How will this all work out then?

[Jumble567]

Can anyone explain this to me please? I don’t understand how this is going to work long term? Everyone staying at home will lessen cases, absolutely so there will be a drop in three weeks time of new cases that should continue whilst we are all staying at home.

However as soon as everyone is able to go back to work again and shops etc open up then surely we are just back where we started from again with huge infection rates?

The vaccine is going to be a year to eighteen months away. Will we need to stay in lockdown until then?

if thats what it takes

they will just let us out until hospitals are getting full again and then back to lockdown I think. keep doing that until majority of people have had it and those that need help have been able to get it.

I reckon we’ll live in a state of semi-lockdown for a while, so pubs, cinemas restaurants etc. remaining closed whilst things are reinstated in stages.

If they get serious with testing there’s a potential that they might attempt to isolate outbreaks by region or something.

The plan is to lockdown for a period, then ease restrictions for a time, then lockdown again, and repeat until a vaccine is ready and/or there is a level of immunity reached. This way, the infections will come in shallow waves as opposed to one, huge, unmanageable tsunami - less pressure on the NHS and, hopefully, fewer deaths.

Also multiple briefer periods of lockdown will be easier to bear than one, indefinite period.

So you mean we all go back to work for a couple of weeks and then back to lock down? So businesses all restart for two weeks and then shut down again for another month? That kind of thing? I can’t see how that would work?

The press briefing this was mentioned at last week didn't say which workplaces would reopen, it just said that the quarantine would be periodically relaxed. Perhaps travel would be allowed again, and bars/cinemas might open?

I'm not sure how it would work in practice but I do think it'd be no harder than keeping everyone indoors for months. As soon as summer arrives and people will have been shut in their homes for months, they'll have had enough and just go out. At least if we know there's a period of 'freedom' on the horizon staying in might be easier to bear.

Perhaps travel would be allowed again, and bars/cinemas might open?

I cant see that. Lots of people wont have the money. And cramming into one place will make it soar uncontrollably.

There will be more movement allowed. What that looks like, no one knows.

Lots of business can operate for a few weeks. We are all WFH. Our people on the ground are doing essential work only. If we got 2 weeks to do our other work (which does need doing for companies building insurance) we can cram work in, in those weeks. Then scale back to essential work only.

I think they’ll relax and tighten the restrictions to coincide with certain times of year.
I think we may see a relaxation in July as what we don’t want is a second peak in winter so they may try to manage the second (less high as some will be immune) peak in August/Sept. Then as we go in to autumn/winter and flu season I expect restrictions may increase again? This is obviously me just speculating but it ties in with the current 12 weeks advice.
That takes us until June and they’ll review then whether we can ease over the summer.