Dr Priyad Ariyaratnam

The coronavirus crackdown sets a dangerous precedent

Boris Johnson announces new Covid restrictions (Getty images)

Has the coronavirus crackdown gone too far? Some of Boris Johnson’s own MPs certainly think so. This week, Tory MP Edward Leigh accused the government of ‘authoritarianism’ over the decision to impose greater restrictions during this second wave of coronavirus infections. Leigh is right to be concerned: we have seen the rights and privileges that had taken centuries or millennia to achieve indifferently cast aside in the space of six months by public health measures outlined in the Coronavirus Act.

We were told in the early days of the pandemic that the measures were necessary to ‘protect the NHS‘ and ‘flatten the curve‘. But while those aims were achieved, I’m not convinced we can credit the strict rules which were introduced.

Although certain NHS hospitals in the country were stretched to capacity, others, fortunately, were not. This may have been partly due to social distancing measures but it may also have been because many operations were cancelled and the fact that non-Covid admissions actually decreased during the pandemic. Worryingly, there is evidence for an increase in excess deaths from non-Covid causes at home, possibly due to this lack in admissions. Coupled with the predictions that thousands may die from cancer due to delays in diagnosis and treatment, this paints something far from the picturesque image we envisioned when told about ‘protecting the NHS’.

What about flattening the curve? The idea that strict lockdown resulted in lower mortality rates than those predicted based on the hypothetical Imperial College model is also open to interpretation. Some experts feel that the assumptions upon which that model was based were from extreme measurements made in Wuhan which were not necessarily reflective of epidemiological patterns seen elsewhere. This was crudely proven by extrapolations from that model predicting over 80,000 deaths in Sweden, when in reality Sweden’s actual deaths from Covid-19 are less than 6000.

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