Patrick Christys: My grandchildren will still be paying for the decision to lockdown

Today is the second anniversary of lockdown and it’s time to reflect. A lot of people died; a lot of people lost everything.

I’m sure we all remember where we were when Boris Johnson announced the lockdown – how surreal and daunting the whole thing was.

There was about a two week period where I thought the world may be about to end. I can remember lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling, the unrelenting sound of sirens cutting through the night, wondering if I’d ever see my family again, wondering if the world would ever be the same again.

The little things I used to take for granted suddenly seemed like luxuries.

I personally feel like the first stages of the first lockdown were justified because of the confusion of it all, the chaos, the unknowns. We didn’t really know how contagious or deadly Covid was and we were right to air on the side of caution.

But on the anniversary of lockdown, let’s remember what it became, what a controlling, coercive, oppressive thing it turned into. The damage that did, and the lack of justification there was for its ongoing existence.

It was prolonged because of the science, despite the fact that Chris Whitty and SAGE in my opinion appeared to be dealing more in science fiction.

Professor Neil Ferguson believed his doomsday data so much and was so terrified of the effects of this virus that he broke covid rules so he could bonk his married lover.

And let’s not get started on little Matty Hancock.

The consequences of prolonged and repetitive lockdowns, designed to protect the NHS and preserve public health, has overwhelmed it and will, in my opinion, lead to more deaths than the coronavirus. The NHS waiting list is currently at 6.1m – that’s a rise of almost 40,000 in a month. People will now be living in agony, getting more ill to the point where they require greater treatment than they otherwise would, or even dying as a knock-on consequence of the length of our lockdowns.

There have been 750,000 missed cancer referrals.

There were a record 4.3 million mental health referrals in 2021 and it’s the first time there has been more than one million mental health referrals for under-18s.

Primary school children were forced to stay at home or wear masks in public, seriously affecting their early years learning both in an educational and developmental capacity, even after their grandparents and parents had been vaccinated.

The number of domestic abuse-related crimes in England and Wales rose by 6% in the year ending March 2021, according to the ONS, as vulnerable people, mostly women and children, were trapped at home with their abuser – like a prison of daily torture.

And then there’s the money, isn’t there. Lockdowns cost the UK £251bn, the equivalent of the entire annual output of the south-east of England or nearly twice that of Scotland.

The loss of the great British boozer is another knock-on effect of lockdown – an issue very close to my heart - Britain lost almost 1,000 pubs and restaurants in the three months after the lockdown fully lifted. Between July and September last year, 980 sites, or 16 per day, closed due to pandemic. In many rural areas the local pub is the beating heart of the area, and now that heart has stopped.

The impact on the travel industry is pretty obvious – during lockdown it fell by 98.3%.

We’re still seeing the impact of that now with the likes of P&O. I highly doubt they’d be dumping 800 staff and replacing them with cheap foreign labour had it not been for the hit their company took during the pandemic.

Furlough cost around £70bn.

Yes, the war in Ukraine has contributed to the cost of living crisis, but in reality, my grandchildren will still be paying for the decision to lockdown, stay locked down, lock down again, and impose massive restrictions.

Lest we forget how many people in power got the taste for it as well. There was talk of locking down for flu season. It exposed a group of closet authoritarians for what they really are.

But most importantly, let’s never take our way of life for granted again, let’s never take each other for granted again, and let’s never allow our way of life or each other to be taken from us again. Never again. Thanks for the memories Chris Whitty, next slide please.