Corona related

[cookiesandcream77]

To think life won't go back to normal until a vaccine is found?

Until then, lockdown will keep easing until the number of deaths start to rise again and when they do, lockdown will start over, and so the cycle continues.

This could be months... or even years

The virus could start to die out, or we find we have greater immunity than thought. For many people under 50, they want normality again and will push for it.

I'm wondering if they will try to hide the death figures, if they start to rise again.

I think we need to see how this autumn/winter virus season goes.

We are seeing local lockdowns here already, plus in some other countries. If we can manage peaks, even in cooler damper weather, then 'normal' might return.

But this is also an opportunity to look at what 'normal' should be. It's a good chance to re-examine priorities. Climate change hasn't gone away

I think we'll just learn to tolerate the risk since we can't control it. Like people in some parts of the world live with malaria. Unfortunately more people will die than we've been used to in living memory but that's reality unfortunately.

I agree with your both. This virus is just inconvenient to so many people; politicians, capitalists and hedonists. The only way to deal with it is unleash it, let the pieces all go up in flux and pick them up again. That is where we are going. Brave New World.

Climate change hasn't gone away.

No, and its doing its thing just fine.

I think (hope) in 3-6 months time things will feel, for most people, like they are back to normal.

Deaths from winter flu this year will be much lower than usual, because Corona has already taken a lot of people that winter flu would have got.

In the not too distant future reporting of covid deaths will be like reporting of seasonal flu deaths, it won't register on their radar for a lot of people, it's another virus that's just kicking around.

I'd personally rather learn to tolerate and work with the risk, than tolerate the next however many months or years in and out of lockdown.

@Ponoka7

Yeah I worry about that too. Re suppressing death rates.

That does make me wonder - conspiracy theory alert - if they exaggerated figures in order to justify lockdown.

• I hate saying that, as it’s so disrespectful to so many who have worked so hard and so many who have lost their lives and people close to them. But then suppressing death rates would be equally as disrespectful, if not arguably more so.

I agree with @meditrina - a lot may depend on how winter goes, but I think it will be while before life is back to normal. What seemed to be being said at the beginning is that there should, at outside, be enough resistence naturally by the end of next year at the outside to carry on as usual.

There will be localised lockdowns, there may be a decision to just bear the risk for schools because it's so difficult to manage other things without kids being in school, and the risk to them is low, but the difficulty will be teachers who are vulnerable or have shielding members of household.

This winter is going to be tough, I reckon it will be the hardest part of the whole thing - we won't have the outdoor option anymore, I doubt large indoor gatherings will be allowed and we'll have to do what at best what we are doing now, in the wet, cold and dark. By next winter, even if there is no vaccine, I expect from what scientists are saying that it will at least be at the stage of being another seasonal virus, and will not raise the usual death rates that much. So hopefully even by next summer we will be able to look forward to a winter where it's tailing off.

So yeah, I'm preparing to have to accept another 18 months, some of which will be better, some will be worse, if no vaccine.

The outcomes are:

1. A vaccine is found quickly.
2. The virus simply fizzles out.
3. We simply learn to live with it, like we do any other contagious disease.

I think it will probably be 3, whilst we wait for 1 or 2 to happen.