Thread by @drraghibali

Seven persistent myths about Covid and lockdowns in the UK / England.

I thought I would put one thread together on what I think are 7 myths that continue to be propagated - mainly by those who, although well-intentioned, always assume that more restrictions are the answer.

1. The UK has had the highest Covid death rate in Europe during the pandemic - mainly due to being late to lockdown twice. (see myths 2 and 3)
Even compared to EU countries, the UK would be 11th on Covid deaths & 15th on excess deaths (20th in all Europe)
economist.com/graphic-detail…

2. Thousands of lives would have been saved if we had locked down earlier in the first wave.

Most of the countries with higher death rates (shown above) did lock down early & had small first waves followed by very large second waves.
Discussed more here:
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/2…

3. Thousands of lives would have been saved if we had a circuit breaker lockdown last October.

Wales did have one and their excess death rate in the second wave was the same as England’s - the main impact was to postpone the peak in deaths by two weeks.
gov.wales/sites/default/…

4. The UK has the highest Covid rates in Europe now. (and this due to our lack of vaccine passports, mask mandates, etc. - see myth 5)

This is based on case rates and ignores fact that UK does a LOT more testing - you need to compare positivity rate where UK is about average.

5. Infection rates would have been much lower if England had kept mask mandate since July.

Wales & Scotland kept theirs but their rates been higher than England's for most of this period.
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
(NB. I do voluntarily wear a mask in confined indoor spaces.)

6. Only restrictions or lockdowns bring down cases/ hospital admissions / deaths.

This is clearly not true given what happened in July and September when there were no restrictions – and is most likely due to people voluntarily changing their behavior as the risk increases.

7. 'Going early and going hard’ with restrictions is always better than waiting.

Given what happened in July & September when a huge surge was predicted, that would have been the wrong advice as cases fell and actual outcomes have been well below the most optimistic scenarios.

So it’s better to admit we just don’t know what’s going to happen going forward and look at the actual data.
As I have said throughout the pandemic, such certainty is misplaced given the uncertainty of the evidence on this - and on many interventions.

None of this is to downplay terrible toll of Covid with the loss of so many lives - which I did what I could to reduce by serving on the frontline.
And there are times when lockdowns are needed to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed as happened before - & harmed all our patients.

Finally, of course it is legitimate to question and criticise the UK's/England’s response to Covid - and what we can learn from it and other countries experiences to save lives in the future but it should be based on facts and not on misleading claims/selective use of statistics.

Charts taken from:

ourworldindata.org/explorers/coro…

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

data.spectator.co.uk/category/nhs

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