My manifesto to beat coronavirus crisis: Protect the elderly and vulnerable, let the rest live their lives, and throw Britain open again, writes Professor DAVID LIVERMORE

 Daily Mail

....Lockdown was worth a try to buy a few weeks respite for the NHS and its dangerously under pressure intensive care wards, but the Government seems to be arguing that if a lockdown proves ineffective, it is because it is insufficiently draconian.

In fact, it is now becoming clear it is simply the wrong policy. Those who dissented from the Government’s Covid-19 strategy have been dismissed as mavericks on the fringes of the scientific establishment. However, this is no longer the case.  ......The problem with Mr Johnson’s strategy is that he is seeking artificially to suppress infection among the healthy – who suffer mild or no symptoms – while betting the bank on a vaccine which may not work.

That is why I felt I had to join scientific colleagues around the world and co-sign the Great Barrington Declaration – which is named after the American town where it was drafted. Since then we have been joined by more than 3,000 public health scientists and 4,500 medical practitioners.  ........

.....The damage can scarcely be imagined now, but one day it will be measured in children who are not now being immunised, cancer and stroke patients going undiagnosed and untreated, and a shattered economy unable to fund the NHS.

In a doomed attempt to suppress this virus, while believing in a perfect vaccine as a silver bullet, the Government is setting itself up to fail – and at a terrible cost to us all.