Chris Whitty’s original covid plan had one thing right – then everyone panicked

Five years ago, a unique experiment was carried out on the British people. The then Prime Minister appeared on television to inform us that, for the indefinite future, we would not be allowed to leave our homes without one of a narrow range of excuses.

The first lockdown had begun and, within days, police officers were threatning fines for those caught walking dogs in the Peak District, or even sitting on a park bench in London. In spite of the draconian nature of the rules – more strict, even, than anything imposed during either of the World Wars – the British people meekly accepted the rules.

It is very understandable that they did so. We had all seen the harrowing images of Italian hospitals unable to cope with the rush of cases in that country. Moreover, many people will reasonably have assumed that some kind of scientific reasoning lay behind the lockdown, and that the Government was confident that the benefits would outweigh the harm.

Looking back, however, lockdown affected our lives in many negative ways, with which we are still living today.

Economic productivity has never recovered from when large parts of the economy were closed down for months on end.

We are all poorer for that – and of course poverty kills.

Cancer diagnosis rates initially plummeted as people stayed at home rather than make appointments to investigate symptoms, but they then surged after lockdown was lifted.

So too did cases of heart disease.

Unfortunately, for people who put off seeking medical attention, their prognosis was much worse than had they sought treatment earlier.

Schoolchildren regressed on reading and writing, and especially on social skills. Some went back to wearing nappies.

The effects are still with us now, with Cambridge University research from last September warning that year seven pupils have arrested reading skills, poor organisational skills and problems socialising.

It is plain that no such analysis of the likely effects of lockdown was carried out before it was imposed on us.

When the Department for Health and Social Care did eventually carry out a study, published in July 2020 just as society was reopening, the results were damning.

When it looked at quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) – ie the number of premature deaths multiplied by the number of years which people could otherwise have expected to live – it came to the shocking conclusion that the first lockdown would eventually cause more harm than had been wrought by 19 up to that point, partly on account of reduced access to medical care and partly due to an increase in poverty.

In other words, while lockdown had certainly saved lives, it was costing large numbers of them, too.

Yet far from learning the lesson and restricting itself to imposing less damaging ways of reducing infections, the Government went on to call another two lockdowns.

Initially, the plan had been to keep society open.

At the first of the Downing Street press conferences on March 12, 2020, Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance and Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty were at pains to stress that it wasn’t desirable to try to stop infections altogether because the virus was already too engrained in the population.

Try to stop it in its tracks and we would risk a spike of cases the following winter, just at the very worst time of year.

Instead of imposing lockdowns, as other European countries were already doing, the UK approach would be to flatten the curve of infections – or “squash the sombrero” as Johnson put it.

But then policy changed completely and the Government attempted to do what, just days beforehand, its chief scientific adviser had told it was futile – try to snuff out the virus altogether.

Ministers and their advisers had simply panicked when presented with modelling by Imperial College suggesting that 250,000 people could die unless serious constraints were put on our everyday lives.

In the end, the official death toll to December 2022, defined as people who died within 28 days of a test – so in reality including many other causes – was 177,180.

One European country, however, refused to panic. Sweden was inspired by Britain’s original policy, opting for limited restrictions on everyday lives but not full lockdown. While large events were cancelled, people were encouraged to work from home and universities and upper schools closed, junior schools were kept open.

People were still allowed to go out and eat and small social events were still allowed to be held.

Citizens were trusted to make their own decisions, with the elderly advised to limit social contact.

But no-one was threatened with fines for visiting their family members or sitting on a park bench.

Initially, Sweden had a higher mortality rate than many countries, although not nearly as bad as had been feared by lockdown enthusiasts.

A version of the mathematical model which had been used by Imperial College predicted 90,000 deaths in Sweden by the end of May 2020.

In the event, the figure was 4,350. And over time, the success of Sweden’s policy became evident.

Overall excess deaths (from all causes) between January 2020 and July 2022 ended up being lower than in any European country other than Norway.

Not only that but, while the UK’s economy shrank by 10% in 2020, Sweden escaped with just a 2% fall.

Lockdown began as a Chinese policy. In Wuhan, where the pandemic began, some residents were confined to their homes by having the doors welded shut.

While our own government didn’t quite go that far, never has the Chinese Communist Party wielded so much influence over our lives in Britain.

It has been thoroughly depressing to sit and listen to the coverage of the inquiry and listen to many politicians and officials to suggest that, in a future pandemic, the UK government should go harder and faster, and impose lockdown earlier.

It is true that some restrictions on our lives in 2020 and 2021 were necessary.

But the lesson of the pandemic, for anyone who wants to learn it, is that lockdown went far too far.

The Government should have given us advice but trusted us much more to make our own decisions. Instead, our leaders had a rush of authoritarianism to the head – and we will be paying the price for many years to come.