Hopefully the gov will just decide its more worthwhile to infect everyone determined healthy for 2 or 3 weeks and wait for them to recover and have enforced mass immunity of we can't get a vaccine fast enough...
Scary proposition given the long recovery timelines and hospitalization needs.
I see that the vast majority of UK people still share the view of their prime minister and government that it is better to let people get infected and gain immunity, but if we look at the example of Italy where mortality is more than 8%, the UK would with even less hospital capacity with this way of defense against the virus had several million casualties.
Unfortunately for the residents of the UK, as well as those in the USA, all that is currently happening in Italy, Spain and other European countries will happen to them, but given the measures they do not take, the consequences are likely to be even more drastic.
Actually I think spreading the pandemic in the UK isn't the worst idea... A lot of car producing companies and engineering firms have stepped down their production of cars and the control circuits used in them. These companies are aiming to produce 10000 ventilators in 3 weeks paid for at cost to the government. If it takes 6 weeks (likely for engineers tbh) we may see some slight issues in healthcare being busy but a lot of medium sized corporations here like the fact that they don't have to pay health insurance for their employees so I can see some trying to allow the government to use their equipment where they can't.
We also have large shopping centres in densely populated areas that won't have many people in them which may be able to be quickly reevaluated for housing emergency wards.
The excel conference centre is the first to attempt to be transformed by the army to house 4000 people.
Somewhere like the Trafford Centre has 200 shops in 3 miles. If we say that's 500 rooms (with most shops taking up the full 2 stories) then you could comfortably fit 16 beds a shop and have space for 3600 people there also.
We have slightly more beds than Italy but we don't yet have more ventilators. The major problem with this government's recent climate is that since the records I've found (2005) hospital beds have been in a reduction and there have been quite a few hospitals closed and companies going bankrupt that were meant to take over the construction of the new ones... I mean since our government can't even arrange a Skype conference until they have to I'm not surprised...