Lockdown saved lives

Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August) – and one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed. But none of this is true. I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. Looking back, it’s clear that the biggest mistake we made wasn’t locking down, but doing so too late.

I vividly remember the morning of Saturday 14 March 2020 when, as part of a small team gathered in the Prime Minister’s office, Boris Johnson was told the current plan to manage the pandemic was failing. Without urgent intervention the country’s healthcare system would collapse. The challenge facing us in that first wave was immense. We knew the NHS didn’t have enough beds and that there was a massive shortfall in PPE and a severely limited number of ventilators.

The initial modelling used for crucial decisions, we found out, was very wrong. A review by data experts recruited by Dominic Cummings had uncovered that, unless we changed course immediately, the NHS would be overwhelmed within three weeks.

The PM sat in silence as three scenarios were sketched out on a whiteboard. The first looked at no restrictions, the second at our current social-distancing measures and the third considered a national lockdown. Only under the last option would the NHS avoid collapse. But not until a week later did the PM declare a national lockdown: one that saved tens of thousands of lives.

What I don’t recognise is the idea that, as Mr Sunak suggests, lockdown’s trade-offs were never properly discussed. They were highlighted daily by Chris Whitty in our Covid meetings. They weighed heavily on everyone involved. But we believed that – morally, politically and practically – lockdown was the right thing to do. Yes, it was a flawed, blunt tool, but it was the best one we had in a limited toolbox. We desperately needed time to improve NHS capacity, buy more ventilators, develop drugs, purchase PPE, and of course create a vaccine. Lockdown gave us that time.

Or, I should say, the public gave us that time. They trusted the government. They stayed at home. They applauded NHS workers. They made a difference. It wasn’t these actions we should regret, it was weeks wasted by a government too pusillanimous to act. The truth is that we locked down late because we had become paralysed by the fear of the trade-offs.

Morality and politics aside, what do critics think would have happened to transmission rates if we had failed to lock down? What would they have done instead? Mr Sunak says he’d have had ‘a grown-up conversation with the public’. But what does this mean in policy terms? Do lockdown sceptics believe people would have voluntarily stayed at home and avoided social contacts, as in Sweden, so restrictions were not needed? What would have happened had our healthcare system collapsed, with people dying in hospital corridors and car parks? We saw at the start of the pandemic how nebulous policy caused many problems. A directive was needed over woolly guidance.

Covid’s exponential growth meant that for every day that decisive action was delayed, the magnitude of the problem would soar: that’s true both for the Covid deaths and the side-effects. No amount of revisionism can avoid that hard truth.

Lee Cain

No. 10 director of communications, 2019-20

London SW1

Model behaviour

Sir: Rishi Sunak says that, as chancellor, he struggled to find the assumptions behind the models used to justify lockdown. As a mathematics department professor who has tried to scrutinise some of the key Covid models, I can see why. Important and controversial assumptions were often buried in seldom-read appendices. Other assumptions were clear only when you read the computer code. Assumptions about what to omit went unmentioned.

For example, where is the evidence Covid infections were growing exponentially until lockdown? In the assumptions fed to the models, not the data. In peer-reviewed studies, I have found that new infections were probably falling well before lockdown. The React2 study gave similar results: simply by asking a sample of those with Covid antibodies when their symptoms started.

Modelling led to predictions that more than 80 per cent of the population would be infected in the first wave of an unmitigated epidemic. In fact, in most European countries, no more than 10 per cent were – irrespective of what restrictions were imposed. Modellers assumed that up to 2 per cent of those infected would require critical care, much higher than was actually the case, but wrongly predicted a completely overwhelmed NHS.

In future epidemics we need to find ways of acknowledging the full uncertainties associated with modelling assumptions and data, and of communicating these to policymakers. Especially when these models are used to recommend policies that have high societal costs and are hard to reverse.

Professor Simon Wood

Edinburgh

Future scares

Sir: Rishi Sunak has performed a public service by revealing his doubts about lockdown – but have the lessons been learned? This is the question I asked Liz Truss at the Eastbourne leadership hustings: ‘Before restricting our right to heat our homes or drive our cars, will you critically examine the scientific groupthink behind net zero?’ She declared another lockdown would not happen under her leadership, but went on to affirm the UK does need to transition to net zero. There is ample evidence that this policy will lead to similar restrictions on our freedom and prosperity as lockdown. Perhaps she could consult the 1,100 scientists who signed the World Climate Declaration as to why they believe that there is no ‘climate emergency’.

Michael Staples

Seaford, East Sussex

Chinese checkers

Sir: The Great Britain China Centre extolled by Cindy Yu (‘I’d be the perfect communist shill’, 27 August) is depressingly reminiscent of the earnest bodies which promoted dialogue with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Its own website extols meetings with Chinese ministers, judges and Communist party officials as if they were representatives of a normal state and not agents of a totalitarian tyranny like no other in history. Under the presidency of Peter Mandelson since 2015, the centre’s records suggest concentration on safe topics which will not offend the Chinese regime. They show scant evidence of activity over Chinese repression in Xinjiang or Tibet or Hong Kong; or its human rights record in general; or its threat to Taiwan and expansionism overseas; or its subversive and espionage activities; or its pressures on academic freedom and intellectual and cultural life. If indeed the centre has pressed these issues with Chinese representatives and reduced them to sobs of contrition, it has been too modest to say so.

Richard Heller

London SE1

Urgent care

Sir: Max Pemberton’s impassioned assessment of the General Medical Council made for difficult reading (‘Unfit for purpose’, 20 August). Earlier this year, the regulator published figures showing that over a three-year period, five doctors involved in its investigations had taken their own lives. A tragedy. Doctors care for us; we need to ensure they are cared for in return.

The case for reforming the GMC is overwhelming. Legislation to deliver that reform was promised and seemingly in grasp before the summer recess. However, events in Westminster now seem to have pushed that to 2024 at the earliest. Doctors shouldn’t have to wait that long. While the next secretary of state for health and social care will have a lot in their in-tray, if they are looking for a policy that can quickly demonstrate their support of the medical profession, GMC reform is top of the list.

Thomas Reynolds, London SW10

Brexit’s deficits

Sir: The Office for National Statistics data used to dismiss the impact of Brexit on EU citizen employment in the UK (‘The new benefits trap’, 20 August) is not quite the full story. The first impact on EU employees was the immediate devaluation of sterling against the euro after the vote in 2016. This equates to a near 20 per cent reduction in their wage if converted. Hoteliers here in the Lake District started to lose staff immediately. The other point I would make is that it is not the quantity of foreign citizens working in the UK, but their skills and work ethic. The ONS data does not speak to that. As a committed Brexiteer, I don’t think we can move forward unless we recognise where the deficits lie and then work to resolve them.

Paul Gaynor

Windermere, Cumbria

Beefy security

Sir: On the topic of cow attacks (‘Herd mentality’, 27 August), my father, who was raised on a farm, would not enter a field with cows unless he had a stick. Wise advice which I follow always.

John H. Stephen

Nashend, Gloucestershire

Uncommon courtesy

Sir: Lionel Shriver was bang on when she said we no longer understand the meaning of the word ‘respect’ (‘The shameful truth: terrorism works’, 20 August). Tony Blair with his ‘respect agenda’ made it into a human right – which has spawned wokeism in all its forms. The truth is we owe courtesy, we earn respect and we give love. The sooner we talk about courtesy again, the better it will be for everyone.

Morag Cummings

Durham

Voting pool

Sir: In discussing the Tory leadership election, Nick Robinson (Diary, 27 August) displays a disappointingly shallow understanding of our political framework with his sideswipe about the millions of people who aren’t getting to choose the next prime minister. I’m sure he’s well aware that midterm changes of PM (of any party) do not require a general election. Anyway, millions of people do not get to elect or reject one even in a GE. Only the electorate of the constituency in which the intended PM is standing get that opportunity.

Ken Stevens

Sonning Common, Oxfordshire

Iron grip

Sir: Hippocrates’s technique for treating haemorrhoids with hot irons (Ancient and Modern, 27 August) was still used in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was my job as a junior theatre orderly in the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy to ‘heat up the irons’ – warming a modified old-fashioned soldering iron on a Bunsen burner in a side room. All doors to the operating room were fixed open as the trick was to run with the cautery iron to the surgeon while it was still red-hot and without burning the seated god – or myself – as the wooden handle was rather short. A few years later, as a trainee surgeon in the wards of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, I assisted at the same procedure on a number of occasions. I don’t think any of us had a clue that we were following Hippocrates’s advice.

Alan Rodger

Glasgow

Cornering the market

Sir: The outgoing letters editor of the Daily Telegraph, Christopher Howse, wrote of the importance of the bottom right-hand corner slot (‘Send off’, 13 August). Two years ago in your 10,000th issue, in a double-page letter spread, you paid me the great honour of publishing mine in that spot. Nothing much fun seems to be happening these days, so I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

Nick Hely-Hutchinson

Four Elms, Kent

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