www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/coronavirus-adviser-pm-wants-herd-21811857.amp?__twitter_impression=true
Coronavirus adviser to PM wants 'herd immunity' considered again to end lockdown
Professor Graham Medley, of Imperial College London, says the UK has 'painted itself into a corner' and that lockdown could cause more harm than coronavirus itself
The UK may need to reconsider a “herd immunity” strategy to defeat coronavirus, a senior adviser to the Prime Minister has warned.
Professor Graham Medley of Imperial College London, the government’s chief pandemic modeller, says the country has “painted itself into a corner” as it battles the deadly bug with no clear exit plan.
He said the UK needed to face the trade-off between harming the young versus the old.
Describing the stark choices facing the government, he says that long, indefinite periods of lockdown could cause more harm than the virus itself by leading to soaring unemployment, domestic violence, food poverty and mental illness.
Speaking to the Times, Professor Medley said: “We will have done three weeks of this lockdown so there’s a big decision coming up on April 13.
"In broad terms are we going to continue to harm children to protect vulnerable people, or not?
There is a link to the original times story in the article (its pay walled hence this link)
It looks like strategy will be expand capacity, reduce lockdown for the working population, let young healthy take gamble (some will lose) and then declare it safe for the vulnerable (those who have survived, particularly the ones in care homes - threads by Lewis Goodall last night and Peter Foster this morning are very sobering indeed).
It is just a question of how we are all psychologically prepared for this. The young healthy being cooped up for a while might make them more keen on the idea and the dispensability of the old.