Anyone agree with Lord Sumption?

There is some truth in what he says I think. Are we causing more problems by protecting one group of people at the expense of everything else. I think this was true initially when it was thought older people were mainly at risk but that has changed now.
As chestnut said this is a work wide problem.

It is not just vulnerable people who are now being asked not to spread the virus, everyone is asked to stay away from others - The logic is perfectly clear - left to its own devices with normal contact being continued, the sheer number of people going down with it would be just too many.

Do the sums - the numbers double every three days or so, even with restrictions in place. Without restrictions? Maybe more. Suppose double each day - not unreasonable to imagine that each infected person could meet two people a day and give it to them.

A chart circulating a few days ago showed the possibilities of different patterns of infection from one case - from unlimited contact, from halving contacts, and from quartering contacts. This from ONE INFECTIOUS CASE

--------------- - -after 5 days --- after 30 days
no limit to contacts ------2,5 ------ 406
halved contact ------------1.25 ------ 15
quartered contacts -- 0.625 ---- 0.25

Multiple that by the numbers who would be walking around with the infction and spreading it. Would it REALLY be a good idea to have the whole global poulation infected at the same time? How many would die of neglect in the months that would be happening?

Those strike-throughs should not have been there - I was trying to space the figures with dashes.

And the decimal point in 2.5 miraculously moved to make it .25. I wish it could be as easily done in real life!

actually i think he has a point. has anyone noticed what lovely sunny days we are having without some many fumes /smoke/chemicals in the air .co-incidence i think not.the bit below that i cut from a newspaper i think is right .its from a reporter in a newspaper...let me know what you think....

There is no need for hysteria, just common sense and paying attention to informed advice. That is NOT the same thing as allowing the pandemic to follow its course withut taking precautions.

The picture of the cutting is too small for me to read properly, but I get the impresion that the reporter thinks having hospitals to treat those badly affected by the virus is a waste of money and effort; we should be protecting the economy instead, and letting them get on with it and die. That is, that wasting people doesn't matter.

Question - What is the economy for ?
Answer - The people of the nation.

Question - What is the nation?
Answer - The people.

Question - How many of "the people" can you allow to die before your nation disintegrates in disillusioned anarchism?
Answer - How long is a piece of string? You only find out when you measure it.

Question - Why did we fight to defeat Nazism, which set the value of human life at zero (particularly that of the vulnerable and non-productive who were cluttering up the gene pool)
Answer - Well, it certainly wasn't so that we could passively cleanse the gene pool (or society) of the vulnerable and no longer productive by failing to provide them with medical care.

On 27 March, I worked out how many deaths there would be if the rate doubled every three days as expected.

In 30 days (ie on 26 April) there would 771,216 deaths. Is that really what people want? Chances are quite a few of those people would be GNers!

Until the effects of the so-called lockdown started to have an effect, the UK was certainly heading for that figure.

There seems to be a "nudge" by right-wing libertarians and supporters of eugenics to let nature take its course. For them, it's political and ideological. I agree with you Elegran. The economy/society isn't just one big competition. It's about a system which serves the interests of as many people as possible.

growstuff, it is unlikely that that the death rate will continue to double at that rate. Even the Italian and Spanish have seen the figures slow down recently.

If we follow your logic and contine the three day doubling of deaths by the end of May everyone in the country would be dead and that would resolve the problem. Perhaps we could just relax and let it happen. We would then have totally defeated the virus and it would no longer be present in the country.

Elegran - medical care IS being provided in the UK unlike some countries where the corona bodies are left in the street and there are too many to clear. The BBC doesn't report on what is going on worldwide. We should be very thankful we live in a country that provides such fantastic healthcare.
A bigger problem would be the worldwide economy going into a depression. Then you would really have something to moan about, millions of people on the breadline with no work and no food.

My daughter was listening to a radio program last week, where they were talking about this very thing. The upshot was, that my grandchildren’s grandchildren may not see the debts paid off, and the world back to the “ normal” we knew, in their lifetime. These are just livelihoods. This is before you start thinking about the number of deaths that could occur well before that, due to mental health, missed surgeries, cancer treatments, that could go on for years as we try to rebuild finances. I think it’s hard, and would have been for anyone.

I agree. People keep talking about lives but economic depression costs lives. A balance has to be struck

Also there is a worry that more people will die from missed treatments from not CV diseases, than of CV because of all resources focused on CV

Chestnut Lord Sumption (and others) are suggesting a "Faustian bargain" with the virus, of not protecting people and preventing the rapid spread of infection. The likely result of doing that would be a vast increase within a short time in the number of those who catch it, with a concomitant increase in the number who require ICU. We would soon reach a point where decisions would have to be made about who lives and who dies.

That is when medical care would be withheld from those who were not a good element of the gene pool, who were no longer contributing to the economy or to society.

Toadinthehole Our generation had to pay for WW2, even though, the oldest of us were only young children and most not even born.

The next generation will be in exactly the same position we were for most of our adult lives. I believe that Gordon Brown paid off the final debts acruing from the last war.

If it's the man I started watching on a link on another forum that said the country was suffering from mass hysteria I stopped watching it at that point. Which was about 30 seconds from the start...
Laibak, yes
He can be as relaxed as he likes of course

It was in the Spectator a week ago.

None of the strategies are about preventing deaths.

Its all about managing how many people need ITU at once

A flattened curve is an elongated curve. It does not mean less people die. It just spreads them out

Lockdown was necessary to allow ITUs to catch up and stock up. Its not a viable long term plan. Long term it would cause extra deaths through decades of austerity

Or, perhap, the only people in that position who would receive life-extending medical care would be those who could afford to buy their own equipment and pay their own medical staff. Survival of the wealthiest. Would that be survival of those best fitted to reversing a global depression, or those best fitted to make certain that they themselves stayed comfortable?

How can we predict who will save the world and who will save themselves? What if we got Trump clones?

That was an extension of my previous post, not a reply to notanan

MOnica The French and Italian slowdowns followed after lockdowns, as ours probably will. The Imperial College report claimed that there would almost certainly be 500,000 deaths without some intervention and that figure is quoted elsewhere too. The reason it would slow down at 500,000 would be because 50 million people would have been infected and herd immunity would have been achieved. It really isn't scare mongering. Work it out for yourself.

Chestnut There is absolutely no doubt there will be a worldwide depression.

We do not have private ITUs in the UK all ITU beds are nationalised private patients in with nhs patients. Total myth that the rich get better car when it comes to critical illness

(There ARE some units that call themselves private ITUs but they cannot do high acuity, they are more like fancy recoveries/HDUs. If you need ITU doesnt matter who you are here, its all the same!)

I don't think anyone was suggesting lockdown as a long-term strategy. It was for delaying and spreading the use of life-saving equipment. If it had not been applied, many of us would now be dead who are still alive. We may still succumb, but our chances of surviving are better.