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@ffm and your posts all seem to miss the fact that quite a number of the deaths are not of very old people, or people with significant underlying health conditions.
A big risk area is men over 60. They may be slightly overweight, a bit out of shape and perhaps are or were smokers, but they could well die from this disease, or have it so bad that they never recover similar lung function. They could previously have happily lived another 20 years. You happy to open things up so all these people are at significantly increased risk of getting it? Plenty younger than 60 have also died, many with no significant health conditions (i.e. about to die anyway).
Also, letting it sweep though the population will overwhelm the hospitals - you content for all the doctors, nurses, paramedics and care home workers to deal with that?
I don't think it's as clear cut as you think it is in terms of who is dying from this disease.
Scrabble-
@ffm and your posts all seem to miss the fact that quite a number of the deaths are not of very old people, or people with significant underlying health conditions.
We're learning about this all the time, and of course deaths aren't limited to the over-70s, but my impression is that the vast majority of deaths still fall in that demographic.
You happy to open things up so all these people are at significantly increased risk of getting it?
Of course I'm not happy. Nobody is happy in this situation, because all the decisions in this situation are shit, but that doesn't mean that we should always default to minimising the short-term pain, without considering the long-term implications. It's not less valid to ask whether you're happy to damage the long-term wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of children. We've entered lockdown and it feels like people expect that there will be some sort of eureka moment when somehow this all gets sorted and we can go back to life as normal; however, while we're waiting for that to happen we may quietly pass the point where the negative effects of the lockdown surpass the positives.
Also, letting it sweep though the population will overwhelm the hospitals - you content for all the doctors, nurses, paramedics and care home workers to deal with that?
This is also important. In addition, the problem of the NHS not being able to treat non-Covid patients has to be factored in.
ffm
The problem is we as a society place too much importance on 'life' rather than 'quality of life'. There has been too much focus on preventing short term deaths rather than a long term view of what the post Covid-19 world is going to look like as a result of the measures we've put in place to contain things.
I realise it's not a popular view and losing loved ones is hard but many people who have died will have welcomed death and I know many of my parents elderly friends stuck in care homes who have openly said they wish they'd catch it so it could finish them off. My Grandma always told us 'never leave it too late to die', she always regretted the fact she ended up in a care home. Maybe we'll finally start to have open discussions about euthanasia after this is all over.