A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic

by Laura Dodsworth

The government reviewed emergency legislation behind closed doors, leaving MPs and the public in the dark about the evidence for the emergency regulations and their proportionality. Repeated requests for a cost-benefit analysis to determine the proportionality were ignored until an attempt to quantify the impacts of lockdown and restrictions was finally published on 30 November, in the report Analysis of the health, economic and social effects of COVID-19 and the approach to tiering.1 ‘Vague’ might be a good descriptor for this report. It doesn’t even mention QALYs – quality-adjusted life years – which are the routine way that the government and NHS quantify the value of a life saved. Presumably this value was not included in the report because it would definitively show that the ‘cure’ has been worse than the disease. The lockdown