Herd immunity is not going to happen

Putting restrictions of any kind on one of the most vaccinated countries on the planet is completely unacceptable and I think people realise this.

The vaccinated population are at virtually no risk of serious illness and should be allowed to live our lives unrestricted. It's not our job to protect the health service.

It's not a cop out at all. Hardly going to sit down and come up with a big bulletpoint plan now am I? 😂 But yes I would have restricted countries that I could ban for the sake of limiting the spread. It's not pointless to try to stop 1 or 2 cases, they could be super spreaders, those 1 or 2 cases could have started a specific cluster among a vulnerable group.

The citizens were also asked at that time (after being locked down for almost 3 months) to just "do a little bit more".

And I'm far from 'stupid' and not a 'stupid person'....I said it would have been a 'gesture', that was a side note to my main point which was that restrictions on countries would have been in line with restrictions placed on us, for the same reason that we were being told, to stop the spread, stop super spreaders, "do a little more"..etc. It's not so much that it would have been a gesture, but that the lack of them doing anything said far more!!!

There will always be people in hospital for flu aswell but we don't shut the country and cripple the economy because of it.

Covid will very soon be just another illness due to vaccination. We need to start accepting that there will be serious cases and live with it.

The flaw in the that mindset is if the hospital did become overloaded (and currently there isn't a risk of that) and you go into with something unrelated to Covid, there may not be resources to treat and look after you. I guess thats why they are not so much looking at the case numbers but the hospitalizations as the critical number.

Throughout the pandemic I have landed in AandE 5 times,(children) and other than spending a week for one of the visits, Ive never been seen as quick in my whole life. NYE we were in and out within an hour and a half with a head injury. Covid seems to have removed the waiting around the hospital understandably so, and this should carry forward especially during flu season. I spent 14 hours on a trolly in AandE with my Aunt years ago, the health system is fine, the problem is the cancelling of 'non essential' services that were never cancelled before even though things were worse.

Ps, before covid we hadn't even seen the GP for years, lockdown sent the kids cuckoo apparently 🤣

It did fall down in some countries.

Yes it is a cop-out: you have a proposal (silly as it was) for India - yet nothing similar for the UK - why?

And you say you "might" stop 1 or 2 super spreader events but the issue is that you would have failed to stop thousands upon thousands of super spreader events caused by the UK - each of which causes further thousands upon thousands of cases. So again stopping 1 or 2 super spreader events is pointless if you allow thousands upon thousands. And let's not forget: how many direct flights from India are there - how many in fact fly to the UK? How many would simply have redirected their flights to the UK and then fly on from there? Or route into Belfast?

Your "Won't someone do something - I don't care if it works or not" is precisely the nonsense that brings out the worst in politicians.

"...Covid seems to have removed the waiting around the hospital understandably so, and this should carry forward especially during flu season..."

Dumb broken forum...can't quote properly.

It wasn't "silly", Is that your level of debate? just saying things are silly or referring to stupid people or randomly associating something with Trump just for the sake of it! Please stop because it's ridiculous!

The difference with the UK is that we share a border with Northern Ireland so it would not have been as simple...which I'm sure you are aware of.

I didn't say 'super spreader events' either, I said "super spreaders" as in one individual could have came over and started a cluster and that specific cluster could have been stopped but the government didn't seem to care about that! Your argument that it still spreads anyway so stopping certain things is pointless completely goes against all the phases and stages of lifting restrictions that the government have been doing.

I can go and do a fitness class but not a dance class, both socially distanced but one is allowed and the other isn't. Surely it's pointless to stop the dance classes when it could be spreading at all the gyms across the country?

Herd immunity will not happen if covid becomes as endemic and has as many diverse strains as the common cold, then we can never create and deliver enough vaccine worldwide, to target every strain. Furthermore, if immunity from post infection only lasts for a finite time and one can get reinfected with the same strain, you will also not reach herd immunity because the virus will always be multiplying in some group of people in the world and will eventually return a year or two later. But it's also possible that a new dominant strain appears that is not so harmful, like a common cold and covid become inconsequential and we live with a new family of the already large set of diseases we refer to as a cold. Noone really believes we will even vaccinate 50% of the world do they?

Of course there is one simple solution that would be the most amazing logistic achievement ever. Get all humans on earth to isolate from all others for 14 days. It's simply not possible for the vast majority though.

At least you now admit that GB & NI are "not as simple". That's a great start.

Now you need to understand that lots more people come from GB & NI than come from India.

Afterwards, we can run through the mathematics of exponential growth - so you can decide for yourself whether your previous statements were indeed silly and foolish.

Lol. The waiting time didn't just reduce because staff just decided to do it quicker. It's primarily because all non critical work had stopped allowing the staff to be available to deal with people immediately.

Once normality returns and all the other work resumes fully, the waiting times will be back.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/health/shocking-increase-in-hospital-waiting-lists-as-over-880000-wait-for-care-hospital-consultants-40295492.html

Multiple tiny A&Es and ICUs result in worse outcomes than fewer larger ones. Better consultant cover, easier to provide services for and so on.

We still have too many small hospitals.

What the smaller hospitals could be used for should also be punted to primary care centres, to reduce the numbers attending acute hospitals.

All we've done is close small hospitals and make fewer bigger ones for decades. Yet it hasn't got better.

We're spending over 2 billion to get a childrens hospital with no extra capacity.

When do you realize the plan isn't working.

@AlekSmart wrote

Right, a civil war certainly helps to put covid in perspective. Moah AK47s!