How long are you expecting this to go on for?

[DennisReynoldsDuster]

Just curious. Friends seem to think it will all be fine again by May, I kind of feel like we will be lucky if we are “back to normal” by Christmas.

And by “this” I mean businesses shut and social distancing etc

@Bluntness100 you said yesterday we'd deviated from the Italy curve for the first time, in a good way. What's the progress on that today? I can't find the comparison.

spirdy that's scary!what about people who will be developing serious illness in that time due to lack of apps/testing. The irony is, hospitals aer not overwhelmed in terms of doing routine/investigative tests, and many specialist are not going to see ay patiend for months? Are they going to be deployed as extra doc for the covid patients?

Is it all to avoid people in waiting rooms and for tests - but why not allow that with masks on, and only if directed by a GP on the phone first, then gp app? And not let people use waiting rooms but coe on time for an app and stay outside at a fistance if arrived early? I know this completely unfeasable in london, but what about small towns which have much quiter GPs - at least some lives will be saved that way.

Well the virus is not going to go away. It will mutate. I can't see anything going back to normal for at least 6 months. I suppose it depends whether or not warm weather helps to slow the virus.

I suspect by Christmas we will all be very thin and quite hungry.

I suspect the opposite and many will emerge out of this a couple of stones heavier through eating the wrong sort of food and lack of exercise

I suspect the opposite as well. Mores the pity!

universalengine

I think 12-18 months. Probably periods where the social restrictions are more severe and some periods of less. Need a vaccine and then the first winter after a vaccine has been distributed should tell us if it's worked.

Yeah that's what they keep saying on the news on TV.
I hope not.
I won't survive that long mentally.
I will go mad.
It's only been a week and I have had enough already.

Maybe they will be wrong and it might be over in a month and everything will be back to normal.
But it does not look like it at the moment.
The crisis seems to be getting worse every day.

I believe weve got 3/4 months left. I've read in oct/nov/dec it's supposed to reappear. I hope not

This is quite a depressing thread!

I don’t think it’s going to be as long as some people are fearing.
IF this government can get proper equipment to health professionals, that will make a huge difference, as they’ll then hopefully not need time off/worse.

If vaccines are already being tested in 40 countries, one or several vaccinations will be found. Yes, they need a period of time to make sure it’s safe longer-term, but the incentive to be the first to create it is huge, and people are innovative.

In the meantime, the people who aren’t maintaining distance are going to cause more avoidable deaths, as hospitals are over-filled with cases, so some of those can’t be treated, and people with other urgent things, like heart attacks, will also die unnecessarily. But I don’t see how that then extends the virus being around. It just makes it happen faster, with more death. 🙁

Individuals and families will struggle for a while, but humans are really resilient and I am confident that we will use this to vote for governments in future who invest in vital services, and who hopefully pay people much better for their value in society. I hope it brings the stripping back of the NHS and social care and the privatisation of services to a halt.

So it’s all down to the vaccines now to predict lengthier time. At least we have technology to help keep in touch, and to look for mental well-being advice, which might help some people cope. It must have been psychologically way harder for people during the plague.

Just found something I was sure I’d heard - the EU’s rules on vaccine trials speed up for pandemics, so it won’t be the usual 12-18 month wait: (and if they’re already beginning testing in some countries, then there’s hope)

“the 'emergency procedure', which allows for fast-track approval of a new vaccine developed after a pandemic has already been declared. Authorisation of these pandemic vaccines is quicker than for a normal vaccine, as the information submitted by the manufacturer is assessed in an accelerated timeframe (around 70 days instead of 210 days).“

It has already mutated once, it will mutate again. COVID 19 is here to stay and its effects will be felt for decades. Short term, we will go through multiple periods of lockdowns. Lockdowns will turn into stringent control measures when a fast and reliable test is introduced. These measures will change a lot of the freedom of movement and travel we are currently used to.

A vaccine will eventually control some strains, but new strains will emerge every year.

The way we live will change drastically from the virus, the psychological effects of what we will go through and the economic repercussions. It may have some effect on global warming but the price we will pay will be high.

I’m mentally preparing to be alone with my dcs at Christmas and not being able to visit family.

Please can someone explain the “mutated” part, what does that a actually mean?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/coronavirus-mutations.html

Here is something about mutations it’s really not as scary as it sounds
Even if it does change once the first vaccine is done it will be like the flu

If it does become endemic I think the likelihood is it will join the flu in being something that could kill you but not everyone get

Well I won't stay home for 4 months.
I can't.
If they do make a vaccine will everybody have it?
Or is it like the flu jab where not everyone has one?

I don't have the flu injection because when I had it once and only once in my whole life, it made me fell really ill.
So I never have a flu injection.

But this virus started in China in a fish market or so they say.
So how did it get to spread around to other places and get into the UK?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/608338/

Is another good read. My reading is that Virus want to survive and if it does adapt it will likely to become milder. Killing a host is actually not that effective for the virus

I only have a layman’s understanding Nono, but here goes.

Viruses, like every living thing, want to replicate, effectively have babies and continue their genetic materials. They cannot evolve alone they need a host, us. So they use us to continue their existence and evolution means that the viruses that are better at adapting to their environment are the ones that survive.

We fight viruses with our immune system and the fight is on, which viruses can evade our immune system and spread themselves as widely as possible?

COVID 19 seems to be a very well adapted virus. It doesn’t kill all its hosts, it leaves some hosts asymptomatic and it has already amputated, that is adapted to new environments. So it used to spread from animal to animal and it changed so it could spread to a human, then it changed again so it could spread from human to human, and it has changed already one more time so that there are now two human to human strains.

In a sense it is a very clever and successful virus. It is plausible that it will start recombining with earlier versions of itself, like other RNA viruses have done, to produce yet more effective (for its purposes) strains.

Mutated not amputated!

I think we will lock down this week for all of April, May and June.
July we’ll be allowed out, August and September will be OK then it will come back at us again.
There will be a series of rolling closures over winter depending on how bad things get.
By this time next year I think we’ll have a vaccine.
I hope I’m wrong because it’s going to be a shit year.

@CatAndHisKit things that are essential can go on but not routine. Most teams seem to have 1 person left in them manning the phone to speak to patients and will decide if they absolutely have to have a face to face. Most other staff members have been redeployed. It's all about minimising transmission. A lot of procedures / examinations can't be done now anyway as they may transmit the disease unless you have correct PPE. There isn't enough PPE for everyone to carry on with normal duties, they need it for treating the very sick in hospital.

But Booboo it’s already highly effective. The aim is to replicate and it’s doing that very well. It hasn’t really mutated that much if you read the articles because it simply doesn’t need to

What makes it deadly is our immune response to it quite often not the virus itself

The second article was interesting because that believes that it can split itself so it can be both upper and lower respiratory. This means a lot more people could have had it as we have been looking at it as a lower obe

Lockdown for 3myths

Quartz2208 I didn’t say it wasn’t effective, I said the opposite, it’s a very effective virus. My impression is that one of the reasons it is so effective in spreading is because it mutates so easily. It is an RNA virus so already unstable and prone to mutations, and it is an RNA virus that, unlike SARS, doesn’t kill its host quickly so it has a lot of time to mutate.

Well I won't stay home for 4 months.
I can't.

What makes you think you’ll have a choice? In a lockdown situation, it will be enforced by the police.

I'm thinking Sept/Oct. because I feel people still aren't taking it seriously x

We wont have a choice

The peak around here (Yorkshire) is predicated end May/ early June.