Covid-19

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Many of the decisions we make in this House pass over the heads of the general public, sometimes because they only affect a small group, and other times because they take a long time to show an effect. But as the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has starkly illustrated—I will not go through it all for the sake of time—the decisions that we are making today will have an immediate impact on people across the country and a detrimental impact on their businesses, wellbeing and health.

I will make three observations. First, many of the decisions that we have made and are making here are based on the views of experts which, unfortunately, we have accepted uncritically. Of course, it is human nature, when we are faced with situations that we do not understand and that have a bad impact on our lives, to turn to those who we believe have some knowledge and understanding.

In primitive societies, when famines, plagues or diseases struck, people turned to the medicine men, who came with a bag of bones that they threw on the ground. They then made their analysis and told people what sacrifices had to be made to satisfy the gods. I suspect that our sophisticated society is not much different. We call them chief medical officers and they bring their computers with their models. They tell us what the problem is and what the sacrifices have to be, regardless of the impact on society.

We are criticised for criticising experts, but given some of the predictions that we have heard, we have to ask whether they have shown that they understand it. We were told that there would be 500,000 deaths by now and, in the middle of September, that there would be 50,000 new cases a day by the middle of October. Neither has happened. We bought, or ordered, 90,000 ventilators because we were told that the national health service would be overrun; we used fewer than 4,000 of them. I could go on. We have to ask whether we uncritically accept the words of those who say that they are expert advisers.

Secondly, we must look at the entirety of the impact of the decisions we make. Unfortunately, we seem to have become obsessed with coronavirus and the impact on the health service, without looking at the impact on the economy and on people’s lives.

Thirdly, we must ask ourselves what the alternatives are. The evidence shows that this disease does not affect the whole of society. It has a disproportionate impact on a particular part of society—elderly people—yet we are using instruments that affect everybody. Very few deaths occur among people of working age, and many who are infected do not go on to have any real detrimental effects, yet we treat everyone the same. I do not have time to explore this, but the Great Barrington declaration advocates a targeted approach, and I believe that the Government should be looking at adopting that approach, rather than this blunt instrument of bashing the economy and bashing the populace in an unmerciful way.