Lockdowns can destroy the lives they’re intended to protect

Some Leavers are perturbed that Lord Frost was suddenly stood down as the next National Security Adviser. This anxiety may be misplaced. If he gets the necessary authority in No. 10, his new job of making our European policy fit with our entire foreign policy and making both serve a sovereign nation will be just what is needed. More discouraging, though, is his replacement choice at the NSC. Sir Stephen Lovegrove comes from the Ministry of Defence but is more renowned for tweeting the hashtag of Black Lives Matter and getting generals into rainbow lanyards than for helping the armed services adjust to war in the information age. His appointment is a victory for the Blob over Boris’s attempts at reform. National security in the face of ‘Westlessness’ and the rise of China needs so much more than virtuous HR.

Throughout Covid, I have been neither a lockdown sceptic nor an ardent supporter. The question seems finely balanced to me. My doctor friend who reports from the front line constantly assists those with severe Covid, so I am struck by his latest dispatch. ‘Although lockdown has almost certainly averted a disaster this time around, I am concerned that its costs are not being counted… therefore I am slowly compiling examples of harm that I have witnessed.’ One such: ‘An 88-year-old man who has been married for 62 years to the girl next door. He came into hospital very frail. His wife had gone into a nursing home before the first lockdown with dementia. He could not see her because he was not allowed out, and no one was permitted into the home. Their few Zoom conversations didn’t work, due to their mutual deafness and her dementia. As she was dying in July, alone among strangers, he begged to be with her, but was not allowed.