The risk of dying from Covid 19 is less than 1%. Most of those who will die are over 70 and many will
be, in layman’s terms, “done”. Lockdown was prescribed by doctors to save lives, but unlike the
prescription of a drug the efficacy/side effect ratio of lockdown was never properly assessed or even
considered.
And, increasingly, the side effects of lockdown are now emerging. Cancer cases have gone
undiagnosed, heart disease hasn’t been investigated, children have missed out on their education,
mental ill-health has sharply increased, the country has been almost bankrupted by furloughing,
waiting lists are at an all time high with a backlog now of more than 7 million patients, millions of GP
appointments and operations have been postponed or scrapped etc.
Further, the current rate of excess non-covid deaths, that is the number of deaths more than would
be expected in normal times, is running at more than 800 per week. The cause of this is still not
clear but Professor Chris Whitty advises that some of it is due to thousands of middle-aged people
dying of heart conditions that went untreated during the Covid pandemic. Even children may have
been affected, there having been an unexplained peak in Strep A infections, with some deaths.
The “Law of Unintended Consequences” is that actions of people, and especially of government,
always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other social scientists
have heeded its power for centuries but for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely
ignored it. This may be the case with lockdown. Mostly elderly lives have been saved in the short term but we are now experiencing the long term consequences of our response to Covid, particularly lockdown.
The government was right to resist a second lockdown for the Omicron variant of Covid one year
ago, ignoring pressure from “experts”, for example our local British Medical Association chairman
(Belfast Telegraph 20.12.21). I doubt very much if the general public will once again obey well
intentioned but ill-considered medical opinion when the next viral epidemic with a low mortality
comes around.
