I know how long it's existed and how influential it is in right-wing circles. Andrew Marr acknowledging that helps us to understand the way the right is operating these days.

Belittling the analysis in Wiki does nothing to undermine it. This is not a "think tank". It is a pressure group. Extracting the quote from Marr needs to be set against all the other things it has done and is doing before evaluating its reliability. So the whole of the Wiki analysis needs to be read.

I haven't read the "report" and won't now. I have another busy day ahead. Interestingly I could not now watch the Campbell video as it has been taken down. I wonder why? Perhaps you can explain?

I will though say this. Any report, let alone one produced by a right-wing pressure group with the reputation of the IEA, that claims that "Lockdowns have been proven a disaster" starts off from completely the wrong position.

Covid was the big disaster. Whatever we did was going to have disastrous consequences. We always knew that. The real question was which was the least worse. Expert opinion decided that locking down represented a better set of outcomes than not locking down.

Looking back now and suggesting that Lockdowns were disastrous only confirms what was predicted. What we don't know is what would have happened if we didn't lockdown. Because we didn't.

So this report looks like some juicy red meat being tossed into the mouths of the prejudiced. Maybe I am wrong and it makes those points. Maybe Campbell pointed it out. We cannot know that as his video has disappeared.

Your comment about “we don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t lockdown” is untrue - at the time I shared data with you comparing US states and in-particular those that had strict lockdown policies such as California with those that did not such as Florida - this data showed that health wise and from an economic point of view Florida fared better. At the time you dismissed this and, as usual, blamed the source of the report.

Right from the start of this fiasco you have been a lockdown fanatic and as such are unable to reflect and perhaps consider that this might have been the wrong strategy.

Interestingly Sweden has emerged as having amongst the lowest excess deaths total per population of all the European countries.

Considering how our media and elites behaved and the sheer amount of criticism that was levelled at Sweden's choices the fact that this isn't widely advertised isn't surprising. However, I did find it in the Telegraph.

[Link]

Edited by Stirlingsays (08 Jun 2023 12.16am)

No Sweden doesn't count, for the reasons explained in these pages many times already. It's not like the UK. It tried something different and it failed. Eventually, they too followed a similar path to other European countries.

It did protect the NHS, which just about coped. Of course, it also caused huge problems, that we always inevitable.

Simply pointing at those problems and assuming things would have been better without the lockdowns is naive. It would almost certainly have been much worse and people would now be asking why on earth we didn't follow medical advice and lockdown for a while.

Where is the evidence "things would almost certainly have been worse"?
The NHS now has an incredible backlog which is still costing lives, education suffered, businesses closed, jobs were lost, mental health was adversely affected and the country spent well over 300 billion we didn't have.