Beauty entrepreneur Liz Earle has spoken out against the effects of lockdown on vulnerable communities in a new report from the Centre for Social Justice. Here’s an excerpt from her sit-down with Eleanor Mills in the Telegraph:
She’s the queen of wellbeing and author of 35 books on how to live our best life, who sold her eponymous Liz Earle beauty company to Avon in 2010, who then sold it to the owner of high-street chemist Boots in 2015 for £140 million.
So why has Liz Earle spent much of the past few months researching the impacts of lockdown on Britain’s most deprived communities for a landmark Two Nations report for the Centre for Social Justice, with “big cheeses” (as she describes them) including Lord King (former head of the Bank of England) and political grandees from Iain Duncan Smith to Andy Burnham and Miriam Cates?
“I’m not political with a capital P, but I do feel passionately that we should never be locked down again,” she says, Christmas lights shimmering behind her as an open fire roars. “I have worked with the Centre for Social Justice for years; my charity LiveTwice, which gives people a second chance, has supported their work with small charities and I can see that the consequences of lockdown have been disastrous – particularly for children and women and the poorest in our society.”
But isn’t that all being dealt with at vast expense by the current Covid Inquiry? She shakes her head.
“The current Covid Inquiry has been more about the blame-game between politicians, going through their WhatsApps rather than assessing the impact of lockdown on the most disadvantaged, or questioning whether the social harms it led to were worth it, which in my opinion – having spent months assessing the evidence – they definitely were not.” …
“Despite the known traumas lockdowns caused, the Covid Inquiry is yet to look at the effect on young people, particularly the poorest ones, and with the final report not due until summer 2026 by then it will be too late. We are sitting on a ticking physical and mental health timebomb.”
Many other experts agree. The day after we speak the news is full of reports about a spike in mortality especially among people aged 50-64, with lifestyle factors including cardiovascular disease, liver disease and diabetes, which were all exacerbated by lockdown. When I ask her what she brought to the research she is typically self-deprecating, remarking that “A lot of the report was way above my pay grade, but I did bring some basic humanity and understanding of family life, particularly as a working mum with school-age and university-age kids.”
That is way too modest. Earle is not only an Instagram influencer with more than 200,000 followers, but a mother of five and a self-made millionaire entrepreneur. “The think tank was interested in the impact on midlife women, which is very much my constituency, and I am also passionate about how tough the lockdown was for small businesses. I had to pivot my business fast or we would have gone down during the pandemic. Honestly, it was so close.” …
Most troubling, she thinks, is the hangover from the pandemic that will impact people for years to come.
“During our research for the Two Nations report we heard about infants with huge speech delays, because after they were born their mothers were isolated; there were babies who couldn’t use their mouths to smile because they had never seen a smile; eight year-olds with the social skills of a five year-old because they hadn’t been socialised. It was terrible for young mums who had to give birth in hospital, without their husbands being present because of the lockdown rules. How inhumane was that? We are only now starting to count the cost of all those missed opportunities.”
She is particularly passionate about the impact on Gen Z, the most anxious generation on record. “I can see the impact of lockdown on my own youngsters, and we were the lucky ones – we had resources and a garden and each other.” Earle talks about how one of her children’s friends “died by suicide during lockdown; anxiety levels were extreme and still are”.
Worth reading in full.
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Sorry, not buying this. Yup, lockdown impacted the “vulnerable” more than the “non-vulnerable” – doesn’t everything bad impact the “vulnerable” more? Can we lose this childish idea that things need to be measured by how much some supposed, arbitrary “victim group” is impacted?
There was no pandemic, no emergency, it was a scam and a lie. End of.
Yes it was a scam and a lie. No, it must not be the end of. We need stories of the extreme negative impact the lockdowns, the outrageously over-hyped predictions, the sob-stories, the media collusion with suppression of the truth – to get the message across that this should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again. We need Jo(e) Bloggs to realise that the WHO is trying to make it easy to do lockdown again – faster, harder. That the reason their kid doesn’t speak yet is because of the insane restrictions. That the reason that Granny died alone was because of the cruelty of the rules. That people’s livelihoods were ruined, and that it all has to be paid for.
It must not be dismissed as ‘end of’.
Indeed – I have not forgiven or forgotten and have my own personal reasons for being angry as hell
But talking about the “vulnerable” is just a rabbit hole and risks playing the game of the enemy
yes it is always ‘ vulnerable ‘ ‘ at risk ‘. why are people such cowardly wimps now a days .
i’ve found the new terms used very annoying, the past few decades i suppose it’s been .
Indeed
Vulnerability is a spectrum anyway and I don’t think it’s helpful to wheel it into an argument about lockdowns
but no offense to the truly vulnerable, just meant it seems to be used for whole swathes of the general public.
sorry can’t help ranting. am just annoyed at so many wimps out there who went along with and believed in the lockdowns the shots the masks etc.
Yes I agree- it’s convenient for people who want to manipulate situations to create victim groups
I think it’s worthwhile to hear these views. I don’t disagree that it was all a scam and a lie but it’s undoubtedly true that certain groups suffered more than others, and some people actually loved lockdown. My 22 year old son lost two friends to suicide, directly as a result of lockdown – they felt hopeless and lonely. It had a catastrophic effect on my 24 year old daughter, already highly anxious, now beyond hope for any sort of normal functioning in society. It’s vital to highlight the uneven impact of lockdown.
We’ve heard all the views a
million times
We predicted it all from the start
It did no good then and it will do no good now
A lie and a scam is a lie and a scam regardless of which supposed victim groups it impacts
I object to the whole idea of victim groups
They are not ‘supposed’ victim groups. They are victim groups whether you object to that notion or not. Nobody suffered as much as children and young people, and the elderly incarcerated in their gulags. Challenging the mantra that we were all in it together is essential, especially in newspapers like the Telegraph. Even the Guardian is starting to acknowledge these harms https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/may/18/younger-children-most-affected-by-covid-lockdowns-new-research-finds
Modern thinking loves to divide people into often arbitrary groups and portray them as oppressors or victims. We were all victims of the covid tyranny and I don’t think giving certain sections special status is either necessary or helpful. The whole thing should not have happened. The likely result of this is going to be something like “in the next pandemic, we will give extra help to the vulnerable to cope with lockdowns” rather than “the deprivation of liberty was unacceptable and unnecessary.
Also not sure how you presume to know who suffered what, and how much.
Any arguments that will help in the fight against doing this again, signing upto WHO etc. should I feel be upported
Earle talks about how one of her children’s friends “died by suicide during lockdown; anxiety levels were extreme and still are”.
Fascist LDs. Yet no one is blamed, no one in jail, no one having to answer for record suicides, alcoholism, broken families, lost businesses, destroyed lives and the terrorising of children. I don’t know who Liz Earle is beyond the brief in the article, but fully support her and others on this issue. We were subjected to a Medical Nazism. It is as pure and simple as that. Never forget. And. Never forgive.
Covid land evil we cannot forget
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.