This is what has always troubled me about total lockdown

[Makeitgoaway]

I don't understand how we get out of it.

Of course, it should reduce transmission while we're all locked down but unless the whole world has it under control, as soon as we start getting back to normal, it will all start again. As they're beginning to see in China.

Is this going to become a regular way of life, with lockdown annually or every few years?

Yes this will go on for a long time, especially in Europe, millions of migrants trying to enter Europe through Greece, how long can you keep people locked up for in terrible conditions before there are huge riots? How do you stop people travelling over a long period of time, the only way is to let people build up an immune system,that is how evolution and nature has worked for millions of years, you can’t change it, you can try and suppress it but you will never control it.

"Herd immunity" never made sense in this context anyway. Herd immunity usually refers to enough people being vaccinated so that it is unlikely that you will catch it. In this context, with no vaccine and overwhelmed health services, Johnson's idea of herd immunity is basically to sacrifice a percentage of the population for the good of the economy.

The Spanish Flu Epidemic lasted 2 years... with our current medical knowledge I'd give this thing around 18-20 months... really until we have a vaccine and have rolled out a tight vaccination programme.
I agree, it will be on / off with restrictions and travelling to different countries will be impossible in the foreseeable future.

First of all, you're not in lock down. You're still allowed out.

Things are moving on.
There are more sensitive tests and tests that can detect when you've been exposed and, probably, resistant or at least not infectious anymore.
Better treatments, hopefully a vaccine sooner rather than later.
Hospital capacity and equipment is being scaled up.
But we need time to catch up.
Hence the social distancing measures.

They will be relaxed and tightened again if necessary, as already pointed out.

What we must have in mind is that there is no perfect solution. Any policy will have to balance protecting the health of the society and protecting the economy. If nothing else because people need jobs and need food, water, electricity, etc.

My absolute guess as I have no medical knowledge is to do with how it transmits.

All those diagrams show 1 person infects 2.5. Those 2.5 infect 2.5 etc.

So if there's 1000,s carrying it there's more infection to spread.

But by having the lockdown where very few people are being out at risk of transmission (work, supermarket etc) then less people have the virus to transmit because if you've been inside for a period of time you know if you incubated it.

Then things relax. I would imagine the relaxation will be perhaps schools opening.
It maybe that a year group only go in 1 day a week. And people are spread over the school to retain social distancing.

Perhaps we can travel to places for a walk rather than have to be from our front door. Therefore everything is still distanced or outdoors.

As I said - this is total hypothesis but makes sense in my mind

I think herd immunity is a crock of shit and the aim is just to control spread.

Were there restriction s for Spanish Flu or was that allowed to run its course? If so, won't our tinkering extend the period?

What I think is going to need careful planning is exposing the 1.5m shielded people at the same time as that will put a huge strain on the NHS again. Currently, they're all being told 12 weeks from this week.

I assume they'll do it one letter of the alphabet at a time or similar to spread the exposed vulnerable people across the country. Otherwise there will just be a similar strain on the NHS in12 weeks.

What Quentin said. The Spanish flu, and other flu epidemics killed the young, because older people had partial immunity to similar influenzas from the past. It’s not all or nothing. This is so lethal and so contagious at the moment because it’s completely new to our immune systems and there are no firebreaks in the population.

By locking down we:
A) stop the health system being overwhelmed
B) give researchers time to work out which of the many many antiviral medications available work best, and manufacture them in bulk
C) give researchers time to implement a vaccine
D) start to set up antibody testing (and work out how long immunity lasts) so people who’ve had it can get back to work in waves.

After that then we carry on. Depending on mutation rate it may be that we have to live with it forever after in the same way that we live with seasonal flu: protecting the vulnerable from exposure, vaccinating as best we can, treating the affected, but that’s manageable.

Everyone getting it at once is not.

I strongly recommend this week’s More Or Less special with Dr David Spiegelhalter if you’re interested in the numbers.

Btw, it's called herd immunity because it refers to a group, as in a herd of animals.

Nothing to do with hearing.

Lweji who thought it was anything to do with hearing? That wouldn’t make any sense, as that would be ‘heard immunity’.

Sorry if this has already been answered but where does that leave the vulnerable people who really can't get it without a very high risk of becoming very ill and dying?

Will they have to stay in isolation for the full 18 months?

It think Lweji was being funny about my typo

There were restrictions with the Spanish flu but as soon as the war finished everyone went out celebrating and it started again. The governments round the world will have to remove travel restrictions eventually and then it will start again, poor countries are never going to control this by lockdown.

Makeitgoaway ah ok!

Typos.
Once is a typo. Many is a trend.

I think some of this depends on how much we manage to create a sustainable (in the medium term at least) increase in capacity for hospital care and ventilators, to find drug treatments that help to ward off some of the worse effects, to do widespread testing and tracking or who has it and also discover who is already immune, and of course to develop a vaccine.

At the moment the lockdown in part reflects the stark difference between the extent of damage the illness does and our ability to respond. All the measures above could mitigate that and perhaps mean that the approach changes.

A virus has a natural life span - eventually once most people have had it it can't find new people to infect and dies away.

This would happen if we did nothing at all - just that many people would die in the process which of course we want to avoid.

So what we are doing is staggering the exposure of the population to it so that the NHS can cope with those who get really ill. We might have a series of lockdowns and relaxations, each time more people are becoming immune until eventually the virus loses hold.

If you let the thing roam free we would all get it rapidly, and within a certain amount of time it would start dying away by itself due to immunity.

The point is, it is GOOD for you to have it provided that you don't die from it or suffer too badly. Each person that has it mildly and gets over it is then immune. The difficulty is that it is hard to predict who can safely get it!

Of course the real worry is can you get it twice or is once enough to secure immunity?

Typos
Many is probably autocorrect

As far as I can see I've only done it once, either way not good form

KatnissK that is my understanding as well

This is not going to be over in 3 weeks, but hopefully we’ll be back to moments of “normal” in between phases

Aint and WhatQuentin - I don't think that's how immunity works. You might also want to look at cytokine storm for one reason why Spanish Flu killed relatively healthy adults c1918 rather than the young and elderly who normally have relatively higher mortality - 'due to the ability of a strong immune system to initiate a cytokine storm'.

I am finding the nature of the lockdown disturbing as well as the attitudes of some people to the new rules i.e. many seem keen to be able to report people for anything they deem an infraction of the rules or others embellishing the actual rules with further restrictions high the government hasn’t stipulated.

Of course at the moment we do all need to just suck it up to prevent the worst of the pandemic but privately I am concerned about the lockdown.

If everyone learns to 'socially distance' and correct hygiene procedures are followed properly then we might be able to avoid lockdown situations in the future.

I think herd immunity is a crock of shit
Well you're wrong, it's a well established fact. It's not the only way we have of controlling viruses though and not something that should ever be relied on.

@StirCrazed - so cynical! (But you're right, what a cunning plan by Cummings!)
Can you imagine if airtravel had been as prevalent at the time of Spanish Flu as it is these days?