How would you beat Coronavirus if you were in Charge?

How would you beat the Coronavirus? It can be as wacky or serious as you want. Not here to criticize, simply to discuss ideas.

My Proposal (very authoritarian but what do you think):

1) Use whatever time we have to focus and redirect all efforts on a manufacturing facility that can distribute a 2 month's supply of food to each household. Instruction on what to eat and when to eat. Redirect homeless people to shelters. Use the taxpayer's money.

2) Announce a STRICT LOCKDOWN. By this I mean if you found out on the streets, you face serious repercussions. No one is allowed to leave their house. They have all the food necessary to cope.

3) All incoming flights to the UK are to be canceled. No Air Traffic

4) As a result of no one being able to go outside, the virus loses the ability to transmit itself between households. It's the only option is to die within its respective household, and only have access to hosts of its household.

5) Civil Servants, The Army, and those policing the streets given strict PPE and tested once a day. NHS workers tested once a day. Essentially only individuals allowed to leave the household to go to work.

5) Within 2 months the virus would virtually have been eliminated. If not sooner.

6) Begin opening up a national economy once again. AKA, it's party time. The border remains completely closed until the world can get it's **** together. Only imported goods to come through.

It's very autocratic. Is it moral? That's up to your interpretation. My basic idea is that the economy cumulatively taking damage over a long ass time, why not just hit it hard, get it over within 1 - 2 months, then open back up? Rather than a possible 18-month lockdown? I'll happily take away my freedom if it shaved 16 months off of lockdown.

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Reply 1

Khanthebrit

Agreed. Had we done that I'm certain we wouldn't have seen such a high death rate.

Reply 2

username2393237

I wish I could neg your post.

Reply 3

Khanthebrit

Original post by YaliaV

I wish I could neg your post.

Sorry, you feel that way, my dude. I can see you don't agree with my idea, and that's completely fair. To be honest, it would be a harsh reality, and there's a lot of variables that go into it but it's basically an idea of issuing a temporary command economy. What would you suggest?

Reply 4

username5275792

This wouldnt work. India tried implementing a strict lockdown for 21 days and look how that went, 2 months is not feasible. Also with regards to food matter, certain household may only permit certain food, e.g. Vegan, Halal and Kosher. This would be seriously difficult to maintain, and some people may eat more than you expect, so how would you counter that? As well as that, it's seriously not good for the mental health to be stuck in doors for a week let's alone 2 months so again not feasible.

Reply 5

username4222532

No one can beat it we all have it its on the air its once in a life time event a 100 years we are been told all lies the Government of the UK know that things are worse than they are telling us more than a 100.000 people have died they dont tell the public that they are just letting the people die in hospital the UK Government have told them to just let them die as it saves them money children should not be going back to any school they should wait till next year its the same with university they should wait till next years and shops should stay closed we should not be out and about if everyone new the full truth they would all be staying at home till next year at the least all the banknotes and coins are now full of Covid-19 the whole truth needs to come out its all a cover up stay home stay safe and always wash your hands

Reply 6

Realitysreflexx

I would turn my country into South Korea quickly, i would call Taiwan...i definitely would have built out track and trace capabilities, i would have made care and nursing homes no go zones.. Required staff to live there and paid them accordingly.

I would have developed apps and tracking capability in a month, not years...or half way.....like their doing now.

Reply 7

parmezanne

Volunteer Team

I'd only make it stricter wording for the lockdown, but honestly I don't know how to criticise the government. they did what they thought was best in perspective of everything.

Reply 8

J Zonda

What's wrong with doing nothing? Continue life as normal. If the virus has to spread so be it. It's spreading anyway and if you get infected the NHS's advice is to get better on your own, if the government doesn't wanna cure it, why should we go out of our way to prevent it? Let nature do it's thing! Natural selection has helped us a lot in the past so why are we trying to stop it now? So what if a bunch of boomers have to die? They were gonna die anyway, IMO this virus is a gift from god.

Reply 9

Neilos

Not much different, unless I had a set of advisors telling me to do things differently. Though I'd have bought a massive pile of PPE rather a lot sooner than the government did. Oh, and I'd make lockdown fines the same as speeding fines (% of income).

And I'd currently be prepping like mad for November-ish, safe in the knowledge that it's highly unlikely a vaccine will appear by then, and somewhat concerned that viruses of this ilk tend to enjoy GMT a lot more than they enjoy BST.

Reply 10

Yelena Icefaren

Shield the vulnerable and maintain levels at the highest possible that is within capacity of the NHS until enough of the population are immune that it becomes endemic. We can't afford to wait for a vaccine and unfortunately sometimes biology/nature isn't entirely within our control

Reply 11

Yelena Icefaren

Ps this is from someone who semi counts as that 'vulnerable' list (immunosuppressed but not very high risk) and also a biomed student. There are limits to what we can feasibly carry out and really the only way to get out of this is to let nature run it's course, but modified to absolutely minimise deaths (infect healthy people and at a low enough rate that all those that could be saved by medical treatment are able to be)

Reply 12

Hudds999

I would stay alert and tell everyone else to stay alert.

Reply 13

JoshDarnIt_

I'd use a sledgehammer to bash it's skull in then piss on it's corpse

Reply 14

Napp

Napalm. Lots and lots of napalm.

Reply 15

gjd800

with a big stick with a nail in it

Reply 16

1st superstar

1) Jan: shut UK boarders, give the NHS and care homes good quality PPE (Hazmat suits, face visors etc) and do a track and trace system also allow anyone who got symptoms of the virus to get a test. Make face masks compulsory too.
2) mid-late Feb: Close all schools for all years (expect for Y11, Y6 and Y13?) and introduce a harsh strict lockdown (like they did in France, Spain, Italy, China etc) there will be social distancing. Do the furlough scheme, give free food to the poor, homeless and hungry (rather than to the NHS).
3) Early March: since exams were cancelled have Y11, Y13 and Y6 go home too.
4) make sure that there is a test and trace app by the 1st of April.
5) mid April ease lockdown restrictions
6) By late April make sure that all pupils have access to educational resources and electronics. Also make sure ALL schools are offering online lessons (even if it's just 1 lesson per week)
7) open up a few businesses in May and have Y10 and Y12 go back to school in June? (Idk tbh)
8) June: ease restrictions again
9) July everything but schools are open
10) September everything is open regardless

I understand the flaws in my plan but this is what I would have done?

Reply 17

anarchism101

Original post by Khanthebrit

It wouldn't be possible to produce that much durable food, all within the UK, in such a short space of time anyway, but more significantly I think you misunderstand the point of a lockdown. It is not intended to completely eliminate the virus, but to buy governments the time and breathing space they need to come up with a more long-term solution. The most obvious two solutions (which are not mutually exclusive) are:
i) Increasing your healthcare capacity - probably quite significantly - by purchasing more ventilators and beds, acquiring more hospital space, hiring more medical personnel, etc, to guarantee that when lockdown restrictions are eased, hospitals will be able to manage the increase in illness.
ii) Establishing a tracing system that can identify who does and doesn't have the virus and so co-ordinate contact accordingly.

Reply 18

Smack

Volunteer Team

Original post by anarchism101

... but more significantly I think you misunderstand the point of a lockdown. It is not intended to completely eliminate the virus, but to buy governments the time and breathing space they need to come up with a more long-term solution.

That was likely the initial purpose but we've been in lockdown too long for it to be the current one. Either they've been really slow in getting the contact tracers ready (possible), or the purpose has been changed. In all honesty I suspect it's being driven more by public opinion than anything else at the moment.

Reply 19

anarchism101

Original post by Smack

There's no "too long" to maintain the lockdown - the more time you can buy with it, the better - but you do have to accept that you can't maintain it indefinitely. Indeed, different countries will likely be able to maintain it for different lengths of time. More popular and trusted governments, and those with better-staffed police and security apparatuses, will be able to maintain lockdown for longer.