Fluctuation0161
Full Member
I tend to agree. Even if we lockdown now the effects won't be seen for weeks and the doubling of cases and deaths will keep on going. Hospitals already close to capacity and no additional staff available to work in nightingale hospitals. Hell, alot of NHS staff are already having to self isolate so they are short staffed as it is. The main factor for me is not overwhelming the hospitals.There isn't a solution. We're in a pandemic. Some problems can't be solved, just managed, and a series of bad outcomes weighed up.
The problem with the virus isn't that it kills a lot of people. And it should be reiterated that it kills a shitload of people, even under the most absurd conditions. If it "only" killed 50,000 people while we've went through two lockdowns, and in between a shitload of restrictions, how many people do you honestly think it would have killed if we had just let it rip? We know, conclusively, it would have been magnitudes higher. Let's be a little ridiculous here and assume it "only" would have killed 100,000. Last year 63,000 people died from ischemic heart disease. The only thing that killed more was dementia. Covid might well kill more than either of them, despite the most insane efforts to prevent it from running out of control, and collapsing the health system.
The problem is how quickly it spreads. We already know that in two weeks' time twice as many people will be dying than they are now. If we didn't do anything at all, we would reasonably expect it to double again, and double again. These aren't theories, they've happened repeatedly across the world. There's no "option" to just open things back up and deal with it because there would be fewer doctors than people with life-threatening covid in a matter of weeks. Then things get real bad.
If critical care departments are having to decide which patient, A or B gets to use the one available ICU, as happened in the first wave then we are fecked.