brad465
Established Member
Regardless of whether or not the restrictions were a good idea in the long run (I firmly believe they're not good), what the whole affair has shown is any money, time and management not spent on ensuring essential services function properly will only lead to major costs of the same or worse value being incurred further down the line. In this case not spending such on the NHS to ensure it's properly funded, resourced and efficiently managed has only led to spending double its annual budget in a year, on top of its annual budget, shutting down the economy so it's "protected".I could just about tolerate lightweight restrictions over the winter, only on a time-bound basis with a specific objective in mind - for example whilst the NHS is remodelled to be able to cope with Covid as a "business as usual" virus. I'm not sure that includes autumn though.
If the vaccines turn out to be less successful in the medium term than hoped then unfortunately we just have to accept that some people are going to sadly pass away from this virus at times, part of the natural life-cycle. Naturally we should do everything possible to ensure the NHS is set up to do the best it can. Indeed it's likely to turn out to be the case that the billions spent on lockdown and measures like furlough would better have been spent equipping the NHS for this eventuality.
Another problem is the NHS has become, as some call it, a "sacred cow", which cannot be criticised in any way. What this means is that we don't tackle issues within it to make it a better service overall, because mistakes/issues are denied rather than learned, even though nothing is perfect. I strongly believe that, alongside furlough pay, compliance with restrictions exceeded our expectations because restrictions were/are about "protecting the NHS".