Covid shows why we should be wary of politicians who claim to be 'following the science'

Looking back, five years on, it seems like a bad dream. Did we really shut ourselves away in our homes for months on end, closing down schools and offices and venturing into the world only under strict conditions that we interacted with other people as little as possible?

Now, occasionally, we stumble across social distancing markings on a street or in a shop, like archaeological remnants from a bygone age, which testify that yes, we really did do all that. Increasingly, the Covid lockdown resurfacing from the memory hole down which many have tried to consign it induces a shudder.

For some, life after 23 March 2020 was not so bad. Perhaps it was almost idyllic. The weather was good, workers were still getting paid despite not having to work, mortgage and debt repayments were suspended, and parents were gifted an abundance of precious time to spend with their children.

Scots maintain social distancing as they queue for vaccinations at West College Scotland Clydebank Campus in Glasgow in December 2021 | Getty Images

Lockdown’s impact on children

But even those who enjoyed these upsides are painfully aware of the many and deep downsides. There is the impact on children and young people, in terms of interrupted education and developmental delays in infants. Hospitals – which for long periods were largely quiet with it seeming to many that the NHS had become effectively a Covid-only service and other illnesses went undiagnosed – are now in permanent crisis as health workers try to clear backlogs. The backlogs in our courts have led to calls for them to sit through the night.

There is the incalculable and lasting damage done to mental health by isolation, the absence of human interaction for those living on their own, of domestic abuse, of alcoholism and substance abuse, of grandparents parted from grandchildren, of relatives dying alone, and of funerals limited to handfuls of mourners.

And then there is the ruinous impact on the economy. Sectors such as hospitality saw many businesses go to the wall, while other employers are still struggling to coax employees out of their homes and back into the workplace. The cost to the UK of the furlough scheme, PPE and other measures has been put at around £450 billion.

Was lockdown worth it?

There is no shortage of reasons why we might like to forget. But we must also remember, as we did on last Sunday’s Covid Day of Reflection. Above all, we must learn lessons from our pandemic response to lessen the risk of repeating them in the future.

This is the purpose of the UK Covid Inquiry, led by Baroness Hallett, and of the Scottish Covid Inquiry, led by Lord Brailsford.

The UK inquiry alone is expected to cost upwards of £200m and is scheduled to conclude in 2026, but so far it does not seem to have grappled with the key question: was lockdown worth it or, in the end, was the prescription worse than the disease?

First Minister John Swinney before laying a wreath during the Covid Day of Reflection memorial event at Glasgow Green, marking the fifth anniversary of the pandemic | PA

‘Following the science’

Despite all the rules and restrictions, the UK had a relatively bad Covid, according to Our World In Data, with 3,404 deaths per million, compared with 2,828 in the EU, for example. Sweden, which was criticised for not imposing mandatory lockdowns and prioritising the economy, saw 2,732 deaths per million.

At first, most people were satisfied with the reasoning that politicians had to impose the restrictions because they were “following the science”.

When leaders such as former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decreed that limited gatherings could be allowed in places of worship but only as long as there was no singing – or that large numbers of hospital patients should be transferred to care homes, or that children should wear masks in school, or that you could have a pint of beer as long as you sat down and also had a scotch egg – it was because “the science” was directing them to do so.

Of course “the science” was far from “settled” but one thing was clear from the outset: Covid was a particularly ageist virus, with the elderly at vastly greater risk than the young. Yet any suggestion that the elderly should be shielded while everyone else carried on with their lives and kept the country going was given short shrift.

There were many distinguished experts, such as Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, who strongly disagreed with the response to the pandemic but were ignored and even scorned by politicians such as Sturgeon.

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and Jay Bhattacharya, who is set to become the new director of the National Institutes of Health in the US | Getty

Respecting free speech in science

Across the Atlantic, however, there are signs the tide has turned. Dr Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University was ostracised by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) after co-authoring the Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, which advocated the targeted protection of the elderly rather than blanket lockdowns. The NIH director at the time, Francis Collins, dismissed him and his colleagues as “fringe epidemiologists”.

Bhattacharya is certainly less “fringe” these days. He is set to become the new director of the NIH – the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, with an annual budget of $47 billion – and he seems to have set his sights on the depoliticisation of science.

At his Senate confirmation hearing last week, he promised a “culture of respect for free speech in science” and criticised scientists who have displayed a “lack of tolerance for ideas that differed from theirs”.

The late writer and Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton said: “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.”

Enlightened thinking

But “the science” is now routinely invoked by politicians even though its role is to challenge established beliefs in search of the truth. It was “settled science” when Galileo was a boy that the Sun orbited the Earth.

Bhattacharya told the Senate hearing: “Science, to succeed, needs free speech. It needs an environment where there’s tolerance for dissent.” He added: “Dissent is the very essence of science.”

It is depressing that this needs to be said – not least here in Scotland, the birthplace of the Enlightenment. But we should all be glad that people are starting to say it.