1. The UK government's justification for non-intervention against COVID-19 is to point to other countries and say "when they lift the lockdown, the virus will just bounce back. They have no plan."
2. But the plan in China, Taiwan, Singapore etc has always been clear: use lockdown to delay the spread long enough to acquire sufficient PPE, produce respirators, expand ICU capacity, develop effective treatments and, hopefully, a vaccine. It buys us time to prepare.
3. The UK is doing none of this. Public health experts are clear that the UK strategy is going to overwhelm the NHS. Medics are unprotected. Intensive care units will soon overflow. Tens of thousands will die needlessly.
4. As Lancet editor Richard Horton has put it, "The government is playing roulette with the public." But it's not roulette with the public *as such*: the gun is pointed at the poor, the vulnerable, the elderly, and frontline workers. It is a travesty of the ethical imagination.
