I have been strongly in favour of keeping the economy open whilst keeping the virus in check. However, it is now clear that we would exceed surge capacity in the NHS (inc the Nightingales) by the first week of December. Personally, now that a lockdown is inevitable I would rather have a very short, sharp shock where we absolutely minimise any contact with people outside our household wherever possible. With the financial support of business grants and Job Retention Scheme, most people and businesses can cope with a four week shutdown as long as it can reopen as much as possible on December 2nd. What would be disastrous is lockdown followed by a half opening of the economy plus multiple circuit breakers. In short, I’d rather we all treated this as a national endeavour and ‘stopped in’ for four weeks rather than pressing for a different approach or lots of exemptions.
