What about other groups that are at risk - say an obese diabetic black man with high blood pressure? Should he be under house arrest?
Was just going to post this. Over 70s seem to be getting used interchangeably with at risk and they're massively different groups, albeit with some overlap.
The first phase priority group for vaccination is based on who is more at risk and that's everyone over 50 plus staff working in care homes, health & social care workers, clinically extremely vulnerable and those in an increased risk group (which includes things like people with asthma, diabetes or obese). That's estimated to be over 25 million people, although there's talk of adding staff in education in as well, no idea how many that would add.
You can't lock all those people up. Even if you could what about people they live with, do you lock them up as well, if not then surely the plan falls apart? Plus how on earth would you enforce it. We can't even get to grip with who should be wearing masks, we came up with the brilliant system of asking people if they had a valid reason not to wear one and not being able to question their response.
According to NHS England from September to Jan 7th there were 55,050 under 65s admitted to hospital with covid out of a total of 152,182. That would suggest even if you did lock up all the over 70s you wouldn't be able to remove restrictions.
