Thank you, an actual answer.
So, to respond...no, I don't like lockdowns or the resulting impact. I do however given my exposure to the real world of healthcare (having a large segment of my family both directy and indirect involved in it) have realistic views of the situation based on actual facts, data, and feedback from the actual "boots on the ground" type people actually living through this.
Many of the alternatives many propose are simply unrealistic, accordingly.
- Calling up retired nurses and doctors is a big assumption that they'd actually be interested in coming back. I can tell you that knowing what many know of the realities of working in an emergency critical care hospital environment right now, many will say "Thanks, but no thanks". It's not the magic bullet many think it is. And many will be out of practice as well so it presents a huge liability issue to them if they do something they haven't done in potentially 10 or more years, it goes bad, and someone dies as a result....then their comfortable retirement is potentially ruined by lawsuits from litigious trigger happy family, some of whom are in the anti-vax anti-pandemic nonsense crowd. In short, they just don't want to deal with this ********. Some will, for sure, but it wouldn't solve the problem and the system would still collapse the same way it has in places like Brazil.
- Doctors from overseas do not magically equate to doctors here the same as how a "mechanic" from the USA doesn't even come remotely close to a red-seal mechanic here in Canada. There's a lot of hoops to jump through to ensure that they are actually who they say they are and have actual training that gives them the skills they claim to have - many titled "doctors" in some countries doesn't equate to what we'd call a doctor here. That's the reason many of them aren't practicing here to begin with is because their training may not be up to our standards and it would cost them time and money to reach those standards and test to prove them. Just throwing all that caution to the wind and saying "go for it" is the equivalent of giving the controls of a 200 foot mega-yacht to some random guy from the Marina who wears captains epaulettes but secretly has no idea what he's actually doing because his "training" was lacking and he's only ever helmed a 30 foot cabin cruiser. It's likely to not end well.
- Making the vulnerable stay home is unrealistic. YOU could be vulnerable for all you know right now. The impacted age groups are changing if you care to follow the facts. By that logic 80% of the workforce would be locked inside their houses right now.
- Capacity restrictions, mask laws, wash your hands, etc etc....we've been doing that. In a perfect world where everyone follows them perfectly and maintains social distancing it's a great option. But we've all seen in the last 12 months not everyone wants to be bothered to follow those rules, and then you get things like the many situations where 100 people get exposed because a business can't be bothered to follow the rules, who then spread it to 200 more, who then spread it to 400 more, who then spread it to 800 more, who then spread it to 1600 more....etc etc etc. Exponential spread is what puts us in the situation we're in. And it's reality.
