To think easing lockdown on Monday is allowing a second peak to happen?

[Gawdsake2020]

Exactly that really. Still 4,000 odd infections a day, 600 deaths a day and there easing up on Monday.

@Weallhavevalidopinions so how do we continue to protect the remaining elderly in car homes? If lockdown eases their careers will be even more exposed and more likely,not less, to pass it on

@JoeExoticsEyebrowRing I don’t think the government are all that keen on admitting that the lockdown is largely to try to mitigate decades of underfunding in the NHS and the social care ‘system’ more generally.

Although their slogan makes it clear that we’re currently staying home to protect the NHS (not people) and save lives by allowing it to continue to function. It’s not actually about directly protecting ourselves or each other.

The government's plan was never to prevent deaths, it was to minimise the impact on the NHS.

So whenever restrictions are eased, yes it will trigger another increase in infection rates.

It was never part of the plan to ensure that nobody gets infected and nobody dies.

I think your post about South Africa is very very naive @RandomLondoner. Death rates have gone down as violence has gone down. Once lockdown ends and the economy is fucked do you think violence will continue to stay low? The people who haven't been killed during lockdown will just be killed at a later stage and many more with them, not all by violence, many will be killed by poverty and hopelessness.

Lockdown kills people.

If So many haven’t followed the lockdown OP, how come the nhs isn’t over whelmed with Covid? How come more aren’t dead?

People on this thread are saying going out is being a murder as this virus gets you the minute you leave home. So why aren’t more dead?

Vast majority have to at at least go out for food, in a germ ridden supermarket, being in a small area with others. Why hasn’t that killed more?

This exactly
"kirinm Wed 06-May-20 13:35:55
Lockdown needs to end. The virus isn't going anywhere and it is still going to be there if lockdown ends in 2 weeks or 12 weeks."

The fit and healthy have little to fear. The economy is decimated, jobs gone, companies folding, our children will pay for this for their entire lives.

We need to ease in most areas now and start getting the country working again. Imagine sitting around and doing nothing much until we all run out of money - some would be happy to lockdown for years.

I find it helpful not to think in terms of 'lockdown' but in terms of a changing array of measures. Some places would consider our lockdown as their easing, elsewhere people are finally being allowed outside for brief exercise for the first time in weeks. But equally any easing will still not be anywhere near normal.

I think that lockdown will be lifted gradually and closely monitored to prevent as far as is possible a second wave. But people do need to return to work as government help is limited and might well not go beyond July.

We NEED people to get covid, herd immunity is what protects the most vulnerable from it.

Lockdown isn’t to stop you getting it, it’s to ease the burden on the NHS. Which is has, the nightingale hospitals are starting to close now.

People don't have to ease restrictions. So anyone who is worried about it is welcome to carry on as we are.

Exactly that. Carry on with your misery Olympics, trying to outdo each other by staying inside the longest and living off tinned goods in the garage. Nobody is going to force you out of your house.

However, back in the real world, the rest of us will get getting to grips with gradually easing the lockdown and going back to doing some things in different ways with social distancing. We cannot just shut up shop and close the country down for months or years.

The whole idea is to relax things off gradually so we DON'T see a massive spike, and if numbers start to rise, the restrictions will come back.

I'm sure lifting the lockdown (to some extent) will cause more deaths, but we have little choice and we're trying to find the compromise that will kill least while allowing the country to keep going.

There are plenty of posters lately who don't think those dying matter at all of course. As long as it isn't them.

If lockdown was the ease the nhs

Why did all the other countries do it? They don't have an nhs.

RedAzalea Wed 06-May-20 13:37:10
@Weallhavevalidopinions so how do we continue to protect the remaining elderly in car homes? If lockdown eases their careers will be even more exposed and more likely,not less, to pass it on

So we all hide away forever do we? Take very special precautions for the most vulnerable. How long do you want the fit and healthy to stay at home - until there are no more jobs left apart from key workers? Obviously some areas cannot go back to normal eg very large gatherings pop concerts etc but some things HAVE to return just as things are gradually returning in other countries.

They still have healthcare

Naive of me maybe but can anyone explain how having a second wave in the summer will prevent a third/fourth/fifth wave during flu season? I have a baby due in November and I'm very anxious about what restrictions will be in place by then. Thank you

The roads are busier than ever

People keep saying this, but they're really not. Rush hour has completely disappeared. DP is working and travelling to a job 20 miles away and it's taking him just over half an hour each way. In normal times it would take him 2 or 3 times that amount of time.

We're also doing dog walking for a relative who's shielding in the early evening and there is no traffic at all despite us having to cross the city, a journey we simply wouldn't contemplate in normal times, again because it would take forever. It's quieter than the school holidays out on the roads right now.

There are not 600 deaths a day from the virus!!!!

First the way the statistics are presented is totally misleading. Many in the number reported today will have died weeks ago and days ago.

Second lots of people die in hospital every day. Hospitals are infectious places. Unsurprisingly many who were very poorly due to other health issues get the virus as well - and they are recorded as a virus death.

How many people do you think are dying of other causes because the NHS has (at the direction of this stupid Government) thrown everything at the virus and neglected everybody else who might need treatment and care.

Lockdown has to end. Panic needs to end.

Of course it is. It's murder.

Dramatic much.

I am happy to financially support the shielded who need to be protected but the rest of us need to recognise that we need to get back to work and can't stay sat at home forever.

How do you justify easing lockdown when the curve is still at a point where a second peak will happen and people will die?

The government has always been absolutely clear that this was always going to happen. They need the second peak to be in July/August, before the flu season starts, and while the children are already off school for the summer holidays - less disruption all round.

People were always going to die. It's really shit, but there is currently no vaccine and no treatment. No government is omnipotent.

@YetAnotherSpartacus
I'm not sure if murder is quite the exact word for it but I do agree with you in principle.

With a pandemic, it is down to the government of each country to protect its citizens as much as it can, and ideally to work internationally in that too.
The initial herd immunity plan quite openly had a death rate that would happen on the way to that. The prime minister said "Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time".
But, presumably, the feeling was that the 1%+ of the population then threatened was the only option.

They've since said that they won't go down that route, but if they do start to lift the lockdown before there are practical protections in place then they must be aware that more people will die as a side-effect.

Of course it must be a nightmare having that kind of responsibility at this time, but if you watch the speech by NZ's prime minister on why she wouldn't go down the 'herd immunity' route, she shows a really human revulsion at the idea of people dying as a consequence. It puts it all in perspective.

Murder might sound like a bit of strong word, but if the government does lift things too early then it is definitely responsible for unnecessary deaths.

*If lockdown was the ease the nhs

Why did all the other countries do it? They don't have an nhs*

“Protect the NHS” is short hand for “make sure there aren’t so many cases at once that the drs and nurses get burned out and ill and there are very sick people turned away at hospital doors”

That applies to any country

Yes you're right it's not a rule, it was just "advisory" at the start of the lockdown. But I just heard it on 5-live the Times correspondent after pmqs citing it as what might be announced...admittedly he didn't sound very with it.

Also, the thing about ‘flattening the curve’ is that it intends for people to get the disease over a longer period of time, rather than all the cases coming at once. And, in doing so, hopefully medical services will be able to treat people so fewer people will die overall and eventually the population will build up resilience to the disease (possibly through a vaccine). And that means it can become the sort of endemic disease that we manage to live alongside (as we do with flu now).

Trying to ‘flatten the curve’ is very different from ‘eradicating the disease’.