I've been following the Twitter discussion between @DAaronovitch and @JuliaHB1. Aaronovitch makes a perfectly reasonable request: if you want a policy of protecting vulnerable, what does that mean. So Twitter hivemind, here's my first stab and hopefully you can make it better.

Observation 1: Accept you can't guarantee anyone's safety with this virus. There is no perfect solution so let's not pretend otherwise. But there are things we can do.

Observation 2: the lockdown earlier this year wasn't exactly a rip-roaring success at protecting older ppl.

Principle: this should be at all times about supporting older and vulnerable people so that they can avoid risk when they want to but also go out/meet people, accepting a certain degree of risk. There's obvious stuff like food delivery, but that's much better than in March.

Stop wasting test capacity on students and schoolchildren. The top priority must be regular testing of care and hospital staff with max 24-hour turnaround.

Fund live-in staff at care homes. Oil rig workers are paid top dollar to do two weeks on, two weeks off. Let's do that. Many staff will welcome the extra cash - double time? Not all will need to do it if others are tested.

Adequate PPE is a no-brainer.

Avoid agency staff moving from home to home without breaks and tests in between.

Make meeting others outdoors at care homes as easy as possible. I'm sure most homes are already doing what they can on this front but let's not pennypinch.

Don't send any hospital patient into a home without a negative test first. There is a good reason to get older people out of hospitals - they can catch it there. But let's not make matters worse by sending infected people into homes.

Guidance on Vit D since 2016 has been older people (and more) should supplement, but it doesn't happen. It's a very cheap intervention. Evidence for it preventing many serious cases of Covid is at least as good as for masks stopping spread. That's a 'no regrets' policy.

If I'm talking rubbish, please tell me (in a constructive manner). But we should be focusing on reducing deaths, not obsessing about reducing cases.