BORIS JOHNSON: It saved lives, but now I’m not sure lockdown works

As for therapies, the confinement was devastating. In our preliminary discussions about these types of interventions (telling people not to approach each other) we had all assumed that we would have trouble persuading them to comply.

Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty, scientist Patrick Vallance and I had thought that if some Conservative Prime Minister appeared on television and told Britons not to go to the pub or even venture out, their natural stubbornness and libertarianism would encourage them. . Let them put two fingers up to the government.

Well, it turned out that lockdown was an easy sell and, in fact, my stay-at-home message was so meticulously heeded by the workforce that the UK suffered the biggest drop in output since the Great Frost of 1709. The trains were empty. The urban centers were silent. The streets were deserted except for the cats, which we initially believed, probably wrongly, were not vectors of the disease.

In that terrible April 2020, new car sales fell by 97 percent, which is not surprising since I closed showrooms. National compliance was so total that we even gave up some types of economic activity that theoretically should continue – such as construction – and that in fact continued in countries like France and Germany.

With traffic off the streets and trains deserted, this might have been the ideal time to accelerate the rollout of that infrastructure: use Covid-safe protocols to build those bypasses, improve that track, send the sprouting fiber optic cable to through the national highway. plinth.

We missed that opportunity, Crossrail was delayed, HS2 was halted and, when the cost of everything exploded, it felt like the tide of the virus was washing away the vast crenellated sandcastle of my plans. Around April 20 it began to look as if we had crossed the crest of the wave. We had increased more than 1,000 deaths per day, but now the totals were falling, both in deaths and hospital admissions.

A police officer asks the public to leave Brighton beach in April 2020 as strict rules were in place.

The M8 motorway near Glasgow as an electronic sign displays a clear message in March 2020

They were still horrendous (800, 700, 600) but the trajectory was clear. It seemed and felt to me as if the great national effort was beginning to work. All that deprivation, all that isolation, was beginning to deprive the virus of its objectives; we were protecting the NHS and saving lives.

At that time I believed in the correlation between non-pharmaceutical interventions (lockdown and other restrictions on human contact) and the shape of the epi curve. I thought we had bent that parable by the force of our collective will, like Uri Geller with a spoon.

Only later did I begin to observe the curves of the pandemic around the world: the double hump that seemed to rise and fall regardless of the approaches taken by governments. There were always two waves, either in China, where lockdowns were mercilessly imposed, or in Sweden, where they took a more voluntary approach.

Looking back, I wonder if King Canute was right when he placed his throne on the bank of the Thames and asked his courtiers to watch as he ordered the tide to recede in vain. Perhaps there are limits to human action; It may not be possible for government action to repel the waves of a highly contagious disease, any more than it is possible to repel the tide of the Thames.

I’m not saying that lockdowns accomplished nothing; I’m sure they had some effect. But were they decisive in pushing back the disease and stopping that wave? All I can say is that I’m not sure anymore.

Adapted from Unleashed by Boris Johnson (William Collins, £30), due to be published on October 10. © Boris Johnson 2024. To order a copy for £25.50 (offer valid until 12 October 2024; free UK p&p on orders over £25), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

Boris Johnson will talk to Gyles Brandreth at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on October 12.