Well they’re doing it in Victoria – isolating outbreaks and dealing with them as ‘hotspots’ while letting the rest of the State return to normal and – what’s most important – full, effective, potent functioning.
The thing is, always was, the lockdown tactic crippled the State ostensibly in order to protect it.
Easily seen, or more easily seen, perhaps, by thinking of it as a miitary attack by paratroopers.
To make the analogy more exact perhaps paratroopers armed with insidious anti government propaganda so’s you’re not just frightened of the paratroopers but you’re frightened of them spreading their creed, undermining your nation, your government that way.
That’s the sort of thing places like China and North Korea are frightened of so it’s quite realistic really.
So imagine it; there they are, parachuting in here and there, destroying and spreading their infectious creed. What’s the Army going to do? How is the Army going to deal with it?
By ordering everyone in the nation to stand still, stay in place, don’t move – most important – don’t work ! ? By bringing the nation to a standstill. By destroying businesses by the thousand. By destroying gainful employment, jobs, by the thousands and diminishing the nation’s available wealth?
Nonsense. Total nonsense. The Army would do nothing like that. Quite the opposite it would want the nation going into top gear, working and interacting as never before.
And it would isolate outbreaks and ‘ring fence’ them just as Victoria is doing now.
And outside of that fence there’d be intense scurrying activity as when a thousand ants congregate around a morsel on the ground or as white blood cells congregate around infection.
Activity would increase everywhere.
And the activity would penetrate the ring fenced areas of infection and bring to bear all appropriate measure to fight back and control the situation.
Such as: to drop the analogy and get to the point – isolating and protecting the elderly and infirm. Which action by itself would reduce the expected mortality rate by 80% (given that they’re not isolated and grouped together with the infection in their midst. Surely that doesn’t need saying? But it does. That is exactly what they did in New York and other places – virtually deliberately infected closely packed groups of highly susceptible individuals. No. Don’t do that. )
And therefore – reduce by 80% – that’s a major and most important step. But I hear no mention of it after an hour or so of listening and watching coverage (which is incessant) of the Victorian actions.
The corollary of the 80% reduction, of course, is that the threat to the rest is much reduced and that’s a great psychological benefit and practical benefit in consideration of physical measures that ought to be taken.