{"id":318903,"date":"2025-11-23T08:27:51","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T08:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=318903"},"modified":"2025-11-25T08:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T08:12:11","slug":"coronavirus-fact-check-18-would-an-earlier-lockdown-really-have-saved-23000-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=318903","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus Fact-Check #18: Would an earlier lockdown REALLY have \u201csaved 23,000 lives\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<h1><strong>Off-Guardian \u2013 Nov 21, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R53n1rWDgHs?si=jtizywFYIp9Y6Kt4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The UK\u2019s Covid Inquiry just published their Module 2 report, and though it\u2019s over eight hundred words long, most people only really seem interested in this short quote from Baroness Hallett:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Had the lockdown been imposed one week earlier than the 23rd of March, the evidence suggests the number of deaths in England alone in the first wave, would have been reduced by 48%, that\u2019s 23,000 fewer deaths\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s being repeated A LOT. But is it true?<\/p>\n<p>No, it is nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>The evidence on lockdowns <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2023\/03\/24\/40-facts-you-need-to-know-the-real-story-of-covid\/#iv\">is clear<\/a>, they had little to know impact on the (alleged) disease, and were a \u201cglobal catastrophe\u201d, likely killing hundreds of thousands and impoverishing millions more.<\/p>\n<p>So why is Hallett pretending otherwise? And what does she mean by \u201cthe evidence\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n<p>Hunting down this mythical \u201cevidence\u201d is a longer and more drawn out process than you might imagine. I\u2019ll go into detail.<\/p>\n<p>First you have to go to the Covid Inquiry website and either open or download <a href=\"https:\/\/covid19.public-inquiry.uk\/reports\/modules-2-2a-2b-2c-core-decision-making-and-political-governance-volume-i\/#section_7_chapter-4-realisation-and-lockdown-13-to-23-march-2020-\">a copy of the report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Then, you have to find the specific quote. Since none of the people talking about it on social media have actually read the report, none of them are citing where the quote specifically came from.<\/p>\n<p>This means we have to do a Ctrl-F search of the document. I looked for \u201c48%\u201d, which returned two results.<\/p>\n<p>First you get the same thought as the press conference, in more reporty and less clickbaity language, from the \u201cExecutive Summary\u201d of Chapters 3+4:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">the Inquiry <strong>accepts the consensus of the evidence before it<\/strong> that the mandatory lockdown should have been imposed one week earlier. Had a mandatory lockdown been imposed on or immediately after 16 March 2020, <strong>modelling has established<\/strong> that the number of deaths in England in the first wave up until 1 July 2020 <strong>would have been<\/strong> reduced by 48% \u2013 equating to approximately 23,000 fewer deaths.<\/p>\n<p>I added that emphasis to highlight two things.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong> The language usage:<\/strong> <em>\u201cThe consensus of the evidence before it\u201d<\/em>, makes it sound like there\u2019s multiple evidences when only one is cited.<\/li>\n<li><strong> The nature of \u201cevidence\u201d:<\/strong> It\u2019s a modelling study. A model should not be cited with language as strong as <em>\u201cwould have been\u201d<\/em>, \u201cmay have been\u201d is more correct.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Anyway, this is informative about the nature of \u201cthe evidence\u201d, but still doesn\u2019t actually say <em>what it is<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>For that we must move down to the second search result \u2013 Chapter 4, paragraph 129 (because I believe in proper sourcing, even if the British government doesn\u2019t):<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Professor Ferguson told the Inquiry that in later work which analysed the impact of restrictions in England:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>\u201cwe explicitly modelled the counterfactual scenario of moving the lockdown of 23rd March back to 16th March, and estimated mortality \u2026 would have been reduced by 48%\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s from Professor Neil Ferguson, who you all doubtless remember. Also note the very important words \u201cmodelled\u201d and \u201cestimated\u201d, which we\u2019ll come back to later.<\/p>\n<p>So, now we know what \u201cthe evidence\u201d is \u2014 it\u2019s an estimation based on a computer model produced by a man who is famously wrong about pretty much everything and who thought lockdown was so important he broke it to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2020\/05\/05\/exclusive-government-scientist-neil-ferguson-resigns-breaking\/\">visit his married girlfriend<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But that doesn\u2019t mean we should dismiss it without reading it. So how do we do that?<\/p>\n<p>Well, first we must make a mental note of the footnote \u201c484\u201d, because this is only a governmental report years in the making and costing 190 million pounds, so they obviously haven\u2019t got the resources necessary to hyperlink their footnotes.<\/p>\n<p>Then you have to manually scroll down to the end of chapter 4, click the \u201cshow footnotes\u201d button, then manually scroll down to footnote 484, where we finally get some links. Yay!<\/p>\n<p>One, to <a href=\"https:\/\/covid19.public-inquiry.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/17173243\/INQ000249526.pdf\">this very long<\/a> (and very dull) witness statement from good old Neil, and a second to this paper:<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ferguson-early-lockdown-paper-650x409-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wpa-warning wpa-image-missing-alt aligncenter size-full wp-image-318904\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ferguson-early-lockdown-paper-650x409-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"409\" data-warning=\"Missing alt text\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ferguson-early-lockdown-paper-650x409-1.jpg 650w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ferguson-early-lockdown-paper-650x409-1-480x302.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) 650px, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>This paper<\/strong> is ALL of the \u201cevidence\u201d which \u201cestablishes\u201d that an earlier lockdown \u201cwould have saved 23,000 lives\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Literally, the entirety of it.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s\u2026rubbish. It\u2019s only eight pages long (not including footnotes), and the word \u201cestimate\u201d appears 83 times. That\u2019s ten times per page.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also a computer model and, as I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2023\/07\/27\/this-pro-mask-study-is-why-you-should-never-trust-the-science\/\">last year<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Modelling studies involve feeding data into a computer programme, then asking it to form conclusions\u2026they are only as reliable and useful as the data you use. In fact, you can very easily make them produce any result you want by feeding in the \u201cright\u201d (bad) data.<\/p>\n<p>Or, as Seth Brundel <a href=\"https:\/\/yarn.co\/yarn-clip\/embed-test\/b60c768e-d3e6-44c4-8649-d8d3e657111f\">more succinctly puts it in<em> The Fly<\/em><\/a>: <em>\u201cComputers are dumb. They only know what you tell them.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In this instance, the crew at Imperial College told their computer:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong> \u201cCovid is a dangerous, deadly disease\u201d<\/strong> (which isn\u2019t true)<br \/>\n<strong>2. \u201cLockdowns are an effective method of disease prevention\u201d<\/strong> (equally untrue).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Then these clever little experts asked, <em>\u201cComputer, given these assumptions, what would happen if we had locked down sooner?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At which point the computer spat out the only answer it could.<\/p>\n<p>You see, by curating the available data, the authors of the study made it logically impossible for the machine to do anything but support their pre-ordained conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>Now, let\u2019s return to the original question: Would an earlier lockdown have saved 23,000 lives?<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely, definitely, 100% no.<\/p>\n<p>But, we can also ask, was Baroness Hallett lying when she said <em>\u201cthe consensus of the evidence\u201d<\/em> before the inquiry <em>\u201csuggests\u201d<\/em> it?<\/p>\n<p>Technically, no.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cconsensus\u201d of the (so-called) \u201cevidence\u201d placed before the inquiry was crafted to \u201csuggest\u201d exactly that.<\/p>\n<p>By curating the available data, the authors of the report have made it logically impossible for the machine to do anything but support their pre-ordained conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>Because government inquiries are just like computers \u2013 they\u2019re dumb, and they only know what you tell them.<\/p>\n<p>You can read all our previous Covid fact-checks\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/category\/covid-factchecker\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Support Off-Guardian:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/offguardian\">Ko-fi<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.subscribestar.com\/offguardian\">Subscribestar<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/donate\/?hosted_button_id=CKFB3MH8CGB9U\">Paypal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/2025\/11\/21\/coronavirus-fact-check-18-would-an-earlier-lockdown-really-have-saved-23000-lives\/\">Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Government inquiries are just like computers \u2013 they\u2019re dumb, and they only know what you tell them. The UK Covid Inquiry is no exception  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":224780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=318903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318905,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318903\/revisions\/318905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/224780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=318903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=318903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=318903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}