Orthodoxy of lockdowns
IT HAS become fashionable to challenge orthodoxies – and the latest is that lockdowns were bad for Britain, went on for too long and should never be imposed again.
According to this narrative, the recommendations on lockdown made by Sage (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) were not challenged sufficiently.
Rishi Sunak started the debate, telling the Spectator that he met a brick wall when he raised concerns about lockdowns. “Those meetings were literally me around that table, just fighting. It was incredibly uncomfortable every single time. In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the ‘fear’ narrative.”
The posters showing Covid patients on ventilators, he said, were the worst. “It was wrong to
scare people like that.”
But could lockdowns have been avoided?
The answer to that is surely no. People were dying in their thousands, hospitals were full and patients went into intensive care, never to come out.
Schools were shut to reduce the danger of children bringing back the infection to their parents and vulnerable grandparents. And we know the death toll among Asians was disproportionately high.
In such circumstances, it was better to follow scientific advice. In the days before vaccines, lockdown was the only weapon available to ministers to halt the spread of Covid-19.