Well... yeah. As agreed by many governments across the world.cdd wrote: ↑Mon 21 Dec, 2020 18.53I agree that preventing the NHS from being overwhelmed - and forced to prioritise who to treat - is important. Your view however appears to be that it is infinitely important.If the rules are relaxed somewhat the cases will go up and the hospital admissions increase. That's what we saw this year in the UK and we had to go into a second lockdown because of it. If we don't go into additional lockdowns the NHS reaches breaking point. So where do those patients go? Yes Nightingale Hospitals are on standby but they must be staffed by doctors and nurses from the existing hospitals so all you're getting is extra beds and even more stretched treatment.
Accordingly your view appears to be that any measure that can be taken to prevent that outcome, no matter how dramatic, must be taken. Even if it means people losing businesses they’ve spent their lives building, millions becoming unemployed, poverty increasing, education of young people being disrupted, people becoming less healthy through sitting on the sofa, large increases in young suicides, the loss of heretofore unquestionable civil freedoms and a massive deficit that will constrain future spending and degrade the quality of future public services. And it doesn’t matter how bad any of these problems become, as long as we don’t overwhelm the NHS right now. Do I understand your position correctly?
Much of these problems, or equivalent problems, are going to happen lockdown or not. A functioning economy needs a functioning health service, a crippled NHS would be extremely damaging for the economy. Millions going without treatments or diagnoses for other illnesses would cost the NHS billions for years to come. The additional impact of staff shortages and illnesses on business would be huge.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest that lockdowns ultimately have less of an impact on the medium and long-term economic situation than not locking down. Interestingly Sweden's economy has declined as much as the other Nordic countries which did impose lockdowns and had far fewer deaths. This is worth a read, social distancing also has a huge impact on the economy, the quicker lockdowns can ease the spread ahead of the vaccine being rolled out on mass, the quicker social distancing can end. Having no lockdowns with social distancing means the virus spreads more which slows the mass immunity from the vaccine down which has more of an impact on the economy:
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publi ... h/ch2.ashx
I don't deny that there are awful and lasting consequences of lockdowns but there are just as many from not locking down. At least this way more lives can be saved.