Please look carefully at the above statistics and take them in. They are from the United Kingdom. The average age of death of the 55,000 people who have died there from COVID-19 is 82.4 years old. As of January this year, the average life expectancy in the United Kingdom was 81.2 years.

The United States is not far off these numbers, with an average age of death from COVID around 80. What does this tell you? That COVID-19 disproportionately affects the elderly, who overwhelmingly constitute those hospitalized and dying from the illness. Don’t you think the news should be regularly reporting these important facts about the average age of people dying? Is this not important when formulating strategy? Shouldn’t this be a starting point for any discussion about who needs help?

I have made no secret of the fact that I have been highly skeptical of the whole COVID-19 response since the beginning. I think segments of the medical community and world leadership have truly lost their minds. We have also become lost in a toxic mix of politics, smartphone-driven media sensationalism, and frequent hidden agendas. All while forgetting the basics of biology, infection spread & immunity, and the reality of human behavior.

One of the first things we are taught in medical school (and has been taught for centuries) is the concept of RISK STRATIFICATION. We don’t treat everybody the same or roll out blanket strategies for everybody, with no thought process about their individual risk. A 17-year old is not the same as a 77-year old!

We should have had a more focused response of aggressively targeting and protecting all the at-risk groups, including the over-65s and those with chronic disease or immunosuppression. As an example on a personal level, I have been very strict with my parents—I make sure they are not leaving the house needlessly, meeting friends, eating in restaurants—and make them demonstrate with me on Facetime how to wear a mask properly and regularly wash hands. They are pretty fed up with me telling them this every other day—but I’m okay with that! I encourage the same for all older or vulnerable people I know, but am much less concerned about any younger relatives or friends—they can use their own common sense and make risk assessments, especially if they don’t come into regular contact with vulnerable people.

Lockdowns are disastrous for peoples’ physical and mental health, I see this at the frontlines every day. Moreover they are catastrophic for the economy and the country. Of course, if you lock people up, you will stop infections spreading—that’s a no-brainer! But a very Medieval way of thinking is it not? Haven’t we moved on from that in 2020. I theorize that countries like Sweden (and now Switzerland) which did not lock down and had a more common sense approach, may well be proved right in the end, with numbers that are no different from those countries that did (Sweden unfortunately though didn’t protect their elderly at the beginning). Shutting down schools and colleges, is also a disaster, and we have not yet seen the full effects of this yet on future generations. Can younger healthy people occasionally get very sick from coronavirus too? Yes, like any illness you will always have outlying cases, but they don’t represent most of what we are seeing in terms of hospitalizations and deaths (for example, research shows that for under-18s, the simple Flu is worse than COVID).

A virus with up to an 80 percent asymptomatic rate when people have no idea they have it, is simply impossible to contain once it has widely spread. Millions of people worldwide have likely been exposed to it without having a clue that their own immune systems fought it off. Leaders have not been honest with the public, in pretending this can be contained or eliminated. It will eventually run its course—whatever region or country you are in (as you currently see in nations like Canada, Germany and Japan, which were doing well initially, and now see cases surging). The most we can do is take sensible precautions, keep razor-sharp focus on the vulnerable, and prepare our healthcare systems. We can minimize risk, but that risk will never be zero—even with a vaccine—which may not help as much as some people think, and I will explain the reasons why at some point soon.

I am comfortable being a physician who is public with my thoughts on this, and really don’t care if I stand alone from my peers. Future generations will look back with utter disbelief at our COVID response. We’ve had a shotgun-style approach that has spent 90 percent of our time, effort and resources shielding people who are healthy, and only 10 percent on the vulnerable—when it should have been the other way round. We lost focus on the elderly and those we should be protecting the most.

Suneel Dhand is a physician, writer, and YouTuber. He is Founder at MedStoic Lifestyle Medicine and DocsDox . Follow him on YouTube and Instagram