There's probably not a right answer to this but it's interesting that those commenting against easing lockdown for economic reasons are highlighting the strong possibility that this will lead to more cases and therefore more deaths.
IMO that's an entirely correct conclusion but does rather ignore the fact that the societal lockdown certainly appears to be causing a raft of additional deaths all of it's own and is likely to be causing other issues with things like a drop off in cancer diagnosis and people ignoring all sorts of other issues, either because they don't want to trouble the NHS or are afraid they'll instantly drop dead if they go near a hospital. (Because after all as the media says hospitals are essentially plague ships with people dropping like flies).
The BBC had an article about showing additional deaths during the epidemic and there's a lot more additional deaths than appears to be caused by coronavirus.
So a straight line of what's good for everyone is a continued lockdown and trashing the economy as a result, is a very blinkered look at what is IMO a much bigger and messier picture. If I save 3 85 year olds who could be expected to have a total of 3-5 years additional life expectancy as a total for all 3, is this a good thing if I kill a 48 year who employs 30 people by destroying his business and the stress and anxiety kills him, directly or indirectly? In an ideal world I'd save the 85 year olds without killing the 48 year old but it's not an ideal world. If you look at recessions, they cause additional deaths and have a particularly strong negative impact on life expectancy on the poorer members of society - so by damaging the economy you're reducing life expectancy for quite a large number of people - is that a good result or even an acceptable one set against the lives saved?
Society functions on the greatest good for the greatest number and I'm not convinced ongoing strict lockdowns are going to achieve that, particularly once we're past the initial phase of making sure the NHS isn't overwhelmed. Targeted easing of restrictions, with mass testing and isolating to get on top of local outbreaks/hot spots seems like the way out of this.
Only a personal musing really but one think that strikes me every time I hear people highlighting deaths total is that the media reaction and to an extent general populations reaction seems to be one where you could be forgiven for thinking 800 people dying across the UK in a day is an unfathomably high number. As an average something like 5-7,000 people a day die every year in the UK, for a variety of reasons, many entirely preventable and yet society and the media shrug their shoulders and carry on. Don't get me wrong, the fact people are dying (and suffering) from this disease is horrible, but we're all human and we're all at risk every day of dying and the reaction to the outbreak seems to be one that largely ignores this, at least the media portrayal is anyway. If we're so concerned about covid deaths, why don't we have social distancing lockdowns every flu season? Why is smoking allowed? Obesity ignored, or largely? Air pollution?
Clearly we need to have measures in place that help safeguard the NHS to ensure it can cope and function and clearly we need to try and safeguard people at risk from the disease (by which I mean at greater risk than the general population) but we need to balance that by trying to make sure measures taken don't cause as much or more harm as an unintended consequence.
All of the above doesn't even get to the vaccine question and whether we'll even be able to make a viable vaccine - we might be able to or we might not. If the latter occurs then what do we do, all largely sit at home and watch the country go bankrupt, other deaths spike, supply chains collapse etc etc? Presumably not, which brings you back to the question of what measures can and should be taken to avoid covid deaths and what measures shouldn't be taken as the harm they'll cause (and are causing) are worse than the harm they're preventing.
The above isn't meant to offend BTW and apologies to anyone that it does but I just think the situation is being shaded very black and white and it (IMO) really isn't that clean.
Originally Posted by: Hippydave