by Steve Cook

So are countries who did not lock down facing the predicted catastrophe? That is the test of lockdowns isn't it?

In other words, do Lockdowns work well enough to justify the damage they do? In fact, do they work at all?

The premise behind the UK lockdown is that here we have a highly infectious virus on the loose that will, if allowed to spread unchecked, kill lots and lots of people, infect even more, overburden the health service to the point of collapse and essentially do what killer viruses do in the very best "Pandemic Apocalypse" movies.

Therefore, the Lockdown is vital to stop all that happening.

It is so vital that the social and economic destruction that a Lockdown causes (not to mention suicides, deaths due to withheld treatment of other illnesses etc) is a "price worth paying" to prevent the horrible effects of the pandemic.

Well, by that logic - and this is what we are told by our government - any country that does not lock down as we have, does not "follow our lockdown rules" as devised by whatever lunatics are "advising" our somewhat dim government, will experience an out-of-control surge of fatalities and so forth much more severe than a country that has wisely locked down.

Well, luckily for us there are plenty of countries across the planet that have not locked down at all or have used a much more relaxed version of lockdown.

As this has been going on for an entire ruddy year, many countries that have not locked down should by now be pretty devastated with millions of dead, their health services in ruins and the entire national landscape beset by a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Yet, as we look across the planet at various countries without our lockdown, NONE OF THEM ARE.

Comparisons of stats are difficult due to apparent differences in how the stats are counted and the agenda behind that. Yet if one looks at the league table of alleged Covid 19 deaths per capita we find countries with lockdowns occupying many of the top spots (UK and Belgium - with the highest and third highest deaths per capita respectively for instance) with countries that have not locked down (Belarus, Japan of instance waaaaay down the table).

There does not appear to be overall a direct correlation between lockdown and no-lockdown and the results achieved. Clearly there are other variables at work that are not understood but what this boils down to is that the UK after months of lockdowns and the ruination of its economy has managed to fare WORSE than any other country on the planet except Belgium (strong lockdown) and Slovenia (locked down but apparently not as tightly).

NONE OF THE COUNTRIES WITH NO LOCKDOWN HAVE SUFFERED THE CATASTROPHE WERE WERE TOLD LOCKDOWNS WOULD AVOID. NONE.

Let's compare the locked down UK with Japan which did not lock down. Japan is a more urbanised country than the UK and is also the country with the oldest population on the planet - and Covid is a virus to which the old in particular are vulnerable. I've also thrown in, just for fun, Belarus which has no lockdown.

UK: number of Covid deaths per million 1496

Japan number of Covid deaths per million 42 (that's right, FORTY TWO)

Belarus number of Covid deaths per million 176

In other words, the UK has THIRTY FIVE times as many deaths per capita than Japan and EIGHT times as many as Belarus.

But these are just numbers and governments fiddle the numbers. So what about the hard reality of overwhelm of their health services? Bodies stacking up at undertakers?

Again, nothing.

Steve Cook is the author of several works of fiction and non fiction. He writes and published the satirical blog, The Daily Scare.