Firstly, this is an editorial piece, not the beliefs of the Gazette staff as a whole. Something occurred to me today.
If the powers that be do not come up with a viable vaccine pretty damn quick, will the world have to let people get back to work and accept that a lot of elderly and sick people will die?
The reason I put this forward is quite possibly my ignorance of the situation, but I just don’t understand how the world can come out of lockdown, bearing in mind the differing amounts of time in said lockdown, the varying degrees of lockdown and in some cases, no lockdown at all.
It would seem the only way this plays out is reducing restrictions to partial lockdowns with the continuation of bans on international travel. If not, surely people traveling to Spain from the UK, for example, who have not enforced the same restrictions and were late in applying any, may well re-infect the peninsula.
Again, just a question, but, on an international level, the quarantine efforts can only slow down infection and never completely wipe it out, and given the virulency of Covid-19, won’t we be back to square one just a few months after opening up?
As the title of this piece suggests, this is a genuine question as opposed to an out and out editorial comment. I truly want to know if there is anybody out there with a good knowledge of the situation that can explain how we come out of this situation without opting for a herd immunity solution and accepting the deaths of millions?
In the meantime, stay at home and follow the rules!
(News/Editorial: Ending Lock-Down Restrictions)
David, thanks for raising a very valid question. This is exactly what we should all be thinking about now and prepare ourselves for the eventual return to “normal” activities. I hope that your question will raise awareness in the minds of our leaders (global, regional, and local) how important it is to carefully manage this transition back to normal (my opinion is that it will be a different kind of normal). Instead of blaming politicians and world leaders for not having the foresight (or crystal ball), we should now urge them to apply good foresight in planning next steps, and road map for the future and the way forward. As other commenters have mentioned, in tandem with current efforts to develop a vaccine, the transition should be managed to control the spread, prevent a resurgence, and support the medical profession to do their best in increasing recovery and survival rates. I think we all have a role to play and it should be everyone’s responsibility to do their part when we do come out of this lockdown.
Valid question. The Irish health minister has said pretty much the same thing today: “In relation to the roadmap, there is going to be a point in this country where we will have to live alongside the virus, for want of a better phrase, where sadly people will still get sick and sadly some people will still die but it is at a rate that is sustainable for our doctors to manage,”. Only question is when? And that is still unknown.
The lock down was never aimed at eliminating the virus but to slow down the spread of it enough so that the hospital system could cope. The eventual relaxations of the lock down, will indeed increase the spread and infect more people. This is all part of the plan. The idea is to do it slowly so that the hospital system are not forced to let people die due to lack of equipment, staff and medicine.
Another reason for slowing it down is to let the medical staff learn the best possible way to treat it, again to increase survival rate.
But in the end, there looks to be no real way (for about a year anyway) to prevent the virus completely, so yeah. Many will die as we are forced to get society back to producing and spending.
What a world we live in.
Short of an effective vaccine,which will take years, the alternative to shut down is that everybody wears masks in public and has access to quick and easy tests ,so that infected people can isolate themselves or be isolated.
( I am not an “expert”)