"End the lockdown now!"

Dr. John Lee writes in UK Spectator about Covid-19.

...The majority of cases are asymptomatic. The most common symptoms are not fever, cough, headache and respiratory symptoms; they are no symptoms at all. The typical case does not suffer respiratory fibrosis; the disease leaves no mark. Somewhere around 99.9 per cent of those who catch the disease recover. Of those unlucky enough to die, over 90 per cent have pre-existing conditions and were anyway approaching the end of their lives. To say this is not being uncaring: it is simply a fact of life that older people are more likely to die in any event, and especially more likely to die from new types of infection.

The very models that put us into lockdown – on the basis of predictions no longer believed accurate – are keeping us here despite their known flaws.

...No country has ever improved the health of its population by making itself poorer.

Coronavirus affects mainly the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. But the large majority of this group who catch the disease recover. In the meantime lockdown is preventing many of the things that make life worth living: seeing children, grandchildren, and friends; eating out, hobbies, charity work, travelling. Doing all the things that people work so hard to be able to enjoy. Isolation is dangerous for everyone but particularly the elderly.

What about people who have died during this period of Covid or – many more – of other diseases? Is it right that they should have had lonely deaths, that they and their loved ones should not be able to say goodbye? What effects will this have on the survivors? How many elderly people have died because they did not access care? In whose name is the lockdown being prolonged? Do the healthy old, as well as 'vulnerable' groups, need the state to extend this damaging experience for their own good or would they like to make their own risk assessments in the face of uncertainty, as they have always done before?

There are 10,832,396 people aged over 65 in England and Wales. Even if we assume 50,000 deaths from Covid in this spike, and all occurring in this age group, the probability of death is less than 1 in 200. Would you rather see your family and live your life (with reasonable precautions as necessary) and take your own chances, or be locked up by the government for your own good?

The epidemiological models had nothing to say about how quickly our health service could adapt to a new disease. As it turned out, it adapted quickly. It has not been overwhelmed nor been close to it. That fear can no longer be a justification for continuing the lockdown. In fact, lockdown has merely harmed our ability to adapt more quickly. Unfortunately, the episode has also revealed less palatable things about the NHS. The gusto with which managers followed the Covid refrain meant that many vital treatments and investigations for conditions that we can and were dealing with were summarily put on hold. What is the moral equation that shows why a patient with one particular disease takes priority over all others? Is it right that health care staff can simply be ordered who to treat by managers? Who takes responsibility for patient care? I know many who are deeply unhappy to be working in an NHS where the command and control culture is so embedded that doctors can be told to stop, for example, cancer chemotherapy halfway through a course and feel they have no option but to comply.

... an evolutionary view suggests that the virus is likely to change quickly, with less virulent forms becoming dominant. Lockdown could potentially slow this beneficial tendency. On this view, asymptomatic people spreading the virus is a good thing because it means that the disease becomes milder more quickly. This could already be contributing to the flattening of the deaths curves that we are seeing. In this case, the sooner we lift lockdown, the better. It also implies that the peak in illnesses we have seen this time is likely to be as bad as it gets. In future, the virus will come into equilibrium with the population as wider immunity combines with predominantly milder forms of the virus to cause a lower overall death rate that nevertheless fluctuates from year to year, much like flu.

...the only reasonable solution is to inform people of the risks and let them, sensibly, calmly, and individually, make their own decisions.

...The government should rapidly lift the lockdown to a condition similar to that of Sweden’s.

Read more here.