Reply to post: Re: One Last Push and it's Over

Re: One Last Push and it's Over

The fewer people infected the easier it is to track and trace, obviously, so the logic is to push numbers infected down hard. 'Herd immunity' is a nice concept but it's not necessarily the end point we should be aspiring to. You could make an equally cogent argument for 'eliminate' and protect your borders (New Zealand). Eventually we might hope that effective palliative treatments are developed or a vaccine is developed, - so that we can 'allow' herd immunity to build up without risking the 600,000 deaths that would result (60% of 66 million, 1.5% of infected patients die).

IANAE or, thank god a politician, but what I would do is actually go for a 10/14 day reallly really mean it lockdown. Close shops, schools, parks, no runs, no cycles, no Amazon deliveries. If you are out of your house you get tasered and then sprayed with indelible paint that marks you as a selfish idiot other people can avoid (without risking the police having to approach too close). If you have to work you camp in your workplace. Everyone stays indoors, watches trashy TV and works their way through a small proportion of all that pasta and tomato sauce they stockpiled. That should give us 2 weeks with a really really low R rate and when we come out of it we can operate an effective track and trace with more normality. Of course we should have actually done that months ago, but would have involved listening to the science meaning 'I heard what you said and I will take action', not 'I'm still listening, and will do so until you tell me what I want to hear'.