Why more and more experts say lockdown didn’t prevent people dying of Covid – and call it a ‘monumental mistake on a global scale’

It was ‘a simple instruction’ to the British people, said the Prime Minister: ‘You must stay at home.’

With that sombre televised address, shown on March 23, 2020 – two years ago last week – the country was plunged into its first national lockdown.

After weeks of surging Covid infections, and horrified by the staggering scale of hospitalisations and deaths in Spain and Italy, the Government had concluded there was no option but to issue an unprecedented order to curb the growing pandemic crisis. It was following the science, after all.