Out of interest
Does anyone extolling the virtues of coming out of lockdown understand how expensive that virus will be?
-Yes - we also understand how expensive lockdown is though.
What will we do with the bodies?
Have to burn them most likely?
Who will treat the sick? The rocketing numbers of COVID-19 patients and those suffering from other illnesses who will have no services because all other resources are needed to treat COVID-19 patients?
The NHS staff who are doing it at present. They won’t be able to save everyone, but then they can’t now.
How will we persuade HCP to carry on?
Pay them. Which requires money from income tax. Which in turn requires people working.
Where will the PPE come from?
Factories. Which will require people working to make them. And government money to pay for them. Which will require people returning to work.
How will vulnerable portions of our population survive when resources have been siphoned off to the (dying) NHS and the already small number of social workers etc is smaller still?
These people are also dying now. Resources will also have to be cut to these areas in an extended lockdown, too. Because the government won’t have any income to pay for them, because the income comes from taxing people’s earning and business profits.
How will we justify allowing the virus to go unchecked through socially deprived and crowded areas while the middle classes enjoy the advantages of lockdown ending? Or would we keep people living close together in lockdown as well?
These people are trapped in close proximity to each other NOW. Many low income workers are key workers living in multigenerational, cramped households. They are infecting their elders NOW, because they are not permitted to go elsewhere.
We don’t ‘justify’ allowing the virus to go unchecked. We understand that is scarcely unchecked in these areas under lockdown either.
Social deprivation is never justified, but without revenue from business, it’s not going to be possible to address it in the future, either. Addressing social deprivation costs money. Lots of it.
How would we compensate in the short and medium term for large numbers of workers who are simply unable to work/teach/childmind because they're sick, recently bereaved, widowed or deceased?
The vast majority of people are ill in the short term, if they show symptoms at all.
If we don’t allow people to return to work, the money for paying them to stay at home will run out. How will we compensate people then?
Looking at the death rate as we enter the flattening of the curve, could I remind you that this was a glimpse of what was to come, not really a 'peak' in terms of what the virus is capable of? Also, the numbers we saw would never be that manageable once we passed the point at which the NHS could offer beds? And of course that would leave many HCP working in exactly the conditions that would cause an immune response that would kill them too? Leaving many struggling to access healthcare and of course, vulnerable people unable to reach a safe space where their healthcare could be safely given (because nothing can be done that compromises the immune system while the viruse is unchecked).
Yes, the measures we have undertaken were to buy us time and to try to flatten the curve. Not to prevent cases, but to try and control the rate. There might still be further lockdown needed to do so, but after a certain point, lockdown will mean that we run out of money to pay NHS workers and buy equipment. If this happens, anyone who gets COVID badly is fucked anyway.
It has to be a judgement call between the two. And unemotional balancing of risk of death from the disease and risk of death from the breakdown of services due to underfunding.
That's not hysteria. That's just modelling.
Few of us understand the modelling. The Imperial Study was not peer reviewed and has many detractors.
There is also a definite amount of hysteria about.