Ah, but it isn't only about saving the NHS now. It's about beating the virus. This new agenda reflects a failure to distinguish between two goals.
I've still not heard a convincing explanation for how we go about beating an endemic seasonal virus that's endemic in almost every country on the planet.
I've also not heard how you "win" or "beat" or in fact "fight" anything when your only tactic is to hide behind the sofa indefinitely and hope it gets bored and goes away.
The most dangerous sport of all is inactivity. It can be a fast route to a heart attack.
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I've still not heard a convincing explanation for how we go about beating an endemic seasonal virus
Here's one way: A lockdown is a powerful control stimulus that can freeze the progress of virus expansion, Basically, the 5th Nov lockdown froze the covid-19 virus totally. When we raised the lock, the virus defrosted, and started from precisely where it left off. That all known fact.
In control theory, this is called on/off control. you either leave the measured variable, ' R ' to change freely as nature pleases or you stop it, driving ' R ' directly towards zero. There are other forms of control. One is called proportional control. With this, you moderate the change stimulus just sufficiently to move the measured variable , ' R ', in the right direction, lower but directly not at zero.
Given what we know about lockdowns, we know we can drive ' R ' down very fast, but the cost of lockdown are heavy, and that is the disadvantage. One could conceive of a semi-lockdown that has lower cost and only slowly nudges ' R ', in the desired direction. This would mean rewarding customers and/or operators who do not transact at bad or busy/crowded times times or penalizing customers and/or operators who do transact at bad or busy/crowded times. This allows any activity, but we can control it to make activity occur at convenient, cheap empty times. In this way a one can conceive of a market driven, proportional lockdown used to take proportional control of the virus. It's complicated and just an idea. If full lockdown is to fierce, moderate it.
