Yahoo pretends to quote a Dr, Heneghen from Oxford when he says effects of lockdown in UK will be worse than the coronavirus. This is an excellent example of a media lie. The claim by Yahoo is directly contradicted by the direct quote from Heneghen in the article. He makes a positive statement and Yahoo reports it as a statement of possibility. Compare the wording in the internal quote from Heneghen to the Yahoo headline. Big difference.
[h=1]'Damage done by lockdown could outweigh that of coronavirus', warns professor[/h]
Deserted streets are a familiar sight as the UK continues with a lockdown to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. (Joe Giddens/PA)
The effects of a long term lockdown could do more damage than coronavirus itself, an Oxford professor has warned.
Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the centre for evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, told Radio 4’s Today programme: “In fact, the damaging effect now of lockdown is going to outweigh the damaging effect of coronavirus.”
Heneghan argued that not enough testing has been done so the government cannot understand how many people have actually had COVID-19, and that lockdown was preventing people seeking help for potentially life-threatening issues.
“The key is no-one has really understood how many people actually have the infection,” he said.
“You could do that really quickly with random sampling of a thousand people in London who thought they had the symptoms.
Professor Carl Heneghan suggests Boris Johnson's government may have imposed lockdown after coronavirus peaked in Britain (AP)
“You could do that in the next couple of days and get a really key handle on that problem and we’d be able to then understand coming out of lockdown much quicker.”
But the academic argued that the government had no plan for what happens next.
“You go into a lockdown - you should have a clear exit strategy,” he said on Monday. “You should understand the advantages and disadvantages of what you’re doing.”
Heneghan suggested the coronavirus peak may actually have taken place the week before Boris Johnson imposed the lockdown.
“We have failed to look at the data and see when the lockdown actually occurred,” he added.