A top UK scientist and adviser to the British government has called the lockdown response to Covid19 a monumental mistake that must never happen again.
Professor Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours, which advises the British government said, “Lockdown was a panic measure and I believe history will say trying to control Covid-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale, the cure was worse than the disease.”
“I never want to see national lockdown again,” he added. “It was always a temporary measure that simply delayed the stage of the epidemic we see now. It was never going to change anything fundamentally…”
“I believe the harm lockdown is doing to our education, health care access, and broader aspects of our economy and society will turn out to be at least as great as the harm done by Covid-19.”
He said he agreed with the lockdown strategy in the early stages of the pandemic because he hoped it would buy scientists time to figure out how to better deal with the virus, but that that hadn’t happened.
“At the time I agreed with lockdown as a short term emergency response because we couldn’t think of anything better to do, but it was always clear that the moment we started to relax enough measures we were likely to see infection rates rise again either nationally or locally.”
“My hope was that we would have learnt how to handle the virus better so lockdown would no longer be necessary,” he said.
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