‘Lockdowns costs greater than lives saved’
THE draconian lockdowns imposed during Covid had only a “negligible impact”, saving just 1,700 lives in England and Wales, says a study.
The investigation by US and Swedish researchers concluded that the benefits of the policy were minor compared to the “staggering collateral costs” imposed on people.
Academics from Johns Hopkins University and Lund University examined almost 20,000 studies on measures taken to protect populations against Covid across the world.
Their findings suggest that lockdowns in the first wave of the pandemic, when compared with less strict policies adopted by the likes of Sweden, prevented as few as 1,700 deaths overall in England and Wales.
The report’s authors said their findings showed that the draconian measures imposed by England’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and then Health Secretary Matt Hancock had a “negligible impact” on Covid mortality and were a “policy failure of gigantic proportions”. The authors said: “The data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”
The findings were published as the detrimental impact of lockdown on children’s lives, economic growth and public debt have become clearer.
Isolating
But critics of the report said it did not examine the data in a meaningful way and “lockdown” referred to measures such as isolating after infection.
Prof Neil Ferguson, Director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, at Imperial College London, said the report “does not significantly advance our understanding of the relative effectiveness of the plethora of public health measures adopted by different countries to limit Covid transmission”.