I don’t accept several hundred deaths a day. I am someone who sympathises with the idea that we need to find an alternative to a cycle of constant lockdowns. One that is based around protecting the vulnerable and allowing the rest of society to go about their lives fairly normal.
I don’t agree with the idea of locking down hard, as the moment you open up, infections rise again. All lockdowns do is delay the inevitable, kicking the can down the road could be be another way to put it, and with all the damaging consequences that come with them.
I think most people submitted to the idea of a lockdown in March to protect the NHS and as part of collective national effort. However, I think what we’re seeing how is fatigue and the reality that the NHS never has been overwhelmed and will never be. There was a particularly bad flu season a few years ago and the NHS was said to be bursting at the seams but we didn’t lockdown over that.
The Tories rightly are trying to balance the need to contain the virus with keeping the economy open and avoiding all the damaging other things that come with lockdowns, such as missed operations, poorer mental health, and jobs and businesses disappearing.
A return to the tier system better balances this.
FFS I don’t even know where to start with this nonsense. The idea of a lockdown is to reduce the level of infection to something a decent test, trace and isolate system can then manage which alongside a few restrictions including a bit of distancing, mask wearing and hand washing can allow society to function fairly normally. This is what lockdown 1 achieved but the government screwed it up when their world beating track and trace system proved to be useless. Lockdown 2 is necessary because cases were running out of control again and the reason the NHS has not been overrun is because of the lockdowns. Lockdowns buy us time, they are not a case of kicking the can down the road if we use that time wisely, with this government we don’t so we end up here again. That is the fault of the government not lockdowns per se.