We warned that lockdown would bankrupt us, write PROFESSOR CARL HENEGHAN and DR TOM JEFFERSON

The release of a spate of private WhatsApp messages – the so-called “lockdown files” – has put the spotlight on the government’s abuse of Covid.

The messages – between former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and other ministers and officials – have revealed in devastating detail the chaotic and often inhumane response of some of our elected leaders.

Yes, they were people facing an unprecedented emergency. But their arbitrary decisions were all too often based on unreliable data and political expediency.

Even when they claimed to “follow science,” dogma gripped them.

As scientists with over 50 years combined experience in epidemiology and medicine of respiratory viruses, we have followed the events from March 2020 with dismay, almost despair.

The messages – between former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and other ministers and officials – have shown the chaos and reaction of some of our elected leaders

Based on our own careful studies, we believed that a UK lockdown would cause lasting damage to society – without stopping the spread of the virus in the long term.

In April 2020 we wrote: “Lockdown will bankrupt us all and our descendants and the virus circulation is unlikely to be slowed or stopped at this point.”

So it has proven itself. Covid restrictions have left Britain with a £400billion bill and its highest tax burden since the war.

What the lockdown files show most clearly is that anyone who dared to challenge the long, tough restrictions favored by Hancock and other officials found themselves vilified.

We have been treated as dangerous subversives and accused of spreading “misinformation”.

In the climate of Covid fear our reputation has been abused and we have even been banned from some social media groups. Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government’s Sage Science Committee, absurdly accused us of being “responsible for a number of unnecessary deaths”.

But it’s the lockdown obsessives, including Hancock, who got it wrong – and who pursued a course of action with an almost fanatical obsession.

For example, when Professor Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, recommended mandatory testing for “everyone who goes into care homes”, Hancock decided against it, telling advisers it “muddled the waters”.

Pictured: Carl Heneghan, Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University (left) and Dr. Tom Jefferson, epidemiologist with a special interest in acute respiratory infections (right)

When it became clear that Sweden was handling the pandemic well, although schools, pubs and restaurants remained open, Hancock fumed at what he called the “damn Sweden argument” and urged his aides to “take three or four bullets”. to produce [points] why Sweden is wrong’.

In another WhatsApp message to his media advisor about a new variant, the minister demanded: “We scare everyone.”

But none of the revelations offers us much comfort. We always knew we were right.

Frankly, we despair at what failed Covid policies have done to this country. At the height of the pandemic, the nation was told that one of the main reasons for the lockdown was to “save the NHS”.

But the service is now in a bigger mess than ever, with waiting lists of seven million and a workforce in turmoil.

Meanwhile, the education of millions has been ruined, social services remain neglected and mental health problems have worsened significantly.

It was all predictable. Especially in the absence of vaccines, lockdowns only delay virus cases. Even the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, seemed to understand this at first.

On March 13, 2020, as the pandemic began in earnest in Europe, he wisely remarked: “If you put absolutely everything under lockdown, probably for a period of four months or more, you would suppress the virus. But if you do that and then let it go, it all comes back.

At the height of the pandemic, the nation was told that one of the main reasons for the lockdown was to “save the NHS”.

But ministers, desperate to be seen doing something, decided they knew better. To bolster their acceptance of social control, unprecedented in peacetime, they peddled empty propaganda and questionable statistics that helped create a climate of fear.

An example of her approach was the concern to introduce a second lockdown in October 2020 amid lurid claims that without her the death toll could reach 4,000 a day by Christmas.

Knowing that number was a wild overestimate, we provided government advisers with less startling data – which showed their estimates of deaths could be four times too high. Carl even managed to raise our case on a Zoom call with Boris Johnson, then Prime Minister.

Our efforts were in vain. A solid ideology had taken root in Downing Street and the second lockdown in November 2020 was progressing.

As we said at the time, “The notion that a month of economic hardship will allow for a kind of ‘reset’ that will give us a brighter future is a myth.”

Hancock’s leaked messages damningly expose a chronic lack of judgment among those responsible, coupled with contempt for dissenting evidence and the general public.

Cabinet Secretary Simon Case joked about travelers being “locked up” in quarantine hotels. “I just want to see some faces of people walking from first class into a Premier Inn shoe box,” he chuckled.

We also learn that face masks were only introduced in English schools after Nicola Sturgeon did so in Scotland and Boris Johnson was told there was “no argument worth holding” for a different policy.

A solid ideology had taken root in Downing Street and the second lockdown in November 2020 was progressing

Informed debate went out the window. In a revealing exchange in November 2020, Sir Chris Whitty Hancock proposed replacing the 14-day isolation imposed on people who have been “pinged” by the government’s testing system with a far less onerous five-day testing system.

Hancock’s main concern, however, was not the effectiveness of the proposal – but maintaining the government’s tough image. Such a change, he replied, “would mean we were wrong”. So the 14-day limit remained in place for a month before becoming 10 days.

In July 2021, half a million people were “pinged” in just one week. Due to staff shortages, retailers have had to close stores and transport companies have had to cut back their services.

There have been many contradictions with decisions based on such flimsy evidence. Incredibly, the rules on restrictions, contact and travel have been changed no fewer than 200 times in 2020.

The reporting of deaths was also contradictory. There was a big difference between dying from Covid – where the virus was the direct cause of death – and dying with Covid. It fit the government’s fear-mongering agenda to lump them all together.

Face masks were only introduced in English schools after Nicola Sturgeon did so in Scotland and Boris Johnson was told there was “no argument worth holding” for a different policy

And far too much was placed on dubious models. Trust has been placed in experts who have incorrectly predicted 136,000 deaths in the UK over the last two decades from the new variant of CJD contracted from eating meat infected with BSE (or mad cow disease); 65,000 deaths from swine flu; and 700,000 deaths from bird flu.

We were vilified for our skepticism in 2020, but the essence of science is to question data, reexamine evidence, and challenge assumptions.

Instead, during Covid, disrespect has been heaped on incompetence and alarmism. Another path had to be taken, but with Hancock and his deluded staff at the helm, the government did not take it.

As a result, it was the children who suffered, the infirm and elderly who were abandoned, and the most disadvantaged who were harmed. The next time a pandemic strikes, our leaders must not make the same mistakes.

• Professor Carl Heneghan is Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University and a general practitioner. dr Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist with a particular interest in acute respiratory infections.