spiked: What about the collateral damage of lockdowns?

Heneghan: The collateral damage will start to emerge over the next two to five years. Clinically speaking, that is what has happened in previous pandemics like the Ebola crisis – it caused an upsurge in measles two years later, because it disrupted vaccination programmes.

It’s similar with economics. We are borrowing a lot of money and at some point, somebody will have to switch the tap off.

The longer all this goes on, the more the harms will accentuate. The anxiety instilled in the population is already so ingrained that even as we are opening up, many people remain highly fearful.

We are going to be talking about the damage of lockdowns for decades to come. Will we try to bury it all, or will we think critically about what we did and how well it went?