Screens and masks are not economically damaging, closing things is.
Screens and masks used on the scale we have seen over the last eighteen months also have a huge economic cost (and an environmental cost in the case of single use plastic masks - although nobody seems to care about that). Billions have been spent on “PPE” alone. This cost is not on the scale of full lockdowns admittedly, but still something we cannot ignore.
Jacinda Adern's policy has proved to be the right one for her country (assuming they deal with the current outbreak) She has never said it is the long term policy, vaccination is.
I think it’s a little early to conclude that. If vaccination is their exit strategy then they’ve made a pretty poor job of things. Their strategy was really just: “shut ourselves off for the world until someone else develops a vaccine (and then do a poor job of getting the jab into peoples’ arms)”.
Its a bit difficult, we don't know how things are going to pan out this winter, cases are about to massively rise with the return to school in England. Quite what that will do to hospital admissions in a couple of months time remains to be seen. The virus might now reach some sort of natural peak before Christmas, or it might not.
I appreciate you’ve said you do want to back to normal, but exactly do you think we should be waiting for? We knew cases would rise when we came out of restrictions, and we know they will rise further going into winter.
The majority of population is double jabbed; you’re never going to get a situation where 100% of the population is vaccinated. That state of affairs will exist next year, and every year onwards.
So arguing as you did before that restrictions should continue until spring is surely an argument for restrictions every winter?? That’s hardly getting back to normal.
Surely at this stage the NHS needs to build capacity to deal with seasonal Covid cases (as with flu cases). Do you agree it is lunacy to shut our economy and way of life down in order to “protect the NHS”, when it’s meant to be there to serve us!