The UK was one of the most locked down countries in the world during the COVID pandemic, but this was not inevitable – it was a failure of public health policy.

That should be the lasting legacy of the UK COVID inquiry’s latest report, not a critique of politicians no longer in office.

In a public health emergency, saving lives will always be the first priority, but even as COVID raged, it was never a binary choice between harsher restrictions or more deaths. The choice was between different ways to protect people from a dangerous virus.

In 2020, governments that had never previously contemplated lockdowns imposed them anyway. On March 23, the UK population was ordered to stay at home, without any assessment of how much harm this would do to the economy, education, access to healthcare and the wellbeing of everyone – especially children.

The vast scale of the resulting damage shows why avoiding lockdowns must be a priority for policymakers in future pandemics.

I gave evidence to that effect to the COVID inquiry myself. I also listened to testimony from politicians, officials, doctors and epidemiologists. But I heard surprisingly little about how COVID could have been tackled without lockdowns, even though everyone has had years to reflect on this question.

Instead, witness after witness argued that the problem with the March 2020 lockdown was that it came too late. Matt Hancock, the UK’s then health minister, thought it should have come three weeks earlier, but one week was the majority view.

So, the inquiry was justified in making that point in their report. Backing it up with the claim, based on

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