Dave, we’ve been concentrating on cases and deaths throughout this discussion, but there are other aspects. CoVID-19 can cause apparently permanent damage, to lungs, other organs, and the nervous system and brain.
I don’t particularly support the UK government’s response, but the restrictions we have are better than none. There should be far more testing and there should have been intensive contact tracing, but there are probably around ten million infections in the UK by now so it’s too late for contact tracing.
A vulnerable friend of mine has received official ‘advice’, more like orders really, that he must not leave the house at all. “You may open a window” it says. Sensibly, he’s not restricting himself that severely, but he is being very careful.
It’s doubly stupid advice because his wife is a healthcare worker and is thus very likely to get infected; the family have divided the house to quarantine her between shifts. The government should have encouraged households to swap members for the duration of the crisis, into households of members of similar risk and vulnerability, but they tried to do nothing for far too long.