Off licences now allowed to reopen.

Jeremy535897

Dodgy philosophical ground here, like the statement made so much today, "saving lives". If you want to be picky, no life can be saved, unless someone knows something about making people immortal. All you can do is "prolong life". If you pull a drowning six year old from the sea, you may prolong that life for 80 years. If you bring a 100 year old patient round from COVID-19, you may prolong that life for a year or two. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence has to decide, for example, whether it is worth spending a lot of money to prolong a cancer patient's life by a few months. You can read up on how they do that if you want.
I take your point about the economy, but like smoking, I think there should be a progressive war on excess (or indeed any) alcohol consumption. Far more people are dependent on alcohol than they care to admit. I was, so I became teetotal some years ago.