One of the claims put forward by the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration is that lockdowns unfairly shifted the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class. As Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta argued in a piece for the Toronto Sun last November:
Low-risk college students and young professionals are protected; such as lawyers, government employees, journalists, and scientists who can work from home; while older high-risk working-class people must work, risking their lives generating the population immunity that will eventually help protect everyone.
The same idea was captured in a viral tweet by the art critic J.J. Charlesworth:
To evaluate this claim, let’s begin by looking at some of the data from Britain. Last July, the ONS attempted to quantify the extent to which different jobs can be done from home. Unsurprisingly, they found that higher-paying jobs in the professional and managerial classes are much easier to do from home, whereas lower-paying jobs in the skilled and unskilled working class are much harder to do from home. (‘Front-line doctor’ is an exception.)
While “key workers” are drawn from all income deciles, a relatively large percentage are drawn from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th deciles – particularly in the food and necessary goods sector. And according to the ONS, 15% of such workers were at an increased risk of COVID-19 because of a pre-existing health condition.
In January of 2021, the ONS computed age-standardised mortality rates for COVID-19 in different occupations. They found that men in professional and managerial occupations were substantially less likely to die of COVID-19 than those in service and elementary occupations:
The pattern among women was similar, although somewhat less pronounced. (The highest age-standardised mortality rate was for women working as plant or machine operators.)
In a study published in Nature, Elizabeth Williamson and colleagues analysed data on a large sample of British adults, and found that individuals from the bottom quintile for area deprivation were significantly more likely to die of COVID-19, even after controlling for age, sex, ethnicity and a number of pre-existing health conditions. This may be because such individuals had greater exposure to the virus, although there are other possible explanations.
It’s important to note that men in elementary occupations and skilled trades are more likely to die for any reason than men in professional and managerial occupations. In other words, there is a mortality gradient across occupations for all-cause mortality, as well as for COVID-19. This means that the two gradients may be partly caused by the same factors – such as more men in working class occupations having pre-existing health conditions.
Furthermore, the fact that people in working class occupations were more likely to die of COVID-19 does not, by itself, prove that lockdown shifted the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class. Such people might have been more likely to die of COVID-19 even in the absence of lockdown – say, because they were less able to engage in voluntary social-distancing.
In order to evaluate the claim that lockdown shifted the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class, we need to compare countries or states that did lock down with those that did not. Of course, the only major country in Western Europe that did not lockdown is Sweden.
In an unpublished paper, Sunnee Billingsley and colleagues analysed Swedish data, and found that workers in frontline occupations were not more likely to die of COVID-19 when adjusting for individual characteristics. Their findings indicate “no strong inequalities according to these occupational differences in Sweden and potentially other contexts that use a similar approach to managing COVID-19”. This supports the Great Barrington Declaration authors’ claim.
Another way of testing the claim that lockdown shifted the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class is by comparing infection rates across social classes before and after lockdown.
In a study published in BMC Public Health, Nathalie Bajos and colleagues analysed French data, and found that individuals in the highest social class saw a substantial decline in the risk of infection after the country went into lockdown, whereas individuals in the lowest social class saw a much smaller decline. Though it’s possible these differences emerged due to voluntary changes in behaviour that happened to coincide with the start of the lockdown.
Overall, there is tentative evidence that lockdown did shift the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class. However, comparative studies will be needed to investigate this claim more systematically.
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Risking their lives? Hardly anyone has been “risking their lives” outside of the Guardian editing room.
Off topic but I went for a walk today and saw a sickening sight. There was a very young child about 2 to 3 and its father was putting a “childs” mask on the child before they entered a shop.
I hope the father also tells the child that the bogey man exists and hides under the bed. Also why aren’t shop assistants on danger money if there’s such a high risk of death?
What a Namby pamby wimp.
The father, that is.
Seen this while at the park with my own children yesterday. One child had a mask on. She must have been no older than 6. I was immediately depressed by the sight of it.
I even saw her constantly take it off and on then drop it onto the ground. Back on it went.
Well, I guess any dirt that the mask might pick up and is now close to the mouth of the child helps build up it’s immune system.
Strange as well that the parent finds it logical to put a mask which has been on the dirt in the park onto their childs’ mouth to prevent an infection.
During the whole of last year there was not a single new staff face in my nearby large Co-op or Tesco Metro replacing those who had succumbed to Covid.
Local Live did run an early headline
“Shop forced to close down as Covid hits staff”.
Turns out one lived with her sister who was ‘identified’ as having Covid so both isolated together. The Co-op sent home those who had worked the previous shift with her leaving insufficient staff to run the store until others could be drafted in from other branches.
The shop was ‘closed down’ for two hours and neither of the sisters actually had Covid.
Says it all.
Indeed
I would say there is a lot of truth in that – and I’m one of the ones on the right side of that divide. But it does have to be borne in mind it’s not a simplistic one-strike type reason for that. There is a variety of reasons for it – through from much less likely to be in overcrowded housing/much more likely to have a healthy diet/etc/etc type reasons for why those in “working class” jobs probably have been struck disproportionately and the job is far from the only reason (as, obviously, people in any job are just as able – of themselves – to live healthily/eat healthily etc etc and much is dependant on whether they have sufficient income to do so). Insufficient income can (and does) hurt anyone from any background – so it’s not just a job thing per se. I’d say it’s much more an income/life expectations thing than a “working class” or “middle class” thing per se. That’s speaking as someone who would define themselves/be defined as “middle class” in about two seconds flat – BUT has only ever had “working class” level of income and then the double whammy of always having been single (ie much worse off).
Morlocks learn to rule.
Of course.
Karens love staying in and having everything delivered by Instacart and Amazon Prime.
All the ‘front-line doctors’ in my GP practice have been working from home!
The only things I saw as a key worker out and about during week one of lockdown 1. were the binmen (and women), care workers/nurses walking to and from work, the police, ambulances (ramping up the fear with their fucking sirens) and a few, largely empty, buses.
Even the car and tyre workshops were closed so WTF was I supposed to do if I got a flat tyre ?
TEXAS SENATE HEARING; COVID VACCINES DID HAVE ANIMAL TRIALS, ALL WERE HALTED BECAUSE THEY KEPT DYING.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/XzF5GqnKGqW3/
An almost absurdist statement that could only come from an art critic, who on this occasion seems to dwell in a different world to the rest of us. To paraphrase Marcel DuChamp’s epitaph:
“D’ailleurs, ce sont toujours les autres qui travaillent”
I therefore suggest two alternatives:
1) ‘There was never any pandemic. There was just a paid sabbatical for many while others had to keep ploughing on or lose their jobs ‘.
This is at least has the advantage of being factually correct, given the LDS article with cows in the pic proclaimed herd immunity was achieved before lockdown started. Many others have been saying much the same thing for months.
or:
2) ‘There was never any lockdown. The loss of small, medium and large businesses, weakening of the UK economy, rapidly rising unsustainable national debt, government directed police violence, rise in suicides, state interference in family life, increase in patients not receiving scheduled NHS treatment for serious and potentially terminal conditions, deliberate destruction of life and health via coerced experimental gene therapy, mandatory wearing of harmful face masks and imposition of inaccurate PCR tests, shutting down of sport and culture, cancelling of previously inalienable civil rights such as freedom of assembly and education etc, etc. was merely a figment of the collective UK imagination.’
There is a class gradient in practically any measure you choose, so isolating ‘Covid’ as a variable is impossible.
The essential issue is that all this is just part of the division narrative that is part and parcel of the Covid strategy, which is used as cover for the real economic fact – the shift of resources to the big capital accumulators.
Fact: there was a pandemic. Fact: there was a lockdown. Fact: some had an easy lockdown whilst to others it was/is disastrous. And fact: those who had an easy lockdown and don’t want to give it up would not have been able to if many, many, working people had not soldiered on in the face of what initially appeared to be frightening risks.
As a retired, probably middle class, person with an adequate income I had a relatively painless lockdown. I am still absolutely furious, though, that the state not only got away with with an authoritarian putsch against the people of this country but that said people actually support it. Unless of course the opinion polls are being manipulated like the Covid statistics or the reporting of dissent.
I have a son and daughter both of whom work in the “essential” food distribution industry. Both of were sick for a while with Covid symptoms in April 2020. However, they followed our wonderful NHS instructions to people with symptoms of a disease being portrayed as the deadliest thing since records began. That is, they avoided bothering a doctor, stayed home, took paracetamol, got over it and got back to work. So they’ll never know what they had.
My personal heroes in this sorry saga of draconian incompetence are the low paid key workers such as supermarket staff, van drivers, tradesman etc. who faced the public throughout with precious little support or thanks, and without the adulation still being heaped on all NHS workers. So I am extremely pleased to find that these key workers who brought stuff to the rest of us did not suffer a quantifiable increase in mortality relative to stay-homers.
I’ve said the same many times, the shop workers, van drivers etc were the unsung hero’s, while the NHS who should have been there for a health problem, shut up shop, the civil service, plus local government, waste of space.
Or… Middle class people needlessly placed under house arrest regardless of the risk of harm this resulted in, while working class people were mandated to bring them things in order for house arrest to continue regardless of the risk of harm this resulted in. One cannot exist without the other. (I accept many more middle than working class people would have experienced substantially less suffering).
True, but find me one such professional type who protested that there should be no restrictions.
I’ve been arguing this all through the lockdown. Staff at the local shops seemed to be working like slaves during the panic buying- having to make people wait outside, dragging crates of supplies around re-filling shelves, helping older shoppers locate things, etc- all the while working close to shoppers so being ‘at risk’ far more than any professional type. It was a similar situation with care workers. Meanwhile, every Thursday, we were expected to clap and cheer for our NHS heroes, and woe betide anyone who didn’t! The public sector/ professional types of which there are many in our village, never gave a thought to the shop or care workers- still working and paying taxes- and still expected deliveries whilst they sat at home on full pay with their pensions safe and secure, and most of them made it clear that we were lifting restrictions too early, (it didn’t matter which ones or when- it was always too early), and they were also watching for transgressors who dared to try and earn a living. The punch line must surely be the bonus lots of them got for ‘working at home through difficult conditions’! The class system in Britain is alive and well- it’s the clear divide between the public and private sector.
I really don’t think you need a study to tell you the answer to this one. Isn’t it obvious that the poorer your circumstances then the worse it will be to be stuck at home in them for months on end? Covid aside, LOCKDOWN has been much worse for working class people.
Imagine being stuck in a tiny flat, working from home if you’re “lucky” (or if not on unpaid leave) so that you can home school your children. All sharing one computer. No access to library books, outdoor playgrounds, after school clubs.
Now imagine the same situation but in a sizeable house where everyone has their own tablet, there’s a bedroom each and a handy spare to be an office, big garden to run around in, nanny and cleaner still come, Peleton bike in the garage etc
So true- my son’s friend lives in a small bedsit in a rough area of Sheffield and he often says he may as well have been in prison. He’s been really down as he feels fairly threatened living where he does and he has no local family who could visit. You know what? No one cares. Just obey the rules pal. I mentioned him to someone recently and their response was something like at least he’s still alive! Does he want to die? I pointed out that he wasn’t exactly living now- only to be told that I was being over dramatic…end of conversation as I walked away dumbstruck.