How do we think about the UK lockdown debate?

Death rate predictions are rooted in lies

Question: How do we think about the UK lockdown debate?
Position1 of 5›: The libertarian position, or 'End lockdown now!'
Argument1 of 8›: Death rate predictions are rooted in lies

Guttenberg Institute Professor Sucharit Bhakdi leads this charge, pointing to the vast cleavages between predicted and realised corona death rates. Underlying this position is the point that lockdown is based on phoney data and bad science.

The argument

Dr. Bhakdi says that, besides the outbreaks in China and Northern Italy, no other part of the world has seen the fatality rate that was estimated with Covid-19. A great deal of the deaths in Italy and China are believed to be the result of other factors, such as respiratory illness or disease, caused by the poor air quality in both regions. Dr. Bhakdi says the mortality rates in China and Italy are "apparent" mortality rates because he says the countries are blaming Covid-19 for the deaths of patients who have Covid-19 in tandem with other diseases. According to Bhakdi, this is a dangerous medical tactic and stokes unneeded fear. In the UK, Peter Hitchin writes that figures coming from Public Health England (PHE) are incredibly skewed. The agency, he says, marks that someone has died from Covid-19 as long as they have tested positive for the virus beforehand. He alleges there is little research done at PHE to determine if Covid-19 was the cause of the deaths, but that instead someone could test positive for the virus, fully recover, and then be hit by a bus and PHE would still count their death as a Covid-19 fatality.

Premises

[P1]The high Covid-19 fatality rates reported in China and Italy reflect deaths from co-occurring conditions like respiratory illness from poor air quality, not Covid-19 itself. [P2] UK agencies like Public Health England count anyone who has tested positive as a Covid-19 death regardless of actual cause, inflating the figures. [P3] Lockdown policy is being justified by these inflated and misleading mortality statistics. [C] Therefore, the lockdown rests on false death-rate predictions and should be ended.

Counter-arguments

Reopening the country and taking the chance that Covid-related death counts are rooted in falsehoods or mishandlings of data could result in worse real death rates and horrendous loss of life for the country.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Excess mortality contradicts this. It counts all deaths against the expected baseline and requires no judgement about cause, and it rose steeply in Italy and then across many countries during their outbreaks — including regions whose air quality is nothing like that of Lombardy or Hubei. [Rejecting P2] The recording rule described was a known limitation of the early English surveillance definition. It was publicly documented, criticised, and revised in August 2020 to a 28-day cut-off; the revision moved the total modestly and left the shape of the epidemic curve unchanged. A published rule that is corrected in the open is a methodological choice, not a falsification. [Rejecting P3] Even if the premises held, the conclusion would not follow. Restrictions were argued from hospital and intensive-care occupancy and from excess deaths as well as from attributed fatality rates, so disputing one measure leaves the others standing.