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Pretty much what the govt are saying - restrictions can be eased slowly while the infection rate stays below 1 and those that are infected can be tracked and traced. There will be at-risk people who die but hopefully care is getting better and the numbers will stay low.
Don't think we're even close to that point yet. Best guess would be in 4-6 weeks.
Whenever it is, if the infection numbers start going back up, we'll be back into lockdown sharpish.
Pretty sure they won't do it by age or demographic or geography though. It's all or nothing IMO.I think I agree with that (except for the bit about it being what the government are saying). But everyone should be aware (as you've stated) that this will result in people dying who would not have died otherwise.
Whether demographics should be taken into consideration is a pretty tough question for a number of reasons (logistic and moral). And I get you're not saying it should or should not, but rather you think it will not. But I don't think it should be dismissed (by the government) if it could result in fewer deaths and less suffering. And that doesn't mean age necessarily (and almost certainly not 50), but thinking about pre-existing conditions makes sense.
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How would a ‘release by age’ approach work?
Seems like it would be very messy, in the same vein as ‘immunity permits’.
I think our pseudo-lockdown, compared to Italy Spain and France’s more complete lockdown makes implementing that kind of thing very difficult.
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I think I agree with that (except for the bit about it being what the government are saying). But everyone should be aware (as you've stated) that this will result in people dying who would not have died otherwise.
Staying in lockdown will result in people dying who would not have died otherwise. That has the capacity for killing far more than 1% of the population if lockdown is enforced long enough for irreversible damage to be done to the economy. One is a virus, the other is mega-austerity. One is nature, the other is a political choice.
The Government has the unenviable task of choosing what to do and, effectively, which group of people die "early". There's no solution where no-one dies unnecessarily apart from a unicorn riding up to No 10 with instructions for a perfect vaccine around its neck.
The C4 series with Dr Xand is good (episode 1 is all that has been out so far) and covers this (not the unicorn):-
Howard
Greenbank
Pretty much what the govt are saying - restrictions can be eased slowly while the infection rate stays below 1 and those that are infected can be tracked and traced. There will be at-risk people who die but hopefully care is getting better and the numbers will stay low.
Don't think we're even close to that point yet. Best guess would be in 4-6 weeks.
Whenever it is, if the infection numbers start going back up, we'll be back into lockdown sharpish.
Pretty sure they won't do it by age or demographic or geography though. It's all or nothing IMO.