Was lockdown the correct Covid-19 Strategy?

Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College, was responsible for the modelling of a response to Covid–19.  His virtual model was recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and it passed through into policy with virtually no scrutiny. Ferguson’s dramatic prediction of 500,000 deaths in the UK became the foundation of Boris Johnson’s U-turn from herd immunity to collective quarantine.

Professor Ferguson later reduced his mortality calculations to around 20,000 deaths stating that “two-thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway”, yet insisted that without drastic lockdown measures being taken, the numbers would have been even higher – this is pure conjecture.  

A new slogan was born and put on play and repeat 24/7 by Government officials and Corporate Media – Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives – (more on that later).  

Was lockdown the correct strategy?  

The following graph was produced by UK Column and demonstrates the lack of correlation between lockdown and “saving lives”:

Updated 21/4/20

It is almost impossible to rely upon “official” statistics, when they so often rely upon unreliable and sporadic testing procedures and based upon death certificates that misrepresent the actual cause of death as Covid–19, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. 

Emerging statistics are increasingly undermining initial conclusions now that physical data is rolling in and casting grave doubts over the correlation between lockdown and saving lives as the negative consequences of lockdown emerge. 

Reality is starting to creep into the Covid–19 dialogue.  It is becoming apparent that people are getting sick because they are being isolated and effectively living under house arrest, condemned as “murderers” if they so much as think about breaking curfew, being snitched on by neighbours for “gathering” more than two people together in their back gardens, or students having a drink on their balconies.  People being consistently fined by Police if they dare to rest on a park bench or drive to an isolated location during their proscribed daily exercise period.  

Isolation is a proven silent killer especially among the elderly who are being “locked down” in their rooms with all family visits banned.  So many dying alone with their families grieving from afar unable even to attend family funerals – these effects will last a lifetime, unlike Covid-19.

During the lockdown, Britain has received an estimated 1.4 million new benefit claims for welfare payments, “around seven times the normal level” the social and economic problems that arise due to unemployment are boundless. 

Analysis

The moral debate is not lives -v- money.  It is lives -v- lives.  It will take years to assess the wider implications of “lockdown”.  The damage to children’s education, the excess suicides, the increase in mental health problems, the removal of resources from other health problems that we were dealing with effectively pre-Covid. 

Evidence of the purported NHS “surge” is entirely absent, it has been reported that close to half of the UK’s hospital beds were in fact empty.  The state will no doubt claim this is thanks to the lockdown.  

Certainly, the fact that during the lockdown period people with serious conditions haven’t been treated together with the media’s 24/7 “terror tactics” keeping most people away from A&E have attributed to the empty hospital beds – but at what cost?.  

It is becoming increasingly clear that the deaths of despair will outpace the deaths from Covid-19 and questions need to be asked and answered the first one being:- 

WHO IS SETTING GOVERNMENT POLICY AND FOR WHOSE BENEFIT?

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