I think you need to look at the future not just now. The overall side effects of burning care now may have a higher body count than covid. Case in point if you look at the austerity policy attributed deaths as a reference.

I know someone who just got handed a guaranteed poor cancer outcome because her preventative surgery will only be done when it’s an emergency later on.

These will be easy to write off as incidental deaths and poor health outcomes which is why they aren’t prioritised as high as covid outcomes. Honestly, staff have complained about this too, but when it comes to triage do you stick a 90 year old on a ventilator or do you reserve the ICU capacity for 10 cancer patients waiting for preventative surgery with a better outcome? That’s the hard decisions being burned for political capital.

The real travesty is we have to choose and that is down to our politicians and the slow wind down of NHS funding and political tennis for the last 30 years.

If hospitals are full, then cancel paitents won't be diagnosed.

Had we locked down 2 weeks ago when SAGE said "Lock down now or else!" we'd have fewer people in hospital and more beds for preventative cancer surgery.

Sure, you could go round with a flamethrower burning anyone over the age of 70 for using precious resources just so you could have the pub open for a few more days. Is that your solution?

All of that is bad, but I don't think avoiding lockdown or other measures would help with it. The images in the media of people dying in the street outside hospitals would just lead to more social/political pressure to deprioritise those cancer patients.

Translated it’d make the politicians look bad for all those cuts.

What cuts, the NHS has an extra £350m a week as of last Friday.

(/s)

Hahaha perfect snark there :)