On the other hand, if it works the payoff will be quite significant in terms of impact to the economy compared to the rest of the world.
The future benefit being get the state out of medicine.
I don’t subscribe to this view at all but having read Rees-Mogg’s daddy’s book, the Soverign Individual i will happily stake my house on the above being very close to the victorian geezer’s view on this.
AFAIK viruses tend to mutate to be less lethal because killing the host is bad for reproduction.
random source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
>This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out
The ideal evolutionary strategy is to produce excess bodily fluids from sweating, coughing and sneezing, while not making people so sick that they lay down and stay home, let alone die.
Viruses don’t get bonus points for being lethal, unlike certain video games.
It is like seeing an experiment playing out at a societal scale. We are all looking at it from a personal level, but successful societies have always been built on sacrifices of various kinds - their costs or others (colonization)
All advanced societies are built on the exploitation of someone else, you just did not get to see who those people were.
Note: I am not endorsing the choice - just observing.
This stuff always involves complicated choices.
For example, would you advocate a policy of taxing all restaurant owners at a 90% marginal rate forcing most into bankruptcy to pay for a very expensive new medical treatment that only works on the elderly and extends their life just a few years?
If you proposed that do you think it would be unanimous or controversial?
Do you believe that, in normal circumstances, we should repurpose all money typically spent on primary education and firefighting to go to elder care instead?
If you weren’t arguing for that last year then you believe in complicated trade-offs too.
The concept of trade-offs is the absolute core basis of all major public policy decisions.
It’s also the basic of many personal decisions. If you’re familiar with hospice care or a DNR order then you know that end of life questions have trade-off calculations as well, even within families or between life partners.
Pretending this is a binary decision is just nonsensical.
In rereading your post carefully, the answer is yes. You did describe it that way and offer a reason to think it’s not so bad. Doing so is shameful.
Marines say "no one left behind", for a reason, because it creates a group... A society.
The UK decision smells like eugenics.
Hell, the young and healthy can go skydiving 100 times and have less chance of dying vs coronavirus.
Nevermind the not dying part. Over 50% of ICU spots in France and the Netherlands for coronavirus are taken up by people under 60. Pneumonia this severe can cause permanent lung damage.
*some of you will die even without the virus, more of you will die than normal because of it, this is awful, but true.
UK seems to be playing a very dangerous game.
The higher death rates have occurred in places where the health system was overrun.
Of course with the current trajectory the UK health system will be over run.
Claiming you can isolate at risk groups well enough while the whole country is going about its business is just putting your fingers in your ears and going lalalalala.