Better without lockdowns
As more data emerges about the impact of the Covid pandemic and its associated lockdowns, it becomes clearer that the UK lockdown, which had huge costs to the economy, to education, to civil liberties and to mental health, had little impact on mortality.
The evidence suggests that a ‘focused protection’ strategy, prioritizing the elderly and clinically vulnerable, would have delivered a better overall outcome.
This is because the risk was extremely skewed by age and condition. Covid danger rose roughly exponentially with age; the infection-fatality risk for children and younger adults was tiny compared with the over-70s. UK tallies show the vast majority of deaths in 2020–21 were in those 70+, underscoring how concentrated the risk was. Deaths in children and young people were rare.
Furthermore, the lockdowns’ marginal benefit on mortality was uncertain. A widely cited meta-analysis (Herby/Jonung/Hanke, Johns Hopkins) concluded that lockdowns in Europe and the US had little to no effect on Covid mortality relative to lighter-touch approaches, while imposing large social and economic costs. Voluntary behaviour change plus targeted measures could have given less costly and more effective results.
The collateral damage from blanket restrictions was massive. The UK economy shrank by about 11% in 2020, the worst annual fall in over 300 years. NHS backlogs exploded for elective treatments and cancer care, with waiting lists hitting record levels as routine care was displaced. Learning loss and widening disadvantage gaps followed prolonged school closures.
Many rules seemed arbitrary or trust-eroding. Police guidance that lingering on a park bench could breach rules; that pubs required a “substantial meal” (hence the ‘Scotch egg’ farce). These show that the policy mix was not tightly coupled to transmission risk.
Sweden avoided stay-at-home orders, kept primary schools open, and relied on guidance plus a few targeted legal limits (e.g., event sizes; care-home visitor bans). While Sweden had a bad first wave, notably in care homes where no country spotted that the risk was highest, its cumulative excess mortality over 2020–22 ended up lower than many Western European countries, including the UK, which indicates that stringent lockdowns were not necessary to achieve relatively good long-run outcomes.
Sweden’s open-schools policy did not lead to severe illness in children (ICU admissions and deaths were very low), and some research found no measurable reading loss in early primary years, contrasting with many countries that closed schools.
We all have 20-20 vision in hindsight, but it is now clear that the UK should have concentrated resources where risk was highest, care homes and older adults, instead of broad closures. That could have involved targeted shielding support for older or clinically vulnerable people, ventilation upgrades in elder-care and hospitals, and keeping schools open with risk-based mitigations. Earlier and larger intervention there would have saved more lives than general closures.
After an initially high care-home-led toll vs Nordic neighbours in spring 2020, Sweden’s overall excess-mortality burden across 2020–21 was lower than many European countries, and several datasets show 2020–22 cumulative excess mortality below the UK’s.
Because Covid risk was so concentrated in older and fragile groups, and because broad lockdowns had uncertain mortality benefits but clear social, educational and economic harms, the UK would have been better off pouring far more resources into shielding and protecting the elderly and high-risk settings while keeping schools and most of society open, more like Sweden. Sweden’s long-run excess-mortality record and the UK’s collateral damage now vindicate that approach.
Madsen Pirie