I believe in democracy. If you want to go out and are willing to risk infection - go for it. If you are scared of the virus - don't.
I am not sure if those two sentences are meant to be connected. Democracy in this country includes voting for a party you think or hope will handle these crises as well as possible. You could have a referendum I guess, but the general public are completely ill equipped to make a decision and the situation is constantly changing.
It's back to this bizarre choice of either have no fear and go out as normal or stay in completely. I think I covered that upthread.
What we have thankfully enshrined as human rights and freedoms, which are actually privileges, are not going to exist while a virus like Covid grows exponentially within a population. You cannot preserve them without taking action, and the action requires restrictions on rights and freedoms. Getting the balance is very difficult and I expect lots of mistakes have been made.
If we had responded quickly and appropriately in the UK we need not have had such a long or difficult journey. Equally we could perhaps have had more sophisticated testing and tracking or adapted schooling in place by now. If the relevant people had responded differently in the beginning of all this we would probably never have had an epidemic, certainly not a pandemic.
I don't think that we are aiming for eradication. It's always a dream goal but only Smallpox has ever been eradicated. I don't even think they are aiming for near elimination in the UK. They know there will be cases, and I think are just aiming to keep a dangerous level of growth at bay until the vaccine they are hoping for or a major breakthrough in treatment. Not just to save lives but to prevent long term disability. Why we are finding so hard to do that at this date in part goes back to the mishandling of the initial outbreak here. Things are changing though, we are not just on complete lockdown. I am fairly sure we'd agree on many ways it could be done better.
As for what will end up costing the most lives after ten years? Factoring in the mishandling we have seen and will continue to see, I honestly don't know. I guess we will perhaps never know. But we will need to factor in that reaching a natural peak would not have just caused deaths from COVID, it would have caused deaths from economic and social collapse and the absence of any healthcare. Again we won't know exactly what predictions were right. No one has risked finding out.