Blair Tells Podcast Host Lockdowns in Developing World ‘Did More Harm Than Good’

Former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair leaves the BBC in central London, after appearing on the BBC political programme 'The Andrew Marr Show,' on June 6, 2021. (Tolga Akmen /AFP via Getty Images)

In an interview with podcast host Dwarkesh Patel, Sir Tony Blair said that he now believes COVID-19 lockdowns in the developing world “did more harm than good.”

In a wide-ranging interview covering leadership and AI on Wednesday, the former Labour leader, who advocated for strict lockdowns, said that COVID-19 “was plainly more serious than your average flu” but “wasn’t the bubonic plague.”

He said that there “was one very difficult question, which is, to what degree do you try and shut the place down and the rid of the disease?”

Anxiety

“Most governments kind of tried to strike a middle course right, to do restrictions, but then ease them up over time,” he said.

But he added that part of the problem was that governments “weren’t sure where to go to for advice.”

“They had scientific advice, they had medical advice, but then they had to balance that with the needs of their economy and the anxiety a lot of people had that when you were having a large shutdown, they were going to be hugely disadvantaged, as indeed people were,” he said.

“I think there’s an argument for saying for the developing world that lockdowns probably did more harm than good,” he added.

Humanitarian Fallout

The disruption from lockdowns in poorer countries was severe.

In June 2020, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that COVID-19 deaths would be “a drop in the ocean compared to the humanitarian fallout.”

This was due, in part, to the breakdown of supply chains via the shutdown of the commercial airline industry which left the World Food Programme (WFP) and other United Nations agencies struggling.

The WFP said that the number of people facing acute food insecurity rose in countries such as Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Ethiopia, to 265 million in 2020, up by 130 million from 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19.

India enacted the largest lockdown in the world, with over 1.3 billion people locked inside their homes with the threat of up to a year in jail for anyone who refused to follow the restrictions. This was despite millions of poor Indians living in cramped conditions.

In May 2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasised that while lockdowns helped reduce the spread of COVID-19, he acknowledged their harms.

“Low-income countries, small island developing states and those suffering from violence and conflict are trying to confront this threat in the most challenging of circumstances,” he said.

“There is no silver bullet. There is no simple solution. There is no panacea. There is no one-size-fits-all approach,” he added.

Health Passes

Sir Tony, who advises political leaders worldwide with his organisation The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, had hardline stances on COVID-19 policy.

In 2021, he told BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show” that people who are vaccinated and not vaccinated for COVID-19 should be distinguished both domestically and with regard to international travel.

The former prime minister referenced a paper published by The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, which calls for a “globally interoperable system of health passes” that is “usable both by national border authorities and other organisations within countries.”

“The paper we’re putting out today is saying we should really distinguish between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated,” he said.

The paper called for the government to allow businesses and organizations to operate with no restrictions if they restrict entry to those who have been fully vaccinated or have had a recent negative lateral flow test.

Asked if this would create a discriminatory “two-tier society between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated,” Sir Tony said that “discrimination” is a loaded word, “but really when it comes to risk management, it’s all about discrimination.”

In the same year, he told Times Radio that there was a choice between “severe lockdown or vaccination.”

Lily Zhou contributed to this report.