"Concerned About The Consequences": Isle Of Wight MP Issues Response To Second National Lockdown

The Island's MP has released a statement in response to the Prime Minister's announcement of a second lockdown, saying he's "concerned about the consequences".

The second national lockdown will force all non-essential shops, pubs and leisure centres to close from Thursday next week.

The advice will be to go to work, only if you cannot work from home.

This morning (Sunday) Cabinet minister Michael Gove says any decision on lifting the lockdown will be based data tracking the spread of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, a teaching union's calling for schools to be shut when England locks down on Thursday. Boris Johnson says education will be among the exceptions to his 'stay at home' order, but the N-E-U claims classrooms are a 'major contributor to the spread of coronavirus'.

Labour is criticising the Government and accusing Boris Johnson of being 'too slow' to act.

In response to last night's announcement, the Island's Bob Seely MP said:

“I am very sympathetic to the pressures Ministers and public health officials are under, and I thank them for their work over the past months. 

“I know there will be different opinions on the Island and elsewhere, but I am concerned about the consequences of this new lockdown, on the Island and the country. However, I accept the Government’s figures over hospital admissions and clearly these are alarming.

"I will wait to hear more from the Government’s before deciding how to vote. However, I have no doubt that the Government will be able to pass this law.

“Covid is serious. No one is denying that, and there are no simple answers, although overall the fatality rates are lower than feared earlier in the year, and cases are not fatalities. I welcome strongly schools, colleges and universities staying open. I completely fail to understand why gyms and swimming pools need to close.

“However, my fear is that lockdowns do not work, certainly not as well as public health officials would argue. It’s obvious that the first lockdown didn’t work. Why? Because we are about to enter a second. The purpose of the first lockdown was to buy us time to prepare so we didn’t need a second. Will we have a third lockdown in January or February? At what cost?

“What concerns me most of all is that we need a strategy to live with the virus and to help people plan. Lockdown is not a strategy. How can people plan their lives? How can Island businesses plan their futures, how can people stay employed and livelihoods be protected, without a clear idea of what the future holds? 

“We need a plan, for the medium and indeed long-term, which amounts to more than locking down until a vaccine arrives.

“We know the last lockdown impoverished millions. We also know it cost more in terms of life years than it saved, because an NHS report showed as much. 

“Scientific opinion has raised significant questions over lockdowns. Edinburgh University’s Professor Mark Woolhouse says that lockdowns are ‘a strategy visibly failing’. Oxford University’s Carl Heneghan says lockdowns push peaks into the future - thus requiring more lockdowns and hence more damage to peoples’ lives. Sunetra Gupta, also from Oxford, says: ‘lockdown is a blunt, indiscriminate policy that forces the poorest and most vulnerable people to bear the brunt of the fight against coronavirus.’ The World Health Organisation is against lockdowns unless in last resort as they predominantly hurt the poorest people in society. 

I also am concerned about some other issues:

“First, the law of unintended consequences means that outcomes of decisions are not always clear. An example? We know there is no scientific evidence behind the 10pm curfew. All it may have been doing is encouraging people to grab alcohol at an off-license and carrying on socialising at home. Restaurants, especially on the Island, are Covid secure, and we know that most infections take place at home.

“Second, we have very, very low rates of infection on the Isle of Wight and a lockdown will do needless damage to peoples’ lives and livelihoods. That in turn creates poverty and hardship. We are threatening to make the cure worse than the disease. However, it is also clear that cases can fast exponentially, and especially on the Island I am aware of this danger.

“If there is anywhere in Britain that should have very high rates of Covid, it is the Island. Why? because we were so full over summer with visitors from across the UK, yet because our hospitality industry behaved so professionally, we continued have some of the lowest rates in the country. This showed that with sensible precautions, people could carry on their lives with something approaching a semblance of normality.

“Third, public acceptance of a lockdown is mixed, and without public support either the policy will fail, or the authorities will have to become more draconian.

“Fourth, the true fatality rates for Covid are becoming lower than first assumed, as treatment improves and as more accurate data becomes available. Initial fears of a fatality rate of just under 1 percent now look to be wrong. Stanford University have shown in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation a global fatality rate of 0.27 per cent – possibly around three times worse than annual flu. This is based on an analysis of 61 studies. As Prof. Robert Dingwall says, ‘despite all the hysteria, this is not a modern plague’.

“I will continue to listen carefully to Islanders.

“On Friday, I visited a care home to thank staff for their wonderful work in keeping their residents safe. The staff I spoke with were, on balance, against a second lockdown. They worry that many of their residents are very distressed at not seeing loved ones and don’t understand why. Keeping residents in a near perpetual state of lockdown is causing harm to them and their families, because only one family member is able to visit. This is simply cruel, especially for people who may die without seeing - or indeed remembering - who their loved ones even are.

“The case for lockdown would have been made better if public health officials been more open about more data, had put that data in context, and had been more willing to listen to other voices.

“There are no simple answers here, and as I say, I sympathise with ministers and officials who are under great pressure and trying to do the right thing. The danger is that going into lockdown now may not work in the timeframe given, but will do social, economic and health harm. 

“I suspect much of the country will stay in lockdown long after Dec 2. I hope, at very least, that the Island will come out quickly as we have low rates of infection.

“Personally, I would now explore, working with some of the best and most able scientists in the UK, a shielding strategy to protect the vulnerable whilst enabling the young to get on with their lives, with sensible, understandable restrictions that will have public support and which need to be put in place until a vaccine becomes widely available. We cannot keep going in and out of lockdown.

“Covid is serious. No sensible human being denies that. There are no simple answers. If this lockdown works, that would be wonderful, but I fear we will be back in this position in the New Year because lockdowns only buy time, but are not a solution in themselves. 

“One of the ways we can become better informed is through public and Parliamentary debate. I hope now that Government will provide a broader range of data and put it in wider context, so that we can see the implications of lockdowns, not only related to immediate cases, but the significant longer-term health impacts as well as economic and social effects.[SIC]”

17 additional cases of coronavirus were registered on the Isle of Wight on Friday, taking the total to 627 since the pandemic started, as previously reported.

Another Islander also passed away at St Mary's Hospital last week, taking the total number of deaths across all settings on the Isle of Wight to 91.