Argument: Lockdowns killCovid-19 Kills – but So Does Lockdown

Published 19 October 2020

Just over six months ago Boris Johnson gave the British people a clear instruction: “You must stay at home.” Professor Karl Sikora writes that it was impossible for anybody to anticipate the unintended consequences of those five words and quite how much pain and anguish they would unleash. “No computer model nor brilliant epidemiologist can fully estimate the sheer long-term destruction lockdowns have caused,” Sikora says, adding: “This is not an argument for a fundamental shift in strategy, those debates have been had. “This is a plea for more balance.”

Just over six months ago Boris Johnson gave the British people a clear instruction: “You must stay at home.” Professor Karl Sikora writes in The Spectator that it was impossible for anybody to anticipate the unintended consequences of those five words and quite how much pain and anguish they would unleash.

Through a mixture of emotional coercion and relentless scaremongering millions of people in need of medical help followed the PM’s order to the letter. They stayed, many in intense pain, at home and didn’t seek the care they needed.

Every Tuesday morning the Office for National Statistics release their weekly information on deaths. For months it has told the same story. Significant, sustained levels of excess deaths are happening in the home every week.

There are repetitive and draining discussions about grand strategies wherever you look. But thousands more than usual are dying in their own homes and nobody raises an eyebrow. To avoid any more unnecessary deaths, we must start asking difficult questions. We can’t be afraid of the answer. Covid-19 kills, but so does lockdown.

Politicians have been playing with forces that none of us fully understand. They claim to always be following ‘the science’, but let me assure you, there is no science behind effectively closing down cancer diagnostic pathways for 3 million people or delaying treatment for so many.

Sikora notes that heart attacks and strokes have dramatically reduced in number over the last six months – and he says that the only way this could have happened is that people have chosen to stay at home rather than seek medical care. Mental health has been relentlessly ignored along with other serious illnesses. Deprivation, depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation continues to spread.

No computer model nor brilliant epidemiologist can fully estimate the sheer long-term destruction lockdowns have caused. I don’t think many have even bothered. Fear is a very difficult metric but if we could measure it with any precision, I’m sure all records would have been smashed this year.

Sikora says that the full consequences of lockdowns have not been properly considered by those who claim to have the answers. “If a wider range of voices had been considered from the start, perhaps we wouldn’t be in the utter mess we’re in,” he writes.

“This is not an argument for a fundamental shift in strategy, those debates have been had,” Sikora writes. “This is a plea for more balance.”