This captures the strain of thought on the right that you have to reverse measures that were put in place to control the spread of the virus come what may and make it look like they are no longer needed.
The contribution of schools [and mostly asymptomatic kids in particular] seems to be one of the least understood parts of the puzzle. And where the distributional affects of the crisis are most acute: poor kids education, vs largely older, shortened lives.
But the process driving the virus is not really much different now from the point at which we went in. So dialling up schools and everything else won't save the govt if it simply reverses the fall in the caseload.
There may be opinion poll support for ending the lockdown but if this does lead to a substantial further rise in the deathtoll opinion is unlikely to look on that favourably, so even on purely cynical terms, it would be a bold step to listen to Allister's warning.
Ironically, there is, buried in the denialist thinking of Allister and others on the right, a kind of truth. If this strain of thought is strong enough to mean that we could never suppress the virus well enough to a point where test/trace can take over from a lockdown....
Then it might indeed be better to throw in the towel [except in so far as to protect ICU capacity]. It's conceivable that no suppression / no lockdown leaves us better off than a lockdown that ultimately leads to no suppression anyway.
Allister could then rewrite his material thus 'because of people like me the lockdown ultimately will fail anyway, so you may as well give up now.'
Several replies [reminds me of pseudonymous Swedish twitter person] 'But damage to kids!' There for sure is harm and highly regressively inflicted, on kids, from school closures.
But, absent some other measure to retard contacts, or new evidence that school closures are ineffective... further reopening... boosts contact and infection rates! Postponing the point at which test/trace can take over, or perhaps meaning it never can.
What would be great is a table of 'exchange rates'; how much each activity [schools opening, pubs opening] increases contacts [and ultimately kills]; published alongside national map of test/trace capacity to suppress infections.
We could then assess the benefit of each relaxation, and work out what we can 'afford' in our budget of notional, countefactually increased contact rates, given our test trace capacity, and what we should 'spend' it on.
If one restricted freedom of movement further, it may be that in some areas with well resourced and effective local authorities' test and trace, you could 'afford' to resume more activities than in other areas, yet leaving contact rates the same.
