People will kill themselves. Simple as that.
We cannot do that, not long term. And you know what? We won't do that either, because it is against our nature.
You cannot possibly believe that people will agree to living like we are now for a virus with a <1% death rate for their age group. Look at any pandemic in history; the Black Death, the Great Plague, even Spanish Flu- and people have not changed their behaviour to adapt to them, choosing instead the path of huge deaths
I don't want to live like this forever. You can tell Will doesn't.
If you could see the mental health fall out that I do with young people in a school (who are actually bearing up far better than they have any right to be) you would recognise that not only do they not want to live in this world, but they can't and won't. They don't want to "kill granny" either. But this is no life, even under tier 2. It's alright for me as a middle age married bloke; I don't have that many friends to go and see anyway. But it's the centre of their world.
And it isn't sustainable. Whenever the students see me, they look at me like I'm the Grim Reaper. When I walk into the common room with my clipboard, it goes silent because they know I'm about to read out names and those people are stuck in a house (which may not be a great environment at all for a handful) for 14 days. I have students who are a genuine suicide risk if they were sent home like that
People work hard, and they want to be social and have a pint at the weekend or the evening. It's not my thing, but that is what people need. You can't take that away long term. We can't shackle ourselves long term to this idea of masks: they are vile and restrictive, they genuinely put people off retail and long shopping trips and they are horrendous for people certain profiles of autism. I am not autistic in the strictest sense but I hate them to the core of my being and I have to wear one every day for work.
I don't know what the answer is CP. I don't want large numbers of people to die, but I genuinely don't believe a massive cultural change in human nature is going to be possible where it wasn't for much more deadly pandemics. We certainly cannot go back to the 2 metre distancing and queuing outside of shops as standard; the economy would never be worth anything again.
I also don't think it is going to be effective; we are already living under these restrictions and even like this, we have gone straight back to where we were in March. In march no one wore masks, the idea of hand sanitising was embryonic and everything was fully open and normal. So much has "moved forward" since then but we are still right back in the same ballpark. The only thing that has worked was a 4 month lockdown.
I would agree in principal with what you said about finding a balance, but I'm not sure a balance is there to he found without it coming roaring back. Balancing economy, mental health and deaths is not easy, and the virus wins that one; as soon as we were allowed some semblance of a normal life it was straight back again.
So even if we just did that on and off, it will still come back. First wave got about 10% of the population. Each wave will just raise that. That is why I say, based on the evidence I've seen, it is going to kill who it kills at some point. We are clearly getting better at stopping it doing that, but I'm not seeing any evidence that ANY model of control is going to stop this happening, nor be enforceable on a social species long term. That's why I'm not really advocating one.
I'm more posting out of despair more than anything
