Take Action

2. Lockdowns cause terrible harm.

* Lockdowns kill.

The excess deaths caused by Covid-19 over the last 12 months will be far outweighed by the unnecessary deaths caused by lockdown. Bristol University’s experts say that the lockdowns of 2020 will cost 560,000 lives in the UK. The Government’s own prediction is that more than 200,000 will die as a result of the first lockdown alone (Office for National Statistics, July 2020).

* Lockdowns are the most deadly Government misjudgement in the history of the world.

Last September, the UN World Food Programme warned that 270,000,000 people face starvation – what it called a ‘hunger pandemic’. That alone makes lockdown the most lethal Government decision of all time, killing many times more people than Mao, Hitler and Stalin combined.

* Millions of people despair of their future.

They’re losing jobs, businesses and businesses – the lifeblood of our country. We need wealth to have health. GDP fell by 11.3% in 2020. Protecting the NHS is very expensive: how will we pay for it without a functioning economy? Unemployment is expected to increase by between 450,000 and 2.45 million above pre- pandemic levels.

* Education is impacted and it’s our children who will suffer.

In the first lockdown there was a 25% reduction in learning for primary school children and a 30% reduction for secondary school children.

* We face an unprecedented mental health crisis.

It’s hitting our children and young people hardest of all. Problem drinking has doubled and is a killer which now affects around nine million people. Domestic abuse has soared. Suicide rates are rising and we have an entire generation growing up in fear and isolation. We simply do not know how bad the long-term damage to our young people will be. The average Covid victim has already lived longer than most of us ever will – it makes no sense to sacrifice our children.

* Prioritising Covid at the expense of all other patients and treatments means that we now have a massive backlog of problems that will keep the NHS at breaking point for years.

Cancer, heart disease and dementia remain the biggest killers in the UK and they’re all going untreated, leading to many thousands of early deaths. Crisis in the NHS will be used as a reason to keep us locked down for years: Covid restrictions are the cause, not the cure.

The government appear to be focused only on reducing transmission of one virus, and not taking all the other harms into account. We need a balanced and rational approach to managing the virus.

3. Liberty and democracy have taken body blows.

The Government has used emergency powers to take unprecedented control of broadcast and social media. Most people trust what they see on TV because they are used to a free media which can scrutinise policy and hold the Government to account. Ofcom, the Government’s broadcasting regulator, has told broadcasters that they cannot do this as it might undermine compliance with guidelines – policy can only be criticised if it is not tough enough – while social media is policed to stop comments that question restrictions gaining traction.

There is overwhelming evidence that these policies don’t work – we can already see that they are making everything worse, not better – but without freedom of speech, it’s impossible to debate it properly in the media.

In 2020 local elections, Police and Crime Commissioner and mayoral elections were cancelled. This was a terrible blow to democracy and must not be allowed to happen again in 2021. People’s rights to worship, protest, have a relationship, maintain family relationships, and children’s rights to education and our freedom of movement have all outright prohibited or impacted at times. The current restrictions breach at least five of the key points of the UN’s Universal Charter of Human Rights liberties that countless people have sacrificed their lives to preserve. There is no justification = suspension of such basic liberties is not acceptable now that we know lockdowns don’t work. The cure is worse than the disease.

We could save far more lives by using the money more wisely

The government’s cost benefit analysis of lockdown published on the 30th November didn’t include the use of QALYs (Quality Adjusted Life Years). The NHS normally allows up to £30,000 for each QALY that a treatment could save. Even if you take the view that lockdowns work – and we can see that each lockdown just makes things worse – the cost is £96,000 to £1.97 million per QALY according to a report by Civitas. The Government’s own statistics show that the average Covid victim has already lived longer than most of us will and has two other life-threatening conditions. We could save the lives of many younger and healthier people from the really big killer conditions with this kind of money.

Sources:

*  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext

*  http://civitas.org.uk/content/files/The-cost-of-the-cure-30-November.pdf

*  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-government-report-shows/

*  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8925425/Lockdown-claim-equivalent-560-000-lives-health-impact-recession-cause.html