Sweden’s resistance to lockdowns is vindicated again
At last, the tragic impact of lockdown is starting to turn from projections into facts. From the devastating effects on children’s education, to the lasting damage wreaked on the economy, we are now paying our pandemic debts.
Cancer patients are the latest unfortunate canaries in the coalmine. Figures show that hundreds more people than expected are dying each month in England from the disease. Since the beginning of September, there have been nearly 900 more fatalities among people with cancer than would be expected at this time of year.
The main reason for this is that during the lockdowns people did not come forward with symptoms. They stayed at home to protect the NHS. This was compounded by GPS being unable to pick up problems in remote consultations, and hospitals being slow to process referrals. These delays compromised the chances of successful treatment. For some cancers, they can reduce the chances of 10-year survival by up to 30 per cent.
As some critics of lockdowns pointed out in the summer of 2020 – though much maligned at the time – overall deaths from untreated conditions and economic disruption are very likely to exceed those from Covid.
As in so many other respects, it seems that Sweden has had a better experience than most. Their political and public health leaders did not panic – promoting social distancing and good hygiene rather than lockdowns – and their health services were well resourced to cope.
Britain’s pandemic management should always have been thinking about the trade-offs involved in delaying investigations and treatments. That was why the original pandemic plan, hastily abandoned when Covid took hold, focused on trying to keep the country going rather than becoming obsessed with a single cause of death.
British pandemic planning used to be well regarded for its “whole of society” approach. When I went to European conferences in 2006-07, other participants were impressed that we had thought through the costs of management for a much bigger problem than Covid has ever presented. We had reviewed the values involved in focusing exclusively, even for a short period, on a single cause of disease and death.
Alas, much of this preparation was discarded. This is why the Hallett Covid inquiry must not avoid looking into the history of pandemic planning and asking why a well-thought out and repeatedly tested strategy was thrown out so quickly. How did Covid deaths come to be thought of as more important than other deaths? How did the Department of Health and Social Care come to be the lead department for pandemic response? How did we come to stop looking at pandemics in the round?
NHS cancer services were not in a good state before the pandemic – the UK had a poor record on basic treatments and survival compared with other major European countries. But we can now say that the pandemic made this far worse. Judge-led public inquiries are good at establishing facts but have a poor record for understanding systemic problems. Lawyers are just not trained to think that way. Let us hope that this inquiry will be different.