In reply to Lord_ash2000:
> I don't see much point in a circuit breaker short lockdown. What's does it achieve? Just puts the infection numbers back a couple of weeks then we unlock and watch them rise again as they are now.
It's a delaying tactic, flattening the curve.
> If you really want to end this for good then there are only two solutions.
So you assert without having understood the problem correctly.
Not an option because society would disintegrate. There wouldn't be country left to rebuild, and there'd nothing to rebuild it with.
> Alternatively, let nature take its course. Expand NHS capacity where possible but when that is overrun simply recommend bed rest at home for anyone over 75 to allow hospitals to function for the day to day stuff. Still a blow for the economy but unlikely as bad, also a lot more people die.
Not an option because society would disintegrate.
"Simply recommend bed rest at home for anyone over 75" is an incredibly stupid thing to say. Do you mean 75+ with covid, or for all health conditions? If something sounds like it might be covid you get no treatment, right? You don't actually know if it's a heart attack or liver cancer or covid, but it might be covid so you can't come to the hospital? Is it the receptionist that decides? Or do you get tested before you're allowed in the ambulance? Do you have to do this yourself before they'll come out, or will the ambulance come with the testing kit? But with so many people ill at the same time there's no ambulances left. Oh well - whether you had covid or not, you die at home without treatment. Now, there's a dead body in the house - great. But this is happening all over the place and there's no space in the morgues, funeral services are overrun. So, what are we going to do with Granpa?
What do you reckon, build a big furnace and just shovel in all the bodies of everyone of 75 who were refused NHS treatment? It would be a lot less hassle, and much cheaper if you just shovelled them in now, covid or not, wouldn't it?
Why didn't you think of that solution?
F*ck it, maybe 70, that'll save on pensions too?
So both of your solutions aren't solutions.
> Nither option is great but that's the sort of scale of action we'd need to fully beat this. The third option and seemingly most likely because it doesn't require making hard choices is to bumble along as we are having wave after wave as we move between varying levels of restrictions and a long drawn out suffering for everyone for the next few years until we either develope, manufacturer and vaccinate the whole country or get to a point where so many have had it that herd immunity takes effect. Basically option two but spread out over years rather than months and likely at far greater overall cost.
We're doing that because it's the lowest cost option available after the initial monumental f*ck up of letting the virus spread everywhere in the winter. If rather than dying, requiring hospital care and funeral services, covid just made people disappear without a trace, then perhaps "letting nature take its course" would work out alright. However, the way the world works is that we have system for dealing with sickness and death in society, which we rely on to keep society functioning. If that system became totally overloaded, the economy wouldn't just carry on, not caring about all the bodies in the streets, with happy shoppers stepping over them to pick a few bits up from Marks. That's not what it would be like. Society is an interconnect web of activities, and just like if the road system become completely logjammed, everything would collapse, if the same happened to healthcare, everything would collapse.
People who advocate this position would find that actually, they didn't like the consequences very much, and in fact, rather than carrying on as normal, the economy completely collapsed, and they'd wish they were a bit brighter and better at understanding things because their idea had completely the opposite effect to what they wanted.
This is why the government is doing the only thing it can - trying to keep the economy going while avoiding overloading the healthcare system. Which means trying to keep infections low, because once exponential growth gets going, it takes extremely harsh measures to stop it, as we saw in March.
I suspect that the "circuit breaker" would probably do more good than harm, by setting things back a bit to give more time to improve test-and-trace, and get people taking things more seriously in terms of individuals behaviour changes, but it's impossible to know. But I think it seems really harsh on people who are in regions with low numbers, so the regional approach has advantages too. Remember that the suggestion is just to apply tier 3 nationally so it's not proper lockdown which is what would really make a difference (but I don't support it unless completely necessary as the side effects are too dreadful).
The worry is that if we don't, then we'll just end up with harsher, more damaging restrictions for longer.
Post edited at 02:10