I think herd immunity is an integral part of the strategy. If a population never gets herd immunity, it will keep on getting infection breakouts and keep on having to impose lockdowns. The only way to stop doing lockdowns is either to prevent the ingress of the virus, ever, or eventually reach herd immunity.
The virus is everywhere now, it’s part of the landscape, so preventing breakouts is just flat out not possible, at least for large countries with lots of travel and especially with large rural hinterlands like the UK. In this view the only strategies are long term strategies.
There is a way to get herd immunity without an epidemic, and that’s inoculations. However we do not have a vaccine yet and have no idea if or when we might ever get one. So you can bet everything on red 13 and cross your fingers for a vaccine in 6 months, or pick which longer term strategy works best for your country, with its particular demographics and geography.
Because it isn’t possible to screen every single person entering a country like the UK, which means it is inevitable the virus will get in again and you’ll have another outbreak.
However that’s assuming you can eradicate it. That might be possible in an isolated population centre like Singapore, but the UK has an extensive rural area where the virus can hide out, slowly propagating through many different sparse populations until it gets back into an urban centre. It can survive outside the body on some surfaces for 9 days according to recent studies so it can infect someone who has light symptoms, they put it on a new surface, then when they recover up to 9 days later it can up again in someone else. This can go on for months. You might track down some of these smouldering brush fires, but not all. That’s how flu keeps coming back every winter.
> Because it isn’t possible to screen every single person entering a country like the UK
Why not? Personally, if I were put before the choice of not having more people enter my country than I can screen or killing off 1M+ of my electorate, I'd at least seriously consider the first option. Meanwhile the UK government clearly thought that even stopping the flow of people from an epi-center, fleeing quarantine (or at least tracking them) would be a grave over-reaction.
> You might track down some of these smouldering brush fires, but not all
I don't see why you can't keep it reasonably contained even with occasional flare ups. I'm not saying you are wrong, but it is certainly not self evident. Since the Chinese were willing to kiss good bye to something in the vicinity of $1T, presumably they think they can. If you keep perfecting testing and procedures and hold out till you've got a vaccine, I don't see that would not be a winning strategy.
> That’s how flu keeps coming back every winter.
Well, this is way worse than the flu and may get worse still, so we should be very motivated to kill it whilst we can. Also, looks like there'll be more where this one came from. Just taking a big hit to global life expectancy every few years will probably start to add up over the long run.
>> Because it isn’t possible to screen every single person entering a country like the UK
>Why not?
In addition to major airports we also have many minor ones and private airfields. There are 120 commercial ports, and many, many more smaller docks, quays and marinas. We have many islands and remote coastal communities that rely on these for essential supplies and no systematic way to monitor them all. Even then, sealing ourselves completely would have to include stopping goods because goods are carried by people.
Also we now know the virus can survive on cardboard for up to 9 days. We don't have 9 days worth of supplies of everything in the country and don'y have a tracking system for every shipment in or out. We know from the Brexit analysis that we can't track goods enough to tax them, so clearly we can't do the same for medical reasons.
Finally, even if such a lockdown were practically feasible and we developed the logistical and administrative capacity to do it overnight, which we can't, it would destroy our economy. That would inflict massive hardship, particularly on the old and vulnerable, exactly the people we most need to protect. Hardship and poverty kills people, and shutting down all trade and commerce until we have a vaccine, which could be several years or even indefinitely, would take us back to the stone age. It would be far, far worse even than during World War 2, and that's how severe it would have to be to prevent the virus getting in, not just for months but probably for one or more years.
Anyway thats a fantasy, we just don't have the logistical or administrative apparatus to do it fast enough for it to matter.
The virus is everywhere now, it’s part of the landscape, so preventing breakouts is just flat out not possible, at least for large countries with lots of travel and especially with large rural hinterlands like the UK. In this view the only strategies are long term strategies.
There is a way to get herd immunity without an epidemic, and that’s inoculations. However we do not have a vaccine yet and have no idea if or when we might ever get one. So you can bet everything on red 13 and cross your fingers for a vaccine in 6 months, or pick which longer term strategy works best for your country, with its particular demographics and geography.