UNITED KINGDOM, August 25, 2020, (LifeSiteNews) – One of the U.K. government’s advisors on infectious diseases has described coronavirus lockdowns as a “monumental mistake on a global scale” and said he never wants to see a national lockdown again.
Professor Mark Woolhouse OBE is a University of Edinburgh professor of infectious disease epidemiology and member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours that advises the government. He told the Express that “lockdown was a panic measure” and that he believes “history will say trying to control [COVID-19] through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale” and “the cure was worse than the disease.”
“I never want to see [a] national lockdown again. 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, however low we drove down the number of cases, and now we know more about the virus and how to track it we should not be in this position again,” Woolhouse said.
“We absolutely should never return to a position where children cannot play or go to school,” he continued.
“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].”
In July, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Robert Redfield warned that deaths from suicides and drug overdoses were exceeding deaths associated with the coronavirus.
As far back as April, a professor of cancer at King's College London warned that disruption caused to medical services will lead to a greater number of excess cancer deaths in the next five years than the number of people who will die from the coronavirus.
Data on coronavirus cases and associated deaths from Sweden suggest that the country’s oft-derided approach of not locking down may have paid off in the long run. Sweden never shut down its schools or economy and did not restrict individual freedoms to nearly the degree seen in the United States and much of Europe.
A study published in July by the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation analyzed responses to the coronavirus crisis employed by 10 different countries and found that draconian lockdowns of the type adopted in many American states are less effective at combating COVID-19 than strategies more narrowly targeted at those most in danger.