Kim – “Their ‘flatten the curve’ plan still assumes 80% or more of the population will catch the virus – it just spreads the ‘peak’ out over a longer period, […] in a number of smaller peaks instead of one big one.””
The policy is madness even by the Conservative party’s own values; this will damage the economy far worse than proper containment because it will protract the problem.
The five-week plan suggested here would impact the economy in almost exactly the same way as the UK “lockdown” did – except it would have been two weeks shorter. The only way to arrest each climb will be to reimpose the stay-at-home order, so the economy will suffer repeated six to seven week periods of restriction rather than one shorter one.