One of the big questions throughout COVID and since is whether or not lockdowns were the right response to the pandemic. It is important to distinguish lockdown scepticism from COVID-scepticism. Although many who were against lockdown were also sceptical about the threat from the virus, it was possible to be wary of the Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) whilst also recognising that the pandemic proved a real and serious danger. It is also worth noting that generally speaking, if you disagreed with the church locking down, the impression I get is that you were also more likely to be suspicious of lockdowns generally. Whilst hypothetically conceivable, in practice I’m not finding people who agreed with lockdowns but thought churches should be exempt. They thought that the church should be exempt because they didn’t think lockdowns should happen, full stop.
Broadly speaking we might identify the following groups
- Those who believed that lockdowns and other NPIs were necessary in order to protect the NHS and suppress waves. So, they agreed with the measures taken in the UK.
- Those who believed that lockdowns and NPIs were necessary in order to achieve “zero COVID.” So, they tended to argue that measures did not go far enough and may well even insist that we should be continuing with some forms of NPIs today.
- Those who were sceptical of the benefits of lockdowns and some other NPIs but concluded reluctantly that they were necessary whilst recognising the huge cost.
- Those who were sceptical of the benefits of lockdowns but believed that we should comply in order to demonstrate obedience to the authorities.
- Those who were sceptical of the benefits of lockdowns and therefore believed that it was our duty to resist compliance.
I personally fell into the third category particularly during the first lockdown. After the vaccine roll out I probably moved more towards the 4th category.
In the early stages of the pandemic I wrote, here, that there was more than one way to die. I argued that social distancing measures came at a cost. I also argued here that the problem with suppressing things is that suppression tends to create a bounce back effect. This might have meant good news for the economy but was bad news in terms of risk from the virus and from anti-social behaviour.
I also argued that the problem with many of our measures was that they were not water tight. I believe that we often achieved high levels of compliance but once you had factored in the many exemptions and significant pockets of non-compliance, lockdowns were the equivalent of putting a sieve under a leak.
My personal opinion, as an amateur, not an expect was that we shouldn’t need to go into lockdown. I believed that if we were able to slow down the spread of the virus from source by restricting movement from places most effected and quarantining people who came into the country with the illness then we might be able to survive without making major changes to our lives.
I’m still of the view that significant mistakes were made on that front and also with the failure to introduce early measures into London. I also would argue that the virus was compounded as people were sent back from hospital with COVID to care homes that simply were not prepared for the pandemic.
Later, I argued that post vaccine, our response to future waves should not be to lockdown or reintroduce social distancing and masking but rather to build additional surge capacity into the health service to ensure it was not overwhelmed. I still believe that this should be our primary response to any future pandemic of a similar kind. I would also argue that churches demonstrated from the summer of 2020, that we were able to open safely, albeit with significant restrictions in place.
Central to my concerns was the recognition that lockdowns and other social distancing measures would themselves be potentially harmful. This has been increasingly recognised. This should to some extent be uncontroversial. We know that pharmaceutical interventions whether vaccines, medication or surgery bring with them potentially harmful side effects. We shouldn’t be surprised that the NPIs did too. We might see the country during lockdown as akin to a cancer patient receiving radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Some people are now arguing that lockdowns not only carried harmful side effects but that the harm done far outweighed any good. I’m not so sure that we are in a position to say that with any certainty. That’s not least because this depends on us weighting and valuing the different effects which may be hard to judge objectively, even with hindsight.
With hindsight, it remains my view that we may not have needed the long and severe lockdowns we experienced if different actions had been taken earlier. However, it remains my view that the first lockdown probably did become necessary. I also continue to believe that the church was right to comply with the measures. This is because.
- Hindsight is an amazing thing but at the time, the Government had to respond to a complex, unprecedented event. They had to make the best decisions they could at the time.
- I don’t think that there is any evidence that our government here in the UK was seeking zealously to lockdown out of authoritarian or anti-Christian motives. Resisting would have suggested that we were treating them as intentionally hostile. I think they got some things wrong, other things right. I think that there is evidence of incompetence at times and that this incompetence also led to a loss of transparency and accountability such as we saw with PPI contracts. I think they at times displayed ignorance especially on matters of faith. However, I don’t think there we were dealing with something wilfully malign.
- Scripture does call on us to submit to those in authority. This does not grant exemptions if we disagree or if we consider those in authority incompetent or even malign. The only exception I can see is if it requires sin.
Whether or not a lockdown in a future situation would be right is difficult to guess. It would depend on the circumstances at the time.
Faithroots 