The Spectator has published a SAGE paper outlining a ‘reasonable worst case’ scenario leading to an additional 85,000 Covid deaths in the UK, even with some partial mitigation. It’s hard to know what to make of this figure without a better understanding of what would happen if the government did nothing. (The paper assumed that ‘policy measures are put in place to reduce non-household contacts to half of their normal … levels’, which sounds pretty draconian to me.) But on the basis of what we do know, it is also hard to justify tightening restrictions any further, especially if this means another full national lockdown.
There have already been several independent attempts at a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of prolonged Covid lockdowns. I think it fair to say there is an emerging consensus that the welfare costs – not just the economic damage but also other social harms –…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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