We've shown that major disruption can happen [could anyone have imagined the UKs lockdown situation of the last few weeks, along with furloughing of millions of employees, etc] but it's come at quite a heavy [human] price.
This is where I strongly disagree. The lockdown has not in itself inflicted a heavy human price. The lockdown has *saved lives*. If it was done sooner it would have saved even more.
I don't disagree lockdown has saved lives and prevent people from dying from Covid-19, and it has saved more (so far) than it will have killed who wouldn't have died without the lockdown. But non-Covid-19 deaths are climbing during the lockdown and it won't be long before that death rate (not total number, daily death rate) will overtake that of Covid-19. Keep that going long term and preventable non-Covid-19 deaths will eventually eclipse even the worse case scenarios of Covid-19, plus you'll still have Covid-19 lurking ready to infect everyone who hasn't already had it.
Just one example but the number of cancer diagnoses has fallen through the floor in the last month. Does that mean hardly anyone is getting cancer? Or maybe people are scared of going to the doctor or hospitals and will therefore die early due to lack of diagnosis and treatment.
Lockdown induces austerity and austerity kills.
(And hindsight is amazing, but we're talking about future decisions here, not the decisions that have already been made rightly or wrongly.)
There's no magic plan that would save everyone (barring a unicorn riding in to #10 with a vaccine or a viable/reliable treatment), but you've got to choose how to minimise the number of deaths from a combination of Covid-19 and lockdown/economy induced austerity. There's no simple obvious choice or set of rules to follow.
Of course, you may just say that it's the choices of the existing Government that is pushing the country down a particular path to a particular level of austerity (and I wouldn't disagree) but it's simply not viable to enforce a lockdown like we are having and not have a significant number of non-Covid-19 deaths. I expect you will disagree with this.