortly after Ireland’s own restrictions were imposed in March.
In the study published in the BMJ, Edinburgh University researchers predicted that over the entire course of the pandemic, keeping children out of classrooms would increase deaths by between 80,000 and 95,000.
Likewise, social distancing of everyone, rather than just the over-70s, could cost between 149,000 and 178,000 lives.
Experts say the virus was able to spread faster to vulnerable people once lockdown measures were introduced than if some level of immunity had been allowed to build up in the young.
But it contrasts starkly with previous research published in the journal Nature, which said that lockdown and school closures in Europe may have prevented 3.1 million deaths
It comes as thousands of scientists across the world signed the Great Barrington Declaration, calling for an end to lockdown for young and healthy people.
The UK Government locked down the country after Imperial modelling showed that 500,000 people could die and the National Health Service (NHS) would be overwhelmed.
The authors of the new paper said the Government appeared to have chosen to protect the NHS in the short term rather than save lives throughout the whole epidemic. Although it reduced peak demand for ICU beds, it prolonged the epidemic, resulting in more long-term Covid-19 deaths, it is claimed.
Lead author Graeme Ackland, professor of computer simulation at the University of Edinburgh, said: “In March the (UK) government had to make a decision: did they want to save lives or beds?
“Lockdown does mean that the number of deaths goes down so there is a short-term gain, but it leads to long-term pain.
“If you had done nothing, it would all be over by now. It would have been absolutely horrendous but it would be over. It wouldn’t even have been completely lunatic to do nothing.”
Figures showing the dangers of closing schools and blanket social distancing were reported in the original Imperial paper but many experts did not notice them, it is claimed.
“I talked to people on (British expert groups) SPI-M and Sage and they hadn’t seen them,” added Prof Ackland.
British prime minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said: “We have considered the full range of scientific opinion throughout the... pandemic and we will continue to do so.”