What would we gain from a circuit break?

Could a two-week ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown really ‘save’ nearly 8,000 lives, as is being widely reported this morning? Not according to one of the authors of the paper on which the claim is based. Matt Keeling, a mathematician at the University of Warwick, was questioned on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about the paper — which predicts that there will be a further 19,900 deaths by the end of the year if no circuit breaker is introduced, falling to 12,100 if we do have a two-week lockdown.

The crucial point is that the figures quoted above relate only to what may happen by the end of 2020. But neither time nor Covid will stop on 31 December. As interviewer Nick Robinson then asked:

Isn’t the whole problem with this idea [of a two week lockdown] that it doesn’t stop deaths at all… it doesn’t stop hospital admissions. Surely it simply postpones them? You stop it briefly.