The latest conclusions of the national Covid Inquiry have hit the headlines, and those who supported lockdown feel vindicated. An expert-led process costing £200 million has broadly endorsed the government’s approach, concluding that lockdown “was right” — and should, in fact, have happened sooner.
But the inquiry has also been labelled as a £200 million pound “I told you so” exercise; never willing to challenge the underlying assumptions of the lockdown strategy. Critics point to the fact that the inquiry uncritically accepted figures based on discredited modelling, and ignored real-world data such as the comparative case of Sweden. They believe that lockdowns not only couldn’t significantly change the mortality rate from an airborne virus, but that they cost lives, wrecked the economy as well as socially, educationally, and psychologically crippling a generation.
