Gandhi quote: "“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
Our society is seriously lacking in humanity when people like Prof Gupta espousing 'protecting the vulnerable' and otherwise letting it rip are given airtime.
They NEVER say how they're going to practically protect vulnerable parents from their non- vulnerable children or vulnerable elderly from their carers. They NEVER address the VAST amounts of money that would be needed to properly do this (you'd need to separate out the vulnerable in hotels or large facilities with separate medical care as once coronavirus is raging then every point of contact with the outside world would be incredibly risky).
You'd need to pay the wages of vulnerable teachers, doctors, nurses and somehow replace them in the workforce.
There would be arguments about who is vulnerable and who isn't and what about people who are vulnerable temporarily - e.g. those who develop diabetes in pregnancy. It would be an administrative nightmare and we'd need to pay lots of people to administer it.
Even Boris Johnson has said that it's impractical because we're all interconnected.
I suspect that people who say 'protect the vulnerable' mean nothing of the sort. They never have practical answers and they wouldn't want to spend the money it would take. What they really mean is 'let the vulnerable die'.
Many countries have reportedly had mass graves with coronavirus - Brazil, India, Iran. Is that what we want here?
Do you know which countries have the least economic impact, and the lowest deaths and least hardship? Counties that adopted universal mask wearing early on, and developed excellent test and trace (using people as contact tracers not just apps) and suppressed the virus, dealing with outbreaks as they arise. That's what we should be doing, ideally with some extra protections for people who are vulnerable and need to take extra precautions, as we had with shielding.
It makes me so angry that this is a strategy that is even discussed as a viable option. The PM has said it's not feasible and it's really inhumane and othering to the vulnerable, who make up a significant chunk of our population and workforce.
It's wasting time discussing it when we should be focusing on what we CAN do to reduce transmission (e.g funding schools better, masks in schools etc).