How to stay out of lockdown: a personal view of the future

In this article it might be said that I am using the retrospectoscope (the most accurate and yet least valuable tool we all have) to complain about the way in which the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been handled, but that is not the case. It will focus primarily on how we should avoid making the same mistakes that have been made during the current pandemic, ready for the next one. This pandemic prediction is based on epidemics/pandemics seen over the past 19 years. Starting with SARS-CoV-1 in 2002, society has endured an epidemic/pandemic approximately every three to four years –

bird and swine influenza, Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Regardless of R numbers or percentage death to illness rates, all previous pandemics fade into obscurity next to the economic consequences of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 disease in 2020. If that miserable prediction is a real look into our future, what can we do to avoid at least some of the economic consequences, as well as help to save lives?

                In essence, we are continually being told that the measures being taken are to “save lives” and “protect the NHS”. Both objectives are laudable, noble and I can’t imagine many having any objections to either. If the lockdown is intended to reduce the numbers of patients requiring NHS beds, the economic consequences of the lockdown significantly reduces the amount of money available to the government to fund those beds and those treatments. The option being chosen to deal with this by government, as we have seen in this pandemic, is to increase borrowing to a staggering level not seen since WW2.