This is what bothers me about the herd immunity plan.
Suppose the UK has 10,000 ICU beds. Suppose each person with corona virus who needs one takes up 5 days.
Then there can be 2000 new ICU admissions per day.
If the fraction of people with the virus who end up needing an ICU bed is 5%, that means the infection rate has to be kept below 40,000 per day.
To get to herd immunity in the UK, 60% of people have to get the virus, around 40 million people.
To do this without overwhelming the NHS then takes 1000 days, or roughly three years.
But the idea is to get herd immunity in place by the Autumn.