The chilling attempt to rewrite lockdown history

The UK remains stuck in a culture of denial where nobody will admit mistakes were made

Britain’s lockdown nightmare may be far from over, but an attempt to rewrite the history of our greatest political blunder has already begun. With the pandemic now past its peak, the lack of evidence that lockdown served any useful purpose is glaring. And, crucially, thanks to a growing abundance of raw data – from deaths and hospital admissions, to Covid-related 111 calls and mobile tracking intelligence – we now have the power to piece together what Britain’s lockdown achieved (or didn’t) in hideous technicolour.

Getting at the truth will be an uphill struggle, however: Downing Street has shown no appetite whatsoever for sifting through the evidence, even though it could inform (or, let’s face it, rip apart) its uniquely odd approach to easing lockdown.

We must also beware the shapeshifting scientific architects of the stay-at-home order; as criticism grows, are they attempting to dress their reconstructed reality in the language of scientific pedantry?

Take Neil Ferguson. One might wonder whether Professor Lockdown’s generous display of humble pie before the science and technology committee on Tuesday – admitting that Sweden “got a long way to the same effect” as the UK without resorting to lockdown – was in fact a cunning attempt to defend his junk modelling. Despite depicting Sweden as an extremist outlier just weeks ago, accusing it of pursuing an approach most other countries would not tolerate, Ferguson this week not only oozed that he had the “greatest respect” for Swedish scientists, but even suggested that while the Nordic country “came to a different policy conclusion”, this was “based really on quite similar science”.

The latter assertion, of course, conveniently implies that Sweden’s success doesn’t pose a challenge to Imperial modelling. It is also a snot-nosed insult to the nation – Britons deserve the unvarnished story, not pedagogic half-truths.

Granted, Sweden’s aim was the same as Britain’s: to flatten the curve. And, like Britain, it embraced measures such as social distancing. But while our entire strategy, by some accounts, hinged on the terrifying projections of a single modelling paper, Sweden rejected working with models due to their limited reliability. This, incidentally, includes two Swedish papers inspired by Ferguson’s model, which wrongly projected that critical care demand in Sweden would peak above 16,000 or even 20,000 a day in May (the reality was nearer 500).

Other basic differences abound. Sweden assumed a significantly higher rate of compliance with measures such as self-isolation than the likes of Imperial. Not to mention that while Sweden has been optimistic on herd immunity, Britain has been sceptical. And while Britain is hopeful about a vaccine solution, Sweden is hesitant.

A culture of denial pervades No 10, too. This is in shameful contrast to the open debate taking place in other countries. Having crunched the numbers, and discovered that the R number may have fallen to 1.1 by the time it announced lockdown, the head of Norway’s Public Health Institute has admitted that the country’s stay-athome order in March may have been unnecessary.

Meanwhile, the architect of Sweden’s strategy, Prof Anders Tegnell, has been frank about the fact that, despite early projections, Stockholm did not reach herd immunity by the end of May, while its politicians have apologised for their “big failure” to protect care homes.

Contrast this with the narrowness of the discussion in the UK, where the only notable admission so far has been the justice secretary’s suggestion that, with testing resources stretched, the UK had no choice but to sacrifice care homes on the altar of the NHS. Even on that, there remain serious questions about whether decision-makers properly countenanced the risk to care homes in the first place, let alone weighed this up against the needs of the NHS. Care homes were mentioned only twice in five months in Sage reports dating back to January. Nor did the Government publish an action plan for social care until mid-april.

Pinning down what went wrong matters. No 10’s refusal to grant a post-mortem on the Covid debacle threatens to cripple our economy with permanent rigor mortis. Early economic data shows a terrifying correlation between countries that locked down hard and the severity of their downturns. There has been no notable rise in Covid hospital admissions in countries easing their lockdowns. And yet No 10 refuses to end this reckless pantomime of scientifically risible caution.

With the Government committed to concealing its mistakes, and those who question “the science” dismissed as cranks, there is no certainty that Britain will be able to have a sensible conversation about lockdown. But try we must. This catastrophe is a textbook case of what happens when people are treated like swing voters, to be polled, prodded and pandered to, rather than thoughtful, responsible citizens.

And so it goes that, unable to protect us from risk, politicians end up protecting us from truth in this new post-orwellian dystopia.

follow Sherelle Jacobs on Twitter @Sherelle_e_j; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion