To think life will be pretty much normal by early 2021?

[itsaweddingone]

I hope we are! A colleague said today (he has no extra knowledge or info) that he can't see us being back in the office before 2021.

Do you think Covid will be mostly behind us by then or we will still be living with restrictions?

My husband (private sector) has been told to expect to be working from home til the end of the year.

Prague is allowing gatherings of 1000 people this side of xmas so you never know

The Czech Republic has had less than 10,000 cases and about 300 deaths so I wouldn’t compare with them....

Fgs it will not be "years" before theatres open

“ we need to prepare ourselves to live with this for years...”

I thought he meant the virus, not the insanity?

I hope we go back to better than normal. Less consumery, working from home more, kinder to each other, and why not rethink the economy while we're at it? Universal basic income for a start.

If it's safe for teachers to be back in schools, it's safe for office staff to go back to work IMO.

Cant even think that far ahead but I would think in the winter months we'll have some sort of second lockdown.
But who knows...

I can’t see how we won’t have social distancing at the end of the year so no we won’t be back in the office before then. Maybe some people but not fully in the office no.

f it's safe for teachers to be back in schools, it's safe for office staff to go back to work IMO.

Why bother when you can wfh? Why not stay working from home and reduce the risk?

I don't think it will be normal. I think we will be able to do most things (go shopping, restaurants, holidays etc) but in a different way and with precautions.

It's all going to depend on the availability of a vaccine. Fortunately there was some very good news on that front this morning.

www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/moderna-reports-positive-data-on-early-stage-coronavirus-vaccine-trial.html

I am dreaming of being able to work from home as much as I want - and finally being able to get a puppy! Call me an optimist....

Why not stay working from home and reduce the risk?

You could argue the same a out schools ...

No, I think restrictions will be in place over the winter because there will be another peak when the cold weather hits and everyone wants to be indoors. I don't know if those restrictions will be limited to the most vulnerable or the whole population.

I go to a Hogmanay street party every year and I don't see that proceeding as normal.

I think it will be spring 2021 when things are close to normality.

If our local was open now I would be there.

There's a huge gap between what I hope it will be and what reality tells me it will be.

Without a vaccine, no chance of near normality. Social distancing will be the norm indefinitely.

@Truthpact

I really hope weddings are OK! They are not huge groups of people in comparison to some things!

I do think governments might realise that it isn’t sustainable to keep major restrictuons - we’re looking at the biggest recovery packages since WW2, the biggest recession since the 1920s, unemployment at record levels... and that’s just from 2-3 months of global disruption. I think at some point governments will start weighing up the economic impacts with the deaths and realise, frankly, it’s not worth it. This isn’t the only infectious disease in the world and people may just have to live with a higher risk in their lives than they have been used to in the last 50 years.

On a personal level, I really hope we’re back to normal by late this year - I’m due my first in December and would not have TTC if I’d realised there was any chance of still having significant restrictions by 2021. We’re also staying with my parents for lockdown which we didn’t expect for more than a couple of months - but for us to go back to London will be tough with three of us WFH in a small 2 bed flat.

Some things will get better quickly, others may disappear forever

@LemonPudding

It won't be. What's the point in living if we can't live freely and be with people?

It would be good if things were back to normal, but I'm afraid they will not be- and some things may never be.

@Daphnise oh bloody hell, cheer up!

Life carried on after WW1, WW2, Spanish Flu and the Black Death.

People need to remember how this all started.

It was first here in January (as far as we know). For months we were meeting in groups, schools were open, gigs were happening.

I went to a gig with 5000 other people in February. There were no major outbreaks in my city until March and it's a capital.

My point is that when the numbers of people who have it in the community are low, it takes a while to gain momentum.

We can all get a test now. We all know the symptoms. We will have some measures (working from home if we can) in place for the foreseeable.

We can stop it getting to that stage unchecked again. And "that stage", the number of cases and rate of transmission which put us into lockdown isn't a relevant figure anymore. As we have expanded our capacity massively.

Drug trials are ongoing and we've learned a lot about the virus. We have more clues about groups who may fare worse.

There is no way that we will be "coming out the other side of it in August 2021". We are coming slowly out the other side of it now.

There will be an increase in cases and we may see some tightening and restricting of certain measures to keep the rate of infection down. But with testing, knowledge and plans in place we will ride it out.

Being a miserable pessimistic fucker doesn't increase your COVID-19 survival chances or get you magical brownie points. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic and focusing on the future.

I have no hope whatsoever that we will be back to the office anytime after Christmas. But then, we were in a good position to migrate the operation away if the office so are pretty much operating as normal from our spare rooms. But I wonder how many of my colleagues will survive until then dealing with young children interrupting them all the time. It is too much pressure for them.

Companies will have to do proper working from home health and safety assessments, provide ergonomic desks, chairs, aids etc

They will soon want people back in when the price of that kicks in.