Letter: Lessons need to be learned after data shows that covid lockdowns failed to significantly reduce deaths

A review recently published by the Institute of Economic Affairs found that covid lockdowns failed to significantly reduce deaths.

This is supported by data from “The Economist” which estimated the number of excess deaths, from all causes, during the covid-19 pandemic.

“Excess deaths” measure the difference between how many people died during the pandemic, from any cause, and how many deaths would have been expected had there been no pandemic. The data show that lockdowns may have prevented only 1,700 deaths in England and Wales. To put this into context, in a typical flu season, 18,500–24,800 flu deaths occur. Thus, lockdown prevented a relatively small number of deaths, not the hundreds of thousands predicted by Imperial College of London’s modelling exercises (March 2020) that influenced government decisions about lockdown.

During the covid-19 pandemic, Sweden was among the few countries that did not enforce strict lockdown measures but instead relied more on voluntary actions and general advice. This approach faced fierce criticism. However, available data on excess all-cause mortality rates indicate that Sweden experienced proportionately fewer deaths during the pandemic (2020–2022) than most high-income countries, including the UK, and was comparable to neighbouring Nordic countries.

It appears then that our heavily-policed lockdown failed to significantly reduce deaths while imposing substantial social, cultural, and economic costs.

Yet, we all remember that almost daily, medical “experts” appeared in the media to urge adherence to ever more stringent restrictions. In Northern Ireland we even had our own medical "experts" who appeared almost weekly in the media urging ever more stringent lockdown measures. Anyone who disagreed was practically excluded from public debate - one prominent Belfast newspaper refused to publish a letter from me criticising lockdown.

One lesson that needs to be learned is that while medicine might be more reliable than it was in the 19th century it remains a pseudo-science and “experts”, especially those who appear certain, should not be blindly followed but should be rigorously questioned and challenged.

Dr Geoffrey Todd, consultant respiratory physician, Co Antrim