Sweden who haven't locked down have an all cause mortality for 2020 that unexceptional compared with recent years.
There is no evidence of correlation between extent of a countries lockdown and other measures and cases /fatalities and in the UK the previous sensible advice to wash hands, avoid unnecessary contact and shield if you are vulnedable had already caused infections to peak and be falling by the time the lockdown was imposed in March.
King Canute will no doub't be telling everyone he comes across in heaven "I told you so, I told you so"
Lockdown is a once in a generation "nuclear option" that wasn was deployed far too soon and far too casually.
If we hadn't gone over the top back in March, locking down after infections had peaked and coming into spring when all virus transmission starts to fall...
....then we would have had the money for a full lockdown now, including construction etc. at a time when we have a much more potent mutation on the loose, mid winter with worst body immununity and midwinter weather facilitating longest virus duration on surfaces, plus the ability to have a limited, finite and forecastable lockdown duration due to the vaccination programme under way.
Plus, if we hadn't been in various stages of lockdown since March we would now have far greater levels of compliance as lockdown fatigue would not have set in.
The equivalent would be if during world War 2 the USA had destroyed Okinawa with the two atomic bombs instead of invading it, many soldiers lives would have been saved.
But that would not have caused Japan's surrender and with the weapons now used (and no more available for months), there would have been no choice other than to invade mainland Japan; which, overall, would have cost many, many more lives.
Going forward, as a population we need to start rejecting the current crop of lightweight career politicians, and instead look to choose people who have accomplished real-life backgrounds. Thatcher’s science background is a case in point. By contrast Johnson seems to have achieved little in life apart from making people laugh - there’s occupations for that!
At risk of derailing the thread, I think one reason for the lightweight crop of politicians is the treaties that drained power away from pariament to the other side of the channel in recent decades.
With parliament only having a rubber stamp role in many great matters this put off capable people from standing and allowed time for jumped up county councillors to persue hobby horses.
That has ended now and much of parliaments time is now again taken up with important (but boring and too complicated to the jumped up county councillors) great matters of state on which life changing decisions need to be made. I hope with this repatriation of power capable people will again be attracted to exercise it.