Lockdown is poorly justified, unsustainable and an assault too far on civil liberties

A prime minister in intensive care, and 6,159 people dead! Coronavirus looks serious – and it is, no question.

People are afraid and a country is hurting. Every day we await with sad resignation the latest death figures, now read out and poured over like some macabre cricket score card: 786 all out yesterday.
Behind each day’s bleak news, individual stories of loss, grief and suffering that statistics cannot capture and that remain unknown to the majority of us.

So, when people are dying, and their loved ones are cruelly even denied the chance to be with them at the end or give them a fitting funeral, is it churlish, crass or insensitive to raise our civil liberties at this point? Is it unjustified to wonder whether the most extraordinary grab of individual freedoms in living memory is really a necessary evil?

I say no! We must apply logic with a heart and when we do, I believe that the case for such a sweeping lockdown is wide open to question, and we must start raising those questions, however unpopular that may be when those in charge are unwilling even to talk about their plans to end it.

If you want to skip the longer read (and it will be a long read!), take away only this point: lockdown has been determined as a course of action on the basis of speculation, not evidence. Contrasting approaches to crisis management across Europe, and a very contradictory scientific picture mean that, despite the bullying hash taggery and loud virtue signaling that comes at us from every direction, it’s not too early to start asking serious questions.

At the moment, I would say that most people would find that objectionable at least to some extent. Hackles are raised when the lockdown is criticised, or when anyone tries to defend the apparently selfish mob of executioners who have dared to venture out rather than be a good citizen and “save lives” or “protect our NHS.”

It looks, on the face of it, a black and white story. Clear before us is a right way and a wrong way – the dos and don’ts for the good citizen are plain to see. This is propagated by a rousing speech from our wonderful Queen, a relentless hammering home of ‘the message’ from government, extraordinary police powers and, above all, the comforting reassurance that, despite following one approach to managing the crisis and dramatically reversing it in one day, all this is consistently ‘guided by the science.’

That science appears to be reaching very different conclusions. Lockdown was introduced because early modelling suggested that many people would die, produced with limited data and time. Yet other data, including emerging data from China, is pointing to a far higher level of asymptomatic infections and leading us to a less frightening picture that makes such draconian measures hard to justify. So there is a case to be made.

The human cost of lockdown might be disproportionately affecting the very same vulnerable souls that we are allegedly protecting, in addition to being economically ruinous (which itself costs lives), but grimly on we go: no questions asked, no doubts to be articulated. On every front there is a need to ask questions.

And if you want the longer version, buckle in and read on.

Not a black and white story

The world isn’t black and white, saving lives isn’t a black and white art but a balancing act of trading risks, and above all, science isn’t black and white either.

Other countries have already begun to announce plans to slowly and gradually loosen their lockdowns. The Austrian chancellor has even called it a “resurrection” in a clear reference to an opening up soon after Easter. Denmark has announced that, whilst school and day centres will open up again, other measures such as its ban on gatherings of more than 10 will remain in place (in Britain, the ban applies to gatherings of just 2).

Sweden has been Europe’s major exception in the modest nature of the restrictions it has imposed, for example banning gatherings of more than 50 and closing universities but not schools. Japan seems to regard emergency measures as simply encouraging people more vocally to adopt the desired behaviours, but not compelling them.

None of these countries have hit crisis point. Yes, they have Coronavirus cases and yes, there have been deaths. That’s what happens in a pandemic. What they haven’t done, it seems, is confine their citizens to an indefinite house arrest with no end in sight.

It’s a bit like preventing road deaths: we could prevent some road deaths by having a rule that states that you can drive your cars, but not if you’ve sunk half a bottle of wine beforehand. Or we could prevent all road deaths by banning driving, then scrabbling around to speedily implement dramatic, complex and costly solutions to the fallout of that decision.

Think of that spectrum to locate where different countries have set their benchmark for Coronavirus. And it gets worse, because we don’t know that we can prevent Coronavirus deaths by doing the equivalent of seizing the cars and keys and forcing a complete cessation of driving.

The contradictory science

The science has never been without contradiction. That’s why scrutiny of the government’s approach to swiping away our freedoms cannot be put off to a later date, even if we do sympathise and commend them for their response to phenomenally complicated logistical headaches.

Boris Johnson and his government were originally planning to follow the Swedish approach of modest restrictions to ‘delay’ the spread of the virus and give the NHS the time it needed to be prepared. This was guided by ‘the science.’ It seemed perfectly reasonable.

Overnight, on 23 March a dramatic reversal came because Professor Neil Ferguson, an Imperial College London scientist and government advisor, produced modelling suggesting that a quarter of a million people could die. This approach was not peer reviewed but nonetheless was enough to shut the country down.

Ferguson regularly defends his work robustly, as well he should, because to his credit he has never been quiet about the limitations of statistical modelling, particularly with little data or time. Nor has he claimed to be anything more than one voice in the scientific community. Yet his is the one who has the ears of those who need to listen.

His work has been seized upon in a completely uncritical way, as it was in 2001 when hundreds of thousands of animals were needlessly slaughtered to prevent a serious outbreak of Foot and Mouth. Among other criticisms, Ferguson’s work was accused of neglecting important factors such as the variability in transmission among species, but it was ultimately a political decision to take the most drastic course.

Once again the bogyman, Ferguson’s work is now criticised because his numbers are so extraordinary.

He has gone on to claim that with measures to slow the spread, as few as 20,000 people could die, whilst over half a million could with no controls at all. Common sense alone would suggest that the likely number will be somewhere between 20,000 and 500,000.

We don’t need to rely on common sense alone, however. We already know that for most people, COVID-19 is an unpleasant but ultimately mild and fairly brief illness, but a fascinating frontier of inquiry is growing around asymptomatic infections.

Exactly how many of us have been infected? An Oxford University team published a paper that explored various scenarios. It claimed that up to half the population could already have become infected, with a vast majority becoming either mildly unwell or displaying no symptoms at all. This assumes circulation of the virus for a couple of weeks before the first recorded case and implies things could subside in a matter of months.

Ferguson says that this seems inconsistent with the data, and Professor Sunetra Gupta, who led the study, has herself acknowledged the need for testing to affirm the theory but questioned the unqualified acceptance of the Imperial research.

So, with claims varying so wildly about asymptomatic infection, what is the truth? Although we don’t know, early data on daily new infections emerging from China suggests that the more generous estimates of asymptomatic infection might be getting closer to the truth.

Cindy Yu, drawing on a British Medical Journal study’s methodology, on Monday crunched the numbers for the Spectator. The first 6 days of data revealed 624 cases, of which 434 were asymptomatic. That’s 70%.

Little wonder then that Tom Jefferson, an Oxford epidemiologist, commented to the BMJ: “The sample is small, and more data will become available. Also, it’s not clear exactly how these cases were identified. But let’s just say they are generalisable. And even if they are 10 per cent out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”

Indeed. With this data, the oxford paper and Professor Ferguson now leaning towards the idea of higher rates of population infection than anticipated, this has got to be going somewhere. It’s got to point us to the conclusion that a lot of us already reached through observation: Coronavirus is bad news, but is it really so utterly terrifying?

Is it really now so hard to understand why we might have coped if we had stuck to our original plan of eliminating higher-risk activities but still allowing some semblance of normality? And is China now about to experience a second wave of infections despite one of the harshest lockdowns of them all?

What about those flu comparisons?

Interestingly, Donald Trump appears to have been persuaded that comparisons with winter flu are inappropriate.

They are limited, but worth a mention. The UK has a flu immunisation programme, but it’s worth remembering that only high-risk individuals are vaccinated and that, if we get the most prevalent strains wrong, there can be seasons where even that isn’t quite so effective.

This happened in 2014-15, which I remember clearly as I got flu. That year, 28,000 deaths in England were linked to flu. Though some years are markedly better, Public Health England has the annual average at 17,000. As with Coronavirus, the majority of these deaths occur in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.

Thus, whilst Coronavirus has hit the health system at speed, and whilst the number of COVID-19-linked deaths receives an unprecedented degree of coverage, a very sad story like this plays out each year, largely ignored and certainly without a national shutdown.

Concluding thoughts

I don’t want to make lockdown more miserable for people. We’ve got so much to be thankful for, not least that this has happened in the spring, allowing many of us to enjoy the simple pleasures of nature, perhaps with newfound appreciation.

The NHS call for volunteers attracted 750,000 to the ‘NHS Army’ and I suspect that this will grow when the pause on recruitment is lifted. That’s amazing!

Our supermarkets have responded at breakneck speed to keep food on the shelves and protect the vulnerable; their staff just some of the unsung heroes that for too long we have never regarded as such.

NHS and social care staff probably deserve a round of applause every week, but they have received a fitting thank you as their hard work has been brought to the forefront of our minds.

Our politicians would probably be criticised no matter what they did, and thankfully it didn’t take a sick prime minister for most decent people to show them some compassion.

A lot of people have probably concluded that we’ll be okay and there’s no point moaning. I agree. We can and will get through this, and we must look out for those for whom this experience is especially lonely and isolating.

Yet we must never relegate our freedoms to the realm of afterthoughts or things to worry about when things look better. They are the very fabric of our society. They were bought with far too much blood and struggle for the ease with which their withdrawal has been accepted.

Terrorist atrocities in recent years have been marked by a combination of revulsion at the crime and resoluteness to keep calm and carry on! We don’t, of course, keep calm and carry on without doing sensible things like upping our security measures, but we try. We should be doing the same now.

Whether it’s waiting for greater scientific clarity, increased testing capacity or the ‘peak’ to come at some point unknown, these are not reasons to avoid a managed opening up again, because the price we are paying may very well be vastly higher than it needs to be.

Lockdown is poorly justified, unsustainable and an assault too far on civil liberties.