How many people are going to die from other causes, if we shutdown entire country for 6 months? How many of those will be children and young people?
It may sound harsh, but as a younger person I prefer this plan.
Coz you need to balance out infections and with that manage them, so you will see periodic lockdowns in some parts to throttle back infection and also those most at risk will see themselves issolating for months and however you do things, you want to be doing that anyhow.
So infect, isolating those who high risk and letting others carry on and manage infection rate with hospital numbers as you will get risk people getting infected anyhow, so focusing on managing infection in those you can and getting it out the way, has logic behind it. yes people will die, they are not flowing that up, but equally, they are planning for those longterm to be lower than falling victim to the seasonal waves ala spanish flu and how that went.
Yes it does seem harsh, but as an older person it is the best plan for the whole and I'm high risk.
also, if bojo wants to ask old people to stay home for 4 months in a couple weeks, why not ask them now to stay home for 4 and a half months? not enough dead in the calculation or what?
But if you have a solution to how an entire country can completely isolate and operate in today's times for any European sized country then I'm all ears to hear it as we are talking a year at least until any sort of vaccine is available.
As for `super spreaders` that's a given, just the same way Europe has easy access to heroin and cocaine that are all imported - you can't stop things spreading even with best intentions and efforts and viruses are much smaller than smuggled drugs. So given that, people who spread this will happen and how would you ever stop that? Sure isolate from the vulnerable and at risk and those groups are already on the case, heck the amount of old people I know and saw 2 weeks ago buying a years worth of toilet roll - well, they are already self isolating and no need to be told by some PM they may or may not respect when they have a lifetime of common sense and experience to draw upon and effectively kick into war-mode mentality lockdown. Though many will learn that over the comming year as this is a world war, only it's the entire world this time fighting a virus. Looking at how the spanish flu went, the real fear is not the hear and now, but the winter to come.
These cool (and callous) calculations will be forgotten the second the hospitals get overwhelmed and there is chaos everywhere. When the country is on fire, the government will be pissing on fires.
Cool calculations involving the facts that people will die, happen more often in many walks of life without being questioned. Kinda how insurance policies work.
If those calculations show less people die overall then how can that be bad - yes it's involving human life but you have to look at the big picture and not just yourself. I'm about 50% likely to die from this given my health and age, if I'm one of those stats that is in the death count, then so be it, I'll die I certainly won't be blaming the current planned approach by the UK and has much going for it, time will tell but hey - worst case We are an Island so you can all set up navigation warning buoys if it all goes pete tong (sorry British Humour included and slang "pete tong" sames as going pear shaped, going wrong...).