The government and media have scared people half to death and given them the idea that a vaccine will solve this......the 'stay at home' message has been a disaster...The using of Police to intimate people using their gardens...totally mad.

The media, in particular, are very very responsible for doubling up the fear and celebrities were used to amplify the message.

I still can't believe that we had people being called idiots for being outside and sitting in the park!. I honestly think some of us have watched way too many movies....and I'm the prepper on here.....I'm the one who thinks you need a permanent month's supply!

This thread has been dominated by those supporting the idea of full lockdown, despite the resultant mess and widespread misery and death that is going to cause. I believe that time will show that these decisions achieved little and that government folded on herd immunity when the reality was it was the only show in town.

I back humanity to eventually create a vaccine for a coronavirus......but it has to be said, it has never been achieved before.

H1N1 which caused the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions is still around and is regarded as seasonal flu. The Hong Kong flu of 69 (H3N2) which killed over a million worldwide is still around and is part of seasonal flu. There are no vaccines only treatments. They exist mainly, but not always, as their weaker strains because obviously lethal versions kill the host quicker and so gradually die out quicker....whereas the virus that doesn't kill the host and survives within the host and continues on without successfully attacking the host. Many people don't realise that most of us have been walking around with viruses inside us most of our lives and our immune system is constantly evolving.

People who think that they can sit inside until there is a vaccine need to realise how unlikely that is anytime soon and that only herd immunity reduces their risks of catching flu or viruses.....that and time ending with only weaker versions remaining and with a very infectious strain like this.....I'd imagine that would take a longer time than usual.

I had to read this twice just be sure.

Stirling I agree every word!

The job of politicians is to remain in power. They fear the backlash of body bags even though most of the deaths are not additional but will have died this year anyway.

The job of civil servants is allocation of scarce resources. Lockdown serves one practical purpose. To prevent the health service being overrun. The civil service have led lockdown to fulfill their function of preventing resource overload.

In combination they have destroyed the economy and arrested the natural processes leading to herd immunity

Edited by Stirlingsays (14 May 2020 2.24pm)

Would love to know just how many deaths you ‘herd immunity’ disciples would have been fine with.

I have supported, and continue to support, the government's handling of this crisis. Of course in a world where we all know everything, all the time, and "hindsight" wasn't in the dictionary, no mistakes would have been made. Eyes wouldn't have been on the 31st Jan Brexit deadline and we would have had enough PPE to last for a few years in stock. Life though isn't like that.

Those arguing that the lockdown has caused more problems than it solves seem to me to be ignoring some basic facts.

Very little was known about this virus at the start, and although we know more now it seems there is still more we don't know than we do. For instance, I heard yesterday that it seems that a significant proportion of those requiring respiration are suffering kidney failure. Initially, that was thought to be as a consequence of dehydration but pms have shown that the kidneys are full of virus, presumably because the receptors they use are present in the kidneys in large numbers. Those suffering kidney failure are dialysed and the machines are clogging up quickly because of the way a patient's blood is thickening. They don't know why yet. There is just so much they are still finding out about how the virus attacks us.

It's known that the transmission rate is about 3 times greater than flu so if it were just left to spread and ultimately create the herd immunity that some want asap, and will eventually be the case, the numbers falling ill would have quickly overwhelmed the NHS.

So we took the drastic steps we did because we had no other realistic choice that would have been acceptable to most people. We bought ourselves some time to learn and get those things in place that needed to be organised. We "flattened the peak". What we did was replicated, with various changes of emphasis, all around the world, depending on the local circumstances.

Those who argue that only the elderly and vulnerable should have been expected to isolate miss another fundamental point. Whilst the younger you are the less impact catching the virus seems to have, that doesn't mean you cannot catch and transmit it. Indeed that makes them more dangerous carriers as they may show no, or only mild, unrecognised, symptoms.

Why does that matter? Keeping the schools open for instance, means that the children of medical and care workers would be mixing with everyone else's children. Everyone else, who were still working and unable to socially distance, would have been under greater exposure and infected more of their children. Who would, in turn, infect the children of the medical and care workers and then those workers themselves. It's a circle that cannot be squared.

Without adequate supplies of PPE, especially in care homes and domiciliary care, the impact can only be imagined. It's been pretty bad as it is, and that's when we have kept the schools closed except for the children of key workers so that with lower numbers a better degree of social distancing can be managed.

Locking down hard as we did, and now gradually easing back, as people get adapted to the situation, makes perfect sense in terms of risk management. Everyone knows that the economic hit is going to be hard and not easy to recover from very quickly, but some of the demand will still be there and available as the brakes come off.

Not to have done so, and just allowed the virus to run its course, could have resulted in creating a very much worse situation. Both in terms of the death rate, and the social impact. That could very easily have also caused an even greater economic disaster than we now face. That was just too big a risk to take when we knew so little at the time we needed to take it. Knowing what we do now proves to me that it was unquestionably the right decision, even with the benefit of hindsight.

The answer, unless, until and even when, we get a working vaccine, must be testing. Regularly, for everybody in contact in some way with the vulnerable. And that, I guess, is most of us.

But as previously stated the flu vaccine is only between 40 and 60% effective and there have been years of research into that.

I agree with what you’ve said apart from your cycle of infection of children of care workers and nhs staff, which is still a risk as you put it, unless you’re saying because the NHS isn’t overcome that it now isn’t a problem.

People want zero risk until a vaccine. I’ve just heard the record for a vaccine is 4 years, and there’s been no discovered vaccine for any Coronavirus yet.