Would you have willingly endured the shortages, rationing & price increases that would’ve resulted from banning all foreign lorries entering the UK from last March for an indefinite period ? & even worse if the rest of Europe had acted similarly.
The trouble is, it took until June for any consideration to be given to this sort of international travel (absolutely essential) and large numbers entering the UK via commercial air travel (in most cases, not essential). Other countries acted much earlier on this and banned international travel without specific exemptions, and we made no attempt to do so.
I said “with hindsight”; my views have changed over the last year as the utter inadequacy and the huge human costs of a suppression strategy have become apparent. I also notice that those countries that have made it work have done so with political leadership that has been willing to say what they’re doing and why.
I agree the choices are pretty poor but I think whatever approach is taken, ultimately it will be many years (if ever) before a definite conclusion can be made on what approach would have be best.
Would elimination be possible? Perhaps for the UK but not for mainland Europe. At some point in the future a new disease will turn up for which there is no vaccine. What then? We can't do a repeat of the last 10 months for years or decades. If life consists purely of work, or sitting in the house, with no fun or seeing friends and family then, frankly, what is the point of being alive?
I’m not convinced about the death toll, because it’s been achieved despite measures like social distancing and lockdowns. Otherwise, I acknowledge the validity of your concerns over sustainability, especially of maintaining border controls sufficient to prevent regrowth.
That’s where we need to agree to disagree. I believe that the government has been trying something along the lines of that middle way, and that it is not sustainable in the long term as it results in both economic and medical harms, without seriously mitigating either. That leaves one or other of the two extreme positions; my view based on our experience of the last year is that the direct and indirect death toll of a natural herd immunity approach is an unacceptably high price to pay, and therefore that elimination is the lesser evil. However, that is with hindsight for the situation we were in 11 months ago.
Where I differ is that the politics were all about lockdown measures being strictly temporary, and without real articulation of a strategy behind them other than "protect the NHS". I believe a different style of politics - shall we say more Churchillian? - could have achieved those results by setting out clear objectives and outcomes. At the time it would have been politically brave, to say the least, and I know that I for one was in the camp that believed it would not be sustainable or deliverable. Which, incidentally, is why I qualify my comments with "in hindsight".
Why do people need to continuously justify why they should have basic freedoms? It should not be up to us to convince people that something is 'safe'. If people want to impose lasting and hugely damaging restrictions on our lives they should be having to explain why restrictions are overwhelmingly needed, that no alternatives are available, and that the benefits outweigh the costs.
I do think the NHS essentially being a religion in this country has been exploited heavily by the Government with Covid restrictions. I reckon this is why we haven't seen unrest on a large scale yet.
Very well put!
Perhaps thats down to the longstanding general decline in respect & enthusiasm for religious institutions & leaders, Politicians, Heads Of State, big business etc being much less pronounced towards our medical & Scientific academia
AIUI the reason for imposition of curfews is to make the state’s job of enforcing the rules easier, rather than for any kind of perceived benefit.
If 100,000+ deaths in less than a year aren't a clear reason for doing something, I don't know what is - and that includes how the relaxation of restrictions is managed.
That depends on how the restrictions are presented and messaged. A time limit is obviously easiest to cope with, but clear presentation of the policy objective, the strategy, and the steps can go a long way to getting support. That's not a blank cheque, but a bargain.
Possibly, though I also give the British public as a whole some credit for their altruism.
We have upwards of 600,000 deaths a year anyway so willing to bet a good proportion of those would have occurred in not too distant future anyway. We need to realise death is an inevitably, you never save a life, you just delay death.
I once did a thread on the concept of "human exceptionalism" and argue that Covid has really shone a light on it, even if the actual concept is not acknowledged, with regards to trying to save lives and in general increase life expectancy, even though doing so only leads to more health problems in later life.
I think there's also a problem with everyone considering COVID in isolation.
