Over the past 10 weeks, we have seen countless mixed-messages by the UK gov on how we will resolve the ongoing pandemic through staying indoors and only leaving our houses for ‘essential’ reasons.
We have also heard from other countries on how they have tackled the same issues we are facing (it is exactly the same virus) and how they are now able to begin resumption of some semblence of normal life. So should we stay quarrantined or should we not?
Obviously, the early graphs released show that there was an exponential growth of cases admitted to hospitals and this led to the ‘flattening the curve’ quarrantining strategy being implemented.
However, we have since been told that the virus is only really a danger to people with pre-existing morbidities (underlying health conditions) or those who have already celebrated their 60th birthday. Looking at the below population pyramid for Nottingham, we can clearly see that the majority of our residence are not in that age group (Source: https://www.nottinghaminsight.org.uk/)
https://www.facebook.com/lee.mainprize/videos/10157498647593507
So the evidence is suggesting then that the majority of us will be relatively unaffected, should we contract the virus. So should we be looking to only safeguard those with morbidities or over a certain age instead of a blanket lockdown?
The answer to that may be more apparent considering the rising tide of discontent for lockdown measures resulting in more people disregarding them (‘Hey if the guy running the country can do what he wants – so can we!’)
Editorial:
If I were running the response for Nottingham from tomorrow; I would make the quarrantine optional for under 50s. I would enforce testing for all ‘key-workers’ (not just NHS/Carers) as essentially they are all out in the public domain and could be infecting hundreds of people daily. Secondly, I would release the numbers of hospitalisations based on locality; so for example, if we know there has been a high hospitalisation count for the Colwick area, it could be a trigger for that area to be ring-fenced from visitors (see how many people are on Colwick Park currently!!). However, if we know that there have been no hospitalisations in The Meadows, then we could allow the children to go out and enjoy the parks there relatively freely as the risk will be lower. At the moment, we are basically relying on the National strategy to be a magic-wand over every locality and it just won’t work!
In conclusion, we are approaching another heatwave and subsequent barrage of complaints about too much people-mixing in public. If we see another spike in cases – we will know that it is probably too soon to abandon all advice, but if we don’t then I believe we should free the under 50s to enjoy their lives again and reignite our economy.