Are we delaying the inevitable?

[Slytherin]

I am wondering if we are delaying the inevitable here with continued lockdowns/social distancing etc.
These events surely happen in the world and over history to ensure population reduction and control.
Surely the virus will continue to circulate whatever happens, until it has burnt itself out/finished its natural run?
Unless a vaccine/decent treatment is found sooner.

Article is not very long.

Concludes with;

Lockdown is going to bankrupt all of us and our descendants and is unlikely at this point to slow or halt viral circulation as the genie is out of the bottle. What the current situation boils down to is this: is economic meltdown a price worth paying to halt or delay what is already amongst us.

What is this argument about gardens in 'the north'? There was a point during the national lockdown when we were allowed to meet in gardens but not houses, how was that fair?
Lots of people in 'the north' have gardens by the way - probably more than in London!

There aren't huge volumes of cases in London, that's why Greater Manchester has different restrictions. There was a lot of lockdown when meeting in gardens was not allowed, most of it I thought.

I find the OP obscene and a bit dim.

This is a virus that mainly picks off those who are past child bearing age. That will do nothing to ensure population control. By the way, there are better ways to do this. You sound a bit like Hitler, suggesting there are positives in a specific group of society dying a horrible death. Only difference is you're suggesting we watch it happen rather than make it happen. Obscene.

But the rules have always been made to take into account as many people as possible. Many people in the north of England do not have large gardens. Small terraced houses only have tiny yards, if anything at all. That's why the rule about households has always included gardens

This is one of the most ridiculous justifications of that particular rule I've seen, so kudos. There are whole swathes of the affected areas where none or virtually none of that housing exists: I know, because I live in one. Note that when restrictions of the national lockdown were loosened to allow garden socialising a couple of months back, there were no regional variations in England then because that would penalise Londoners.

The most common symptom of Covid is no symptoms.

Are we going bankrupt for that?

And people who talk about "eugenics" on threads like this really need to look up the definition.

I think you know exactly what they mean Hester, semantics aside.

we going bankrupt for that?

Well, no. We've lost about 50 000 people despite a full lockdown. We've gone bankrupt for the hundreds of thousands we still have as a result of the lockdown. And the cancer treatments and operations we have a chance of restarting without it being stupidly risky.

If we hadn't locked down we would have basically crashed our whole society.

It would take a long time to work through the whole population, especially as many would start to avoid going out anyway.

The economic impact of letting it run would have been bigger than we've seen anyway.

Same with health impact, how would you have run e.g. cancer clinic with covid circulating widely?

We know what has happened with lockdown. We can't KNOW what would have happened without one - it can only be an assumption.

We can make reasonable predictions though. I think it is not for example unreasonable to assume that if twice as many people had caught covid, the number and % of deaths would have risen - because the NHS would have run out of ventilators.

@HesterShaw1

And people who talk about "eugenics" on threads like this really need to look up the definition.

No. Eugenics refers to something specific.

When we are talking about the majority of Covid deaths, we are talking about old, probably ill people (I said majority), long past breeding age. That is not eugenics.

Sorry I quoted my own post rather than Jihhery's but the point still stands.

@Jihhery you are making an awful lot of assumptions with your posts. When the full implications of the economic crash become apparent, will people still be saying we should have locked down for months, despite there being evidence that lockdowns make little difference to the curve of a virus?

No country ever increased life expectancy by deliberately making itself poorer.

Please don't assume I was against any kind of mitigation measures. Of course I wasn't. Sensible distancing, improved hygiene, massively increased administering of the flu jab this autumn - all this makes perfect sense. Keeping playgrounds shut, and people out of hospital and GP surgeries for non Covid matters - not so much.

Worldwide economic devastation will cause more suffering and deaths than this virus will. There are no easy solutions to be had.

It's all cause and effect anyway. With no lockdown or restrictions the economy would still take a huge hit due to just how many people would have been seriously ill and the impact on hospitals. Every office/shop/business in the country would have been laid low and directly impacted by the virus.

As it turns out we've just got the worst of both worlds. The worst death rate in Europe and the worst economic hit.

Remember that without lockdown covid deaths would be much higher so you can't compare lockdown covid deaths with lockdown non-covid deaths directly as if the lockdown hadn't happened covid deaths would have been much higher (whilst other deaths were lower).
Also, many scientists/ epidemiologists/modellers (not sure which) have modelled that without lockdown there would still have been a significant rise in non-covid deaths due to lack of access to hospital facilities, people naturally staying at home due to fear of going out etc due to high numbers of cases and deaths.
It's not easy to determine which is the right approach unless you had two identical countries which took two different approaches (and Sweden isn't identical to the UK). The government and their advisors are left with being responsible for weighing it all up and deciding what the best approach is.

'one in ten people are infectious with covid apparently, do you fancy going out for lunch and then to the theatre?' was really never going to happen, the economy would have bombed anyway.

The key thing to understand here is that we're not doing this to protect the vulnerable. They were shielding for the majority of the year. They were not putting pressure on NHS resources or being counted in the death rate.

Your "plan" of just letting it rip through society is that many people die. The oldest among us, the most vulnerable among us. What kind of a society would that make us?

It's not easy to determine which is the right approach unless you had two identical countries which took two different approaches (and Sweden isn't identical to the UK)

Sweden is a red herring used for people to argue against lockdown. For one thing their figures are a lot worse than neighbouring countries. But Sweden is far less populated and less densely populated than England and they have the Great Swedish Common Sense, where people can be a lot more trusted to socially distance and less anti social.

5000 deaths being knocked off the covid total and possibly more to come off.

@Jussayingisall

5000 deaths being knocked off the covid total and possibly more to come off.

Isn't that because PHE were counting anyone who'd ever had a positive test in their figures no matter what they died from or when? I understood they were bringing England into line with Scotland and Wales with a 28 day from date of test cut off which make sense.

Well since the latest estimate is 6% in the uk have had it so far the potential for deaths is still high and the estimates of half a million with no lockdown would not seem to have been impossible. Then for some we have unknown long term complications to consider.

As other posters have said, the economy would have been damaged by so many deaths and people would have socially distanced naturally any way.

Lots of schools were closed even before lockdown. Attendance for some of my classes was only 20%. Shops, sporting events etc closed before they were made to

Lots of people say what about mental health and suicides etc yet mental health provision and suicides /social services funds have been cut to the bone for years as has the welfare state. We have had people starve to death because of sanctions and not much has been done about it. Yet now it is a priority. I wonder sometimes how many posters making these points genuinely care and how many want to get back to normal and use it as a justification.

The way I look at it is we are buying time for more systems and treatments and possible vaccines. If a vaccine is not possible then hard decisions need to be made.

As it is almost every country worldwide with expert advice by scientists and economicists etc have made similar decisions which says it all really.

We all know history will not look back at lockdown favourably.

Don't you think it is kind of odd and counterintuitive that the Uber-rich and the just plain rich have become richer despite economic downturn and recession and huge increases in unemployment?

The Guardian recently reported that 9 out of 10 furloughed men were actually WFH. Making the same profits for their employer, but 80% of wages paid by the state. The state was also not collecting business rates etc. Of course dividends were still paid.

What impact has this had on women, who we know from research have done the majority of home schooling (and the rest)? What impact has this had on relationships with supposed equality between 2 working parents with DC at school and after school care provided by grandparents?

And we all know there is no magic money tree. If and when covids all over, who will be presented with the bill? Will employers repay the funds they received or will employees pay through taxation, wage restrictions, austerity etc?

We have all been naturally too distracted by existential threat to pay attention to the massive wealth transfer that Covid has enabled.

Even schemes that are 'meant' to protect the 'little people' - like protecting people through furlough - has, in reality, allowed employers to line their pockets before making people redundant anyway. Morally, this is no better than Maxwell robbing the pension scheme before it all went belly up.

How do we square the conflicting realities that the economy is fucked but, at the same time, the economy is booming?

(Apart of course by saying that Covid has both exposed and increased inequality.)

I don't understand how expressing concern about the route we have taken is the equivalent of saying we think we should have "let it rip through the population". It isn't

Limiting mass gatherings, improving hygiene measures including having proper PPE for care staff, and maintaining a sensible distance from other people - close friends and family aside -: these would have been sensible things to do.

Isolating the elderly and confused in care homes for many months, and letting them lose the will to live as per current policy...why do people support that, for example?