Nine months into the global Coronavirus pandemic and the consensus around lockdown as the preferred strategy to combat it is starting to crack. Those who argue that the cure is worse than the disease are getting more vocal, perhaps most notably in the form of the Great Barrington Declaration, a global initiative backed by leading scientist who advocate herd immunity as the solution to the crisis. The background is not just the inability of lockdowns to stop the virus in its track but a picture of rising collateral damage adding to the colossal economic cost of putting society in a holding pattern until a vaccine is made available. In Britain, Cancer Research UK have estimated that about three million people have missed cancer screenings since March, which means 350,000 people who would normally have been urgently referred to hospital with suspected cancer symptoms are instead continuing to live without diagnosis. And of course, the worst hardship is likely to hit the developing world: estimates say as many as 130 million people are at risk of starvation brought on by disruptions of supply chains that result from lockdown.
But despite the opposition, apart from the Swedes who have dissented from the start, only US President Donald Trump among western leaders is questioning the lockdown consensus. Why are they digging in? The more you look at the facts, the more obvious it becomes that this is less about fighting a virus and more about political convenience.
Hence, even with as prominent a charity as Cancer Research UK sounding the alarm, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not flinching in his commitment to his strategy. It would appear that his cold calculation is that it is much more likely that his government will be blamed for a rise in Covid-19 deaths in the autumn of 2020 than for the deaths in years and decades to come that result indirectly from the lockdown. The one thing the government has clearly decided can’t be risked is a situation where the National Health Service is being “overwhelmed” with Covid patients and the media shows scenes like those from the hardest hit hospitals in the Italian city of Bergamo that that were frightening the government into Britain’s first lockdown in March. Covid deaths that might be blamed on lack of a lockdown are much more politically damaging than cancer and heart disease that are a secondary effect of lockdown, that won’t be as easily linked, won’t dominate headlines and won’t happen for a few years anyway – they will happen out of the public eye where they are much less damaging to the political lives of our current government. Contrast with the intense focus on Covid deaths from an activist media, led by lockdown zealots like Piers Morgan and his ITV morning news show, who will destroy Boris Johnson’s political life if Britain fares markedly worse than other countries in the coming months with respect to the unique metric of Covid deaths. Nothing else matters.
The economy is similarly unimportant, though Mr Johnson must realise that before his five-year term is over in 2024, he will suffer major political damage form the economic devastation coming our way. But there is safety in numbers, and the political reality is that lockdowns are the less risky strategy if you don’t want to stand out: lockdown is what other countries do (except Sweden, which doesn’t count) and the Labour opposition is in favour as well, in fact, they are trying to out-flank the government as even more authoritarian because they find political safety in the mainstream lockdown policy as well.
Then there is the loss of quality of life is – difficult to quantify but no less important. We are asked to stop living in order to avoid dying, but that trade-off is not one everyone wants to make, not even the vulnerable old, who may prefer the risk of a premature death to spending their last days in isolation. Where Boris Johnson may make a critical mistake is in his treatment of young people: it is evident from the scenes of street partying after the recently implemented 10pm curfew that they have not bought into government’s narrative of putting a lid on fun in order to “save granny,” that is, to not spread the disease among the resilient young and risk passing it onto the vulnerable old. The generation that are having their university experience ruined may not easily forgive a Tory party they already hate because of tuition fees.
But in the end, it is all a political calculation. We are paying trillions of Pounds, people are dying of treatable diseases and we are putting our lives on hold, all in the name of protecting the country form Coronavirus – but underneath looms the matter of job security of Boris Johnson’s government. Politicians will not meet hardship through lockdown restrictions; they won’t be worrying about their jobs or how to pay the mortgage – and the political ecosystem in which they operate has built-in incentives to stick with the strategy. We all know politicians never admit to having been wrong. A draconian lockdown, unthinkable a year ago, has become a safe, mainstream policy tool.