As the government has said, its strategy on COVID-19 has been driven by the science. Specifically, it has been informed by SAGE, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

SAGE comprises a number of very distinguished epidemiologists and physicians. And the same is true of the three other committees that feed them.

These experts supported the economic lockdown—and its extension—as a way of flattening the infection curve, preventing an unmanageable surge in critical cases and deaths. And most of us have gone along with that.

But we are starting to realise that locking down an economy for three weeks is very damaging. Locking it down for six weeks is disastrous. Each business that closes spreads trouble to many more. And they in turn to many more others. So, the failures and unemployment multiply, like a virus ripping through our productive network.

Given the enormity of that, you might think that economists would be involved in the lockdown decisions. But no: there are no economists on SAGE, nor the committees that feed into it. No Roger Bootle, Mervyn King, Paul Ormerod, John Vickers, Patrick Minford nor others who could explain the cost of lockdown and how best to unwind it.

Advice that has such serious economic impact should not be decided by physicians alone but by economists too.