Covid lockdowns had a “catastrophic effect” on the UK’s social fabric and the most disadvantaged are no better off now than at the time of the financial crash, a new report claims.
The country is in danger of sliding back into the divisions of the Victorian era, marked by a widening gap between the mainstream and the poorest in society, according to an inquiry by the centre-right thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
About 13.4 million people lead lives affected by family fragility, stagnant wages, poor housing, chronic ill health and crime, the centre says.
[citation needed] as they used to say.
The modelling data we used to justify lockdowns also gave expected outcomes if we did lockdown. It was wrong. So wrong that there’s no reason to think it would have held true for the paths we didn’t follow. If somebody has gone back and modelled what no lockdown would have meant based on the data we have today, then I’m all ears. You can’t point to March 2020 modelling today though. It’s been shown to be wrong.
The truth of it is that we were scared and we panicked. What’s worse, is that we never adjusted our strategy based on what we learned. We never thought about the future cost of our actions and now when those effects are starting to be realised, we’re too embarrassed to admit it.