Lockdowns ‘haven’t achieved very much’, claims councillor
The "rolling cycle of lockdowns" has achieved very little, with the situation "getting worse, not better" a West Midlands councillor has claimed.
Speaking after Boris Johnson announced the third UK national lockdown, Birmingham Councillor Meirion Jenkins said it was "hard to conclude" that lockdowns were effective, given the evidence so far.
But he added that there was little to be done at this stage, and urged residents to get vaccinated ‘as soon as possible’ to avoid further lockdowns in the future.
Councillor Jenkins, who represents Sutton Mere Green, said: “My concern right from the outset was whether lockdowns could be effective.
“I just wondered to myself whether they could have an overall impact or whether they would simply delay the progress of the virus. And I understand that there’s an argument for delay in so much as it reduces the peak demands on the NHS, smooths out the demand, and therefore there’s merit in delay.
“And then over the summer lots of scientists from institutions like Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, were saying a better approach would be to shield those people who are particularly vulnerable but then allow the other people for whom it isn’t such a threat, and that’s probably 99.7 per cent of the population, just to go about their normal business and keep the economy functioning.
“And you know we could have thrown the whole and significant resources of the state at helping and supporting those people that needed shielding, at a fraction of the cost of everything else that’s been done.
“It just struck me that that was a more persuasive argument, though obviously the majority of people took a different view, including the Government. But I was persuaded by that view.
'No easy answer'
"And now I just reflect on the fact that we’re nine-and-a-half months in lockdowns, we’re told the situation is worse now than it’s ever been, and with the best will in the world it’s hard to look at that situation and think that lockdowns are effective.
“Because we have been doing them for all this time and it’s getting worse, not better.
“I fully understand there’s no easy answer to this, this is a really nasty coronavirus, there’s no cost-free option, there’s no 100 per cent safe option, and there’s no easy decisions. But I was more persuaded by the shielding argument than the rolling cycle of lockdowns that we’ve had, which don’t seem to have achieved very much.”
Councillor Jenkins believes that the UK isn’t the only country where lockdowns have been seemingly ineffective, adding that it is "really hard to conclude that lockdowns are being effective".
However, he urged residents to follow the Government advice in the coming weeks and months, and told them to get their coronavirus vaccines as soon as possible.
He added: “We are where we are, the Government’s made its decision, and we all have to try and get the best result as we possibly can.
“I think the one thing everyone agrees on, or just about everyone, is that we should get vaccinated as quickly as possible, and thank goodness that the pharmaceutical industry has delivered on those vaccines, because this situation would be a lot bleaker now if that wasn’t there.
“And I think we have to deliver these vaccines like never before – I know the Prime Minister has set the objective of two million per week, and it’s up to the NHS management to deliver that.”
