This is what has always troubled me about total lockdown

[Makeitgoaway]

I don't understand how we get out of it.

Of course, it should reduce transmission while we're all locked down but unless the whole world has it under control, as soon as we start getting back to normal, it will all start again. As they're beginning to see in China.

Is this going to become a regular way of life, with lockdown annually or every few years?

If the govt can provide a test for antibodies, and we could be sure those people can't be carriers, then anyone who has antibodies can go back to work, surely?

Anyone got any better ideas than lockdown?!?!?!

Its an ugly one, but there is an argument for just accepting the deaths amongst the elderly that would arise from just letting it run.

The current policy is going to result in a catastrophic global recession that will prematurely take the lives of countless people.

I'm not sure what the right answer is, but whatever we do, many people will die; we shouldn't kid ourselves that the current lockdown will result in fewer deaths, they will just be different ones.

The aim is for the NHS not to get overwhelmed

The NHS is almost certainly going to fail as a direct result of the decades of austerity measures that will have to be implemented in the future.

We can't escape the disaster that is heading our way.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52060791

The problem will be when you and a few people you know have had it. Then lockdown becomes irrelevant as you are all immune.
Well people will expect to go to work as normal again ASAP.
It will be hard isolating those that are at risk after that.

The best answer is that the people who are elderly/vulnerable/prefer not to catch it for whatever reason stay at home and the healthy population go on as usual.

I'm struggling to see why this policy isn't being adopted.

As has been previously said we aren’t trying to stop it, we are trying to slow it. We need most of the population to get it but at the ‘right’ time. What we don’t want is people all getting it at once and people dying due to lack of medical care who otherwise would have survived. There are vaccines in the works but if you are young ish and healthy you’ll need to get your immunity the old fashioned way. I think the ‘stay safe’ ‘safe distance’ thing has promoted an idea that the goal is to avoid infection all together which isn’t the case.

Whoopps! missed the reason for that link BoJo has now copped a dose!!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52060791

Surely for a lockdown to work, it would have to be a total lockdown with every single person if every country not leaving their homes. This cannot work as hospitals still need to treat people , therefore hospital workers will still be leaving the house , and potentially going home after work and infecting their family. In an ideal world all shops and businesses would have to shut except hospitals. There would be no one to man power stations , news stations etc. Unless these workers had to stay in their own workplace to isolate themselves to avoid the risk of passing anything on. When the full 12 week (or however long it would be) lockdown is over then all hospital workers and any other people who continued to work through necessity would then have to isolate for a further 4 weeks or so in case they had it.

I also can't see a way out of this.

Stark reality is that lots of people will die.

Or has he, he could just be wanting to escape the excruciating televised updates 😂

For the lockdown to work it has to be globally, at the same time because as soon as the borders are open, it will come back. How will that ever work? The only solution is eventually everyone will become immune or die then the virus hasn’t anywhere left to go.

So... If you have already had it and have immunity, and then the virus mutated into something worse, would you be in a much better position than someone who hasn't had it and therefore has zero immunity to any strain?

If you have immunity to this strain, then you also have some immunity to subsequent, potentially more dangerous mutations?

Is that how it works?

If I understood the experts properly, that's how it works with this kind of virus, Lambrini

"How we get the heard immunity if we don't "let" people get it."

People are still getting it - that's why we get reports of new cases every day

The idea is to "flatten the curve"
to avoid too many people catching it at once and the NHS being unable to treat most of them

The "now" in that picture is with no social distancing measures
Then it shows the effect of adding them

Yep, as I understand it, the basic idea is that we don't want to try and stop people getting it completely, and in fact that could potentially be more dangerous. It's that we want people to get it at a slower rate so that the health service is not overwhelmed. And also try and stop the most vulnerable getting it as well.

I have to say, from speaking to people in real life, I'm not sure that people understand this?!

Abd of course the other problem is that even if you are young and healthy, there is still a chance you could get seriously ill/die from it. A small chance, but a chance all the same.

But then again, the same could be said about any 'Mild for most people' disease I guess? Nothing is zero risk?

If the govt can provide a test for antibodies, and we could be sure those people can't be carriers, then anyone who has antibodies can go back to work, surely?

In the movie Contagion people that become immune or have been vaccinated get wristbands so they can go out and about later on as society recovers. I was musing about the possibility of this becoming reality the other day. Sadly my conclusion was that a wristband black market would develop and people would be attacked/mugged for them.

Abd of course the other problem is that even if you are young and healthy, there is still a chance you could get seriously ill/die from it. A small chance, but a chance all the same

Its a tiny, tiny chance.

We can't make policy on the basis of outside chances.

This is overwhelmingly a disease that impacts the elderly, who only have a few years left to live anyway.

Our DCs and GrandDCs will be paying the price long after all the lives 'saved' will have died of something else anyway.

Its grotesque.

Other posters have previously pointed out that although immune people cannot spread the virus themselves, they could still spread it via their beans if they touched something with the virus on and then touched something else? I don't know how long the virus can live on the hand of an immune person or how that works. Presumably it would be a much lower rate of spread, but they wouldn't be a total fire break?

Their beans?! Their hands!

Don’t worry lots of people are scrubbing their tins of beans when they get home from the supermarket so bean-based spread is being minimised

Sorry that’s a shit joke for shit times

Its a tiny, tiny chance.

We can't make policy on the basis of outside chances.

^ yes. Maybe there are people who feel that is an unacceptable risk & are willing to continue to live like this for a prolonged & indefinite period. I'm not one of them & I don't know anyone irl who regards lockdown as any sort of legitimate medium/long term plan.

Eireni

The problem, as I see it @Laniakea is that so many people have misunderstood the idea of lockdown.

They seem to see it as a way of 'keeping our children safe', not a different way of getting to a position of herd immunity (i.e. with upwards of 60% of us catching it)