A quarter of economic recession won't result in even the fraction of deaths that the virus will cause. Even less so when the government provides stimulus and enacts policy to help businesses. Not even close.

For herd immunity, at least 60% of the population has to be infected (possibly even 70%+). Assuming a low mortality rate of 0.7% and infection of 60% of the population this will result in 294,000 deaths in the UK alone. Not to mention, herd immunity isn't guaranteed at all since the virus could mutate as the flu does every year.

The WHO and most of the scientific communtiy have publicly criticised our approach. This is suicide and gross negligence of the highest order. There are a myriad of countries that have shown containment is possible if harsh measures are taken.

Boris Johnson needs to get in the sea.

You simply cannot completely crash your healthcare system like that. Look at italy right now. Dead bodies are piling up in the morgues and families are not allowed to attend burials. The entire healthcare system is overwhelmed. What about the other patients that require care, besides corona? Sorry mate, hospital is full with corona patients, can't help you?

There's a reason countries resort to draconian measures, there's no other way.

Fuck markets and the morons who are only talking about this instead of people lives.

UK pooped the bed on this one

Well, Boris may be a populist clown, but he's not making decisions unadvised. There are voices, even if a minority, that don't consider it a wrong approach. Personally, I'd rather lose access to healthcare for a few months than lose my home because I've been fired from my job and can't afford to pay rent. In any case, I assume that any responsible government that is going for the yolo approach would invest heavily in healthcare, to help keep coverage as wide as possible (even if some people are unfortunately left out, temporarily).

We'll have to say how it works out... if he has the guts to not cave into social and media pressure and back track in a few weeks time (which would probably be the worst thing to do... either you go balls deep, or you don't).

The best approach is neither the Chinese nor the British one, imo... it's the Korean one. Get millions of people tested, and isolate only those that test positive or have been in recent contact with people who have tested positive. It's working well so far, and it's much less damaging to the country than completely shutting down the economy.

The big amounts of sick people were women aged 20-40 from a cult, localized.
They have done 210k tests. New clusters continue to appears.

Italian area locked 15 days ago is now reporting almond no new cases, very good, giving an idea of the next months.

uh, wait, what now? the korean approach is what you just days ago described as "overreaction". they shut down schools and took the virus seriously, focused on social distancing and testing (not 'millions of people', but a couple of hundred thousand - and to be fair, they have a bit of an 'advantage' in that regard due to their experience with MERS), and thus managed to flatten the curve significantly.
i mean, i totally agree that it's probably the best approach, but coming from someone who not even a week ago commended their government's hands-off approach this is a bit surprising. but hey, it's great to see you come around.