Should we all lockdown again, infection rate is rising or should we shield the elderly and vunerable and support them financially while everyone else goes back to normality to save our economy.

[947EliseChalotte]

Covid is not going to disappear, we will be waiting years for a vaccine. How on earth are we / the economy suppose to carry on like this ?
Yabu I'm being unreasonable
Yanbu I'm being reasonable

It doesn't mean that the legislation wasn't there

Linky?

@nether

Take it up with him if you disagree

Why?

You've made him sound so ignorant of even the basics of life expectancy and cancer, and a number of other conditions on the 'shield' list - particularly blood cancers (the commonest kind of cancer in children) that I think I would find it difficult to know where to start.

He's talking about the elderly and their life expectancy.

That is not/not a synonym for the exceptionally medically vulnerable (no age categories for shielded conditions) and it includes those who can expect a normal or near normal life expectancy.

He's talking about the elderly and their life expectancy

Where did he say this?

He said that on average, the risk of dying with Covid 19 is the same as that of you dying in the next 12 months of any cause.

You are misinterpreting what he said. The risk of dying of Covid at the moment may be the same as dying of something else but that would be because the risk of catching it is low. If there were no cases of Covid the risk would be even lower. If the number of cases is high then the risk of catching it and therefore dying would be much much higher amount of dying of something else.

amount of that the risk

How will everyone go back to normal and the over 50s be more careful actually work?

Be more careful not to be infected by the person at the store or in your office ?

Or do you mean hide away in full lockdown until the problem goes away? Because that is what it would take in practise.

Why should the over 50s be expected to give up living? Isn't it more reasonable to ask everyone to take a much less painful set of actions to protect everyone ?

And how does pushing a significant fraction of the population out of circulation protect the economy? How many pubs and restaurants and gyms and cinemas and hotels and theatres and John Lewis stores will close if the over 50's can no longer attend?

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

I referred to how you portrayed the comments, and that bit was about juxtaposing Covid risk to life expectancy in care homes.

I think you have cherry picked to build your argument.

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

It doesn't mean that the legislation wasn't there

Linky?

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/22/contents

There are about 10 million workers aged over 50 in UK

2015 govt data, so round up

Leaving aside shielded and flu jab vulnerable who should be added in as well

That's nearly a third of the British workforce potentially out of action.

Where in that Act does it state that the whole of the country can be detained in their homes at once, irrespective of their state of health?

@midgebabe

How will everyone go back to normal and the over 50s be more careful actually work?

Be more careful not to be infected by the person at the store or in your office ?

Or do you mean hide away in full lockdown until the problem goes away? Because that is what it would take in practise.

Why should the over 50s be expected to give up living? Isn't it more reasonable to ask everyone to take a much less painful set of actions to protect everyone ?

And how does pushing a significant fraction of the population out of circulation protect the economy? How many pubs and restaurants and gyms and cinemas and hotels and theatres and John Lewis stores will close if the over 50's can no longer attend?

At the risk of repeating myself, you have to ask why people aren’t doing it anyway?

If such a majority are in favour of blanket lockdown, why does the government even have to get involved?

Setting aside the moral repugnance of your argument, the majority of deaths were not in care homes. So, even if your 6 months figure is correct for care homes (and I don't think it is) you are taking that figure and applying it to all deaths.

"Recapping the main arguments, COVID-19 does seem to disproportionately affect people with chronic health problems. On the other hand, while it affects the old more than the young, and a large proportion of the elderly will have chronic health problems, only a tiny fraction of impaired lives have life expectancies of the order of one year. Therefore we feel it is unfounded to claim that a large proportion of those who have died from COVID-19 in 2020 would have died in any case this year.

This claim, in addition to being false, is also dangerous from a public health perspective: it understates the risk from the disease, endangering adherence to government policy on social distancing. It also seems very callous, encouraging a ‘why should I care?’ attitude to the people in question – in our view, people who would (in the great majority of cases) be alive now in the absence of the coronavirus, and would probably still be alive in several years’ time."

www.theactuary.com/features/2020/05/07/co-morbidity-question

@NikeDeLaSwoosh

Where in that Act does it state that the whole of the country can be detained in their homes at once, irrespective of their state of health?

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/emergency-powers

Whilst I am not in favour of a selective lockdown , neither am i in favour of a blanket lockdown.

I am in favour of people not being stupid so that neither is necessary. So keep your distance please.

I a, I'm favour of the government making it possible for people to do the right thing ( so something more than stat sick pay for people self isolating for example)

Although I will admit that if there is a big rise in cases I am in favour of coming down hard on the guideline breakers Blame and restrict the freedoms of the perpetrator not the victim.

I remember thinking back in the spring that lockdowns weren't a sustainable longterm solution & that the Swedish model might well turn out to be the 'least bad' approach for countries where the virus had already taken hold. I'm a liberal lefty Guardian-reader type though so kept very very quiet because that opinion was streng verboten back then

Those were awful times, eh? I'm also a liberal lefty Guardian-reader type, but I'm no longer friends with any of the liberal lefty Guardian-reader types I used to know, who all too readily believed that the most noble thing to do for humanity was to hide behind their sofas - which mainly meant them enjoying working from home in the garden, and not giving a fuck about either the people who still had to go out there to make sure we all have food, nor how it was all going to mean millions of other people losing their incomes.

The virus hadn't really taken hold in Sweden as it had done with us though. They would have been in the same position as other Nordic countries if they hadn't locked down i.e. with a very low number of deaths. We on the other hand have the worst death rate in the world even with lockdown and therefore very unlikely that their model would have resulted in anything other than an extremely high death rate for us.

@CheerUpCreepyKeen

I remember thinking back in the spring that lockdowns weren't a sustainable longterm solution & that the Swedish model might well turn out to be the 'least bad' approach for countries where the virus had already taken hold. I'm a liberal lefty Guardian-reader type though so kept very very quiet because that opinion was streng verboten back then

Those were awful times, eh? I'm also a liberal lefty Guardian-reader type, but I'm no longer friends with any of the liberal lefty Guardian-reader types I used to know, who all too readily believed that the most noble thing to do for humanity was to hide behind their sofas - which mainly meant them enjoying working from home in the garden, and not giving a fuck about either the people who still had to go out there to make sure we all have food, nor how it was all going to mean millions of other people losing their incomes.

Oh so very true!

Can the people calling for a Swedish style response please inform themselves better! Sweden had the highest death rate in the world at the beginning of June.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-lockdown-sweden-death-rate-worst-country-covid-19-a9539206.html%3famp

The Swedish model is based on the longhaul. They predicted that other countries would simply face second, third, subsequent waves every time they lifted lockdown. Their model assumes you need measures which are sustainable over a long period of time, at least a year.

How are Sweden currently doing, compared to France, Italy, Spain etc?

Sweden isn't the model I would have personally gone with originally, but by mid march that was the only realistic model we were left with. If we wanted something else, should have locked down earlier and done better with the testing.

The Swedish model is based on individuals taking responsibility for social distancing. I've seen zero evidence that British people are capable of sensible behaviour.

@Domino20

The Swedish model is based on individuals taking responsibility for social distancing. I've seen zero evidence that British people are capable of sensible behaviour.

Nonsense

We were very very compliant with lockdown. Brits are really compliant, it turns out. We'd be great in a dictatorship. There were millions of people stepping forward as volunteers as well.

But it's like anything, if you treat people like children, give them no real information, ridiculous slogans, contradictory advice, turn people against each other, all to cover up your own government ineptitude, incompetence and corruption ... well yes .. people might not take personal responsibility

That is actually the whole point of the Swedish model. Total lockdown isn't sustainable long term. People won't do it. Swedish people won't. British people won't. The Chinese might. Because they have a full dictatorship and prison camps.
If you make them do a series of really harsh lockdowns ... it won't last. That is precisely why they didn't do it. Instead, you ask less of people but make changes where life can carry on.

infection rate is rising

Not everywhere it isn't.

Apart from one of the highest death rates in Europe, Sweden's economy is doing much worse than their neighbours.

We couldn't follow Sweden anyhow. 50% of Swedish households are single occupancy. Makes social distancing much easier.

Do people not realise care homes aren't just for elderly people? Many young disabled adults live in care homes. They have care needs, yes, but that doesn't mean at all that they're anywhere close to being at death's door.

@corythatwas

One problem here is that recent findings seem to show that a lot of people who were not elderly and did not have underlying conditions still end up being very ill for a long time (5 months and counting) and that some of them can be shown to have sustained damage (lung scarring etc) which is probably not reversible. The government are currently setting up to build new rehabilitation clinics and in the long term this will almost certainly be a far bigger problem than the actual deaths.

This is a big unknown concern imo.

@KatherineJaneway

infection rate is rising

Not everywhere it isn't.

Not everywhere YET it isn't.