Seriousness and fatality rates go up with age with any disease from flu to cancer. It is an ineluctable fact. There is nothing remarkable about COVID doing the same.
Medical knowledge has come on in leaps and bounds in dealing with this disease, which probably didn't exist a year ago and the chances of a quick recovery and few longterm problems are much higher for all ages.
How many of us would leave the house if we really knew the exact probability of us being injured in road accident, of tripping over something in the street, not to mention all the coughs, colds, flus and other diseases that can be caught.
For the health and wellbeing of everyone, it is necessary that the economy recovers as soon as possible, people return to work or can get new jobs and that means we need to develop a rational reaction to risk, or are we to become a third world country over-burdened by debt and with a collapsed economy, where the economic migrants will be British citizens escaping this country for opportunities elsewhere.
I am not suggesting a reduction in precautions when out. I have worn both mask and gloves when out, from the start of the pandemic in March, I socially distance and take every care, but at the same time, I appreciate people's concerns when members of their family are very vulnerable, but those same vulnerable people were equally vulnerable to flu and many other conditions before COVID. Were you taking the same precautions then?
I do not know anybody who has had COVID but my sister was killed in a road accident, my daughter seriously injured and left with a residual disability following a road accident, a whole family close to my DiL were also killed in a road accident. I have friends and contacts who sometime in their lives have been in traffic accidents that led to serious injury yet we all still get into cars as passengers and drivers and travel thousands of miles every year.
We need to take care, but our longtime well being requires us to come out from behind our barriers and move forward, socially distanced, of course.