The shameful attacks on the Covid inquiry prove it: the right is lost in anti-science delusion | Polly Toynbee

TThis figure will remain forever engraved in public memory: 23,000 people died because Boris Johnson resisted the country’s confinement in time. As Covid emerged and with horrific images of temporary Italian morgues under tents, he went on vacation and did not respond to any calls. As the NHS prepared to be “overwhelmed” by the virus, he rode his new motorbike, walked his dog and hosted friends in Chevening.

This is hardly surprising: he was kicked out of Downing Street and later resigned as an MP, largely for partying and lying to Parliament about it. Everyone knew he was a self-aggrandizing fantasy with a “toxic and chaotic culture” around him. But it’s not just about a narcissistic politician. It’s about his entire right-wing coterie of libertarians and their lethally dominant creed in the British media.

They have long rejected measures that save lives – seat belts, speed limits, smoking restrictions, sugar taxes, vaccination, welfare benefits, sewage, clean air, the NHS itself and, of course, stopping climate change. Recall that in the 1980s and 1990s, the Sunday Times, under the editorship of Andrew Neil, promoted the strangest gay plague theory, publishing articles suggesting that AIDS was not caused by HIV and that it was almost impossible for heterosexual people to contract it. (Neil said he regretted some aspects of the newspaper’s coverage, but took no personal responsibility for them.)

This anti-science tradition is alive and well today. Lockdowns are the epitome of everything right-wing scientists abhor: how unfortunate that a tribe least equipped to cope is in power during the pandemic. In these circumstances, the interventions of those responsible were “too little, too late”. Hard to imagine, but Covid in the UK could have been even deadlier if the inevitable facts about the pandemic had not ended up overwhelming their fact-based ideologies.

Naturally, the lockdown skeptics came out in force to demolish the last module of the Covid report chaired by Heather Hallett, the former High Court judge appointed by Boris Johnson. From the start, they had proclaimed confinements that were worse than useless. On the fifth anniversary of the first lockdown, they argued over who had denounced it first: Daniel Hannan in the Sunday Telegraph boasted that he was the only one to “stand up to a stampede”. “What were we thinking? Five years ago we were sliding towards the costliest mistake ever made by a British government, a mistake which led to our financial ruin, the destruction of our fundamental freedoms and the destruction of public trust,” he continued.

Toby Young in the Spectator was quick to one-up Hannan: “I’m happy to name myself one of the first journalists to oppose the lockdown policy, alongside Peter Hitchens, Allison Pearson, Ross Clark, Julia Hartley-Brewer and a handful of others. » The Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express and Spectator, joined in the middle of the pandemic by GB News, were among those who flew the extremist libertarian flag, relentlessly since. The public must be constantly reminded of these 23,000 deaths, as Nigel Farage and Richard Tice were among the fiercest opponents of the lockdown, hastily renaming their Brexit party Reform UK to campaign against all restrictions. None of this can be called “populist”: the public is still in favor of precaution, as it did during confinement.

Now with this report, virulent attacks from this executive are raining down on Hallett’s statistics and reasoning. The Telegraph disputes these figures. Toby Young’s newspaper, the Daily Skeptic (successor to his Lockdown Skeptics blog), is on the attack. Shamefully, Johnson himself called the investigation he himself complied with “hopelessly incoherent” in the Daily Mail.

Maybe 23,000 is too much or not enough: but it’s an educated guess. Sweden is the country constantly cited by the right, because it has relied entirely on a voluntary consultative approach, without ever imposing a lockdown. In terms of deaths per capita, far fewer Swedes have died than Britons: proven case? Hallett beaten? Alas, we are not Sweden in terms of social structure, national wealth, vulnerable deprivation, health or social protection, mainly due to the long-term harmful influence of the right who fight tooth and claw against Swedish-style social democracy. But here is the most revealing research, comparing socially and economically similar Norway to Sweden. Norway implemented lockdown measures while Sweden refused. Many more deaths per million in Sweden (2,759) than in Norway (1,050).

The precautionary principle, which gives priority to safety when scientific data is uncertain, is as foreign to these ideologues as risk. To them, safeguarding regulations and protecting the public are comical, while the officials who protect society are laughable blobs and lackeys. Johnson delivered a witty jab to me in 2006, illustrating the great gulf between us. He said I embodied “all the schooling, high taxes and high spending of Blair’s Britain” as “the high priestess of our paranoid, coddled, risk-averse, airbag and booster seat culture of political correctness and ‘elven security’ fascism.” Fair enough and funny enough, I wear the badge with pride; public welfare is a serious matter.

Johnson and his people have never been serious: they play games and have pleasant manners because they don’t actually believe in government. Brexit was another of their political games, with the most disastrous consequences. The report quotes Johnson as saying, “let the bodies pile up” at the prospect of large numbers of deaths in nursing homes (he denied saying this). More than 45,000 of them actually died as hospitals moved untested patients to beds in nursing homes.

It was an outrageously casual and deeply revealing attitude, so reprehensible that it immediately ended the discussion. His faction uses its own false numbers to dismiss Hallett’s and “prove” that lockdowns don’t save lives, so often decadently rejecting majority scientific opinion.

But their outrageous attacks should not prevent meaningful debate on a much more difficult question: Was the considerable cost of lockdowns and government rewards to businesses and individuals worth the number of (mostly elderly) lives saved? How many QALYs – quality-adjusted life years – i.e. years of good quality, have been preserved and at what cost?

Bereaved families have a painfully clear perspective. But the gigantic cost must be weighed in the balance, estimated by the House of Commons Library at between £310 billion and £410 billion. A Benthamite calculus seeking the greatest good for the greatest number could calculate how many more lives could be saved in one way or another, how much more happiness could be created and how much unhappiness could be avoided if the Chancellor now had this huge extra sum for her budget this week.

It’s understandable that people are torn over such questions. It’s not easy, but it requires serious thought that these extremist dilettantes will never have. Future modules in Hallett’s investigation will examine the terrible harm caused by keeping children out of school for long periods; letting the elderly die alone; domestic violence; solitude; and the crippling blow to the economy, trade and public services. These trade-offs between life and death must be faced honestly in the next pandemic. But always be wary of the deranged right’s predilection for “freedom,” even for the most basic, life-saving health and safety measures.