PETER HITCHENS: Why do so few accept lockdown was like burning down a home to ... trends now
We will never know exactly how foolish it was to close down the country in the spring of 2020.
It is beginning to dawn on some people that it might actually have been an error. But will it ever be broadly agreed that it was so?
A report published yesterday — hundreds of pages of devastating detail from experts at Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and Lund University in Sweden — concluded the supposed benefits of lockdown were 'a drop in the bucket' when compared to the costs. Or, as I would put it, they were like burning down your house to get rid of a wasps' nest.
This report (in fact a revised version of an earlier document first issued in May 2022) will shock many Lockdown enthusiasts by saying that closing the country saved as few as 1,700 lives in England and Wales in spring 2020.
Boris Johnson (pictured) was the British Prime Minister during the Covid lockdowns starting in 2020
Wrecked
It ought to weigh heavily on the anti-panic side of the scales. I hope it will. But will it resolve anything? I have my doubts.
I still meet plenty of people who insist that our only national mistake was not to lock down harder and sooner than we did. This is why I am quite sure many of those who supported these moves will never abandon their position.
Those of us who, like me, took the other view, are unlikely to shift either. Why is this?
I have come to the conclusion that it is really about whether people like being bossed about for their own good, or whether they do not. A surprising number of us turn out to love Big Brother. Not only could these illiberal types not get enough of doom-packed propaganda, decrees urging them to stay at home, keep their distance and wear masks, but they were sorry when it ended.
A report suggests specific initiatives to control the spread of Covid had mixed results in reducing mortality, with mask mandates having the biggest impact while measures such as limiting gatherings paradoxically raised death rates
Those who think that statistics and reason will resolve this are likely to be disappointed.
Here are some riddles that I doubt will ever be solved. What did we mean by a 'Covid death'? Someone who died solely of Covid, somebody who died partly of something else but had Covid at the time, or someone who died almost wholly of something else but had Covid at the time?
I do not think it was ever clear then and so it cannot be clear now. Then there is the cost. Is there any accurate, precise way of counting how many cancer patients died because Covid restrictions postponed urgent treatment?
How will we ever measure precisely how many people had their schooling or university courses wrecked?
Will the price of closing the economy, in inflation, taxes, destroyed businesses and lost jobs, ever be computed?
And what about the old people whose health was damaged by being forced to stay at home and abandon their active existences?
You might as well try to weigh a thunderstorm.
The facts are incredibly difficult to set out precisely and always will be. Behind them all lies an unverifiable claim that doing little or nothing would have killed thousands more.
I would say the example of Sweden shows this is not true. Sweden got by well without closing down. But they will be met by others who say its more restrictive Nordic neighbours did better, and it was saved by its position far from the main travel routes of the world.
Even what seems to me to be clear evidence that masks were futile is disputed by others who insist they were effective. So those who wish to believe this was a good idea are difficult to persuade otherwise.
While I have my own opinions, and am very glad I expressed them, my heart sinks at the
