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What's the govt's goal? Is it to flatten the curve so the NHS is not overwhelmed? If so, now we're a couple of weeks past the infections peak, it'll shortly be time to allow more spread again, to keep the flow not too far below the NHS' capacity to cope? Or is there another goal?
I'm not necessarily saying there shldn't be any other goal than flattening the curve, but if there is shldn't we be told what that other goal is to see if we agree with it?
Part of the reason I keep asking what the goal is is that things the govt says make me suspicious it sees the goal as returning to containment - getting numbers down so low that individual cases can be identified & isolated. I don't think I agree with that goal at all, one bit.
It seems to me that if we could get out of this with only 60k excess deaths this year & another 60k excess deaths next year, with GDP declining no more than 15% & no more than two 1-mth lockdowns, that shld be considered a triumph.
Aiming for less than that risks being so greedy on the deaths reduction side that we disproportionately damage people's lives.
If there are 60k excess deaths this year that'll mean abt 610k deaths instead of 550k. That's bad. It's certainly not trivial & it's not like the flu. But does it justify totally overturning 66.4m people's lives for years?
& no, I don't mainly mean "the economy". I mainly mean: no choirs, sports, theatre, pubs, weddings, holding grandad's hand as he dies from cancer, seeing your daughter go on her 1st date, dancing in a nightclub til dawn, screaming yourself hoarse in a crowd when your team scores.
The above things are not worthless, & those that value them are not "heartless folk valuing money over lives".
