The Lost Lessons of the Covid Pandemic

How political imperatives sidetrack scientific enquiry

This week saw the publication of a suite of systematic reviews by the Royal Society on the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the pandemic. 

Politico headlined with  “Top review says COVID lockdowns and masks worked, period;” The Guardian led with “Lockdowns and face masks ‘unequivocally’ cut the spread of Covid, report finds” and the I newspaper stated, “Masks and social distancing did reduce Covid infections, new report shows, proving lockdown skeptics wrong.”

So there you have it, a slam dunk, sceptics, you were all wrong. You should have masked up and stayed in lockdown. 

Even more so when you listen to the chair of the report’s group, Mark Walport, who said: “There is sufficient evidence to conclude that early, stringent implementation of packages of complementary NPIs was unequivocally effective in limiting Sars-CoV-2 infections.”

Four systematic reviews informed the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the covid pandemic. However, here is some of what the…