What would happen if....?

[Aesopfable]

Only the old and vulnerable self-isolated and everyone else got on with business as usual? Obviously in the short term (few months) there will be potentially be tens of thousands of excess deaths and the nhs will be overwhelmed, but what then? Will we be back to normal?

I am not being flippant about the short-term deaths but lockdown will itself lead to many deaths. Then there is the decades of post-war-type austerity we are now going to face due to the debt we are rapidly building up to keep the country going - people were already saying austerity was causing thousands of deaths. And this isn’t going to go away. At some point we are going to have to live with covid and lockdown will have to be lifted. In the long term might a lockdown cause more harm than good? Might the indirect deaths outweigh those from Covid now?

Because it wouldn't contain it. What about all the carers? They would bring it in to those older and more vulnerable patients. The list of "vulnerable" is huge. You're talking about people with asthma and who are just plain fat. The list would be huge and it wouldn't be practical to isolate only them. The virus would tear through pretty much unchecked.