This time next year?

[TheLastStarfighter]

What do you think this time next year will be like? Do you think things will be trending back towards normal?

Prompted by a winter light festival sending me an early-booking offer for October’s event.

I like to think that there will be a lot of normality by then. That a large portion of the population will have been vaccinated, and we’ll also, have better treatments, and will be starting to put it in the rear view mirror. That people who were badly economically affected would have started to recover. That next year there will be Christmas markets, and parties at work.

Am I being overly optimistic.

Be over people starting to not comply now we need to live with this like flu etc

I doubt there will be any compliance by the end of the year tbh. People are sick of it, which isn’t great but I can see why!

This time next year I plan on being too drunk to care. Still compliant but I'm over it

We will all be millionaires. (Couldn't resist!)

People's tolerance of measures is waning already. Masks might still be a thing, but I think the majority of people will be socialising like they used to.

Yes, even if the virus is still here life will be back to normal. This way of living just isn't sustainable. I reckon by the end of winter things will be back to normal.

We will be in a much better place by then at least as far as the virus is concerned, but not sure about economically.

I think it'll be either Mad Max: Fury Road or 1984.

I think life will never be quite the same again, though.

I agree with the above poster- we need to start living with this like the flu. We can’t go on like this for much longer, people are losing their jobs and the economy is being trashed, for what exactly?

I will only have two and a half years before I can retire. At the beginning of lockdown I had fours years to go but this year has been very low stress workwise since we are unable to see and treat the volume of patients we normally see and although people are getting fed up they understand our current dilemma.
It’s probably going to dramatically change our work patterns for a few years and by the time we are back to the normal madness I will be retired.
I am very bored of the whole situation. Being frontline healthcare we have become very complacent about our own health but ultra careful with patients. Can’t wait for vaccination.

If the government is still behaving with lockdowns like this year then it is proof it is not working.

We do need to learn to live with it sadly.

I think a vaccine will be in the long slow process of being rolled out. I think there will be good treatments available. I think there will be faster testing available. All combined to make things much closer to normal.

Question is, will this government be able to implement the new technology?

Also, I think a good chance Boris Johnson will be gone. But not sure if his replacement will be any better.

It bloody better be back to normal! I want to get dressed up and have a good proper (messy) night out with the girls! A Christmas party or two next year be great too, I want to put on a black short dress and heels..... I am so shallow I know but I've had 3 years of shit leading up to this pandemic so I've really had enough.

@onedayinthefuture Not shallow imo! Very natural. Desperate to go out on a carefree night.

By this time next year they'll be rolling out the vaccine. Only frontline/most vulnerable will have had it so far but that will be enough to impact hospital figures and deaths.
Medical treatments and understanding of the virus will have improved significantly which will further reduce the number of very severe cases. We won't be completely back to normal but we'll have an uneasy sort of tolerance if it. It will be at the back of our minds rather than the front. We'll still be in masks (but we'll be used to them) distancing and handwashing a bit but it won't still feel as raw and scary as it does right now.

The economy on the other hand..... I'm less optimistic 🤷‍♂️

Sometimes, people die. We don’t seem to have a problem with this when it comes to the multitude of other diseases and illnesses we deal with; and very soon we’ll all feel the same way about Covid. None of this was ever meant to be about preventing all deaths, but preventing the healthcare system being overwhelmed.

I don’t know anyone who’s paying anything more than lip service to “the rules”. You obey them because it’s the law, not because you think they make any sense.

@Ellsbells12

Be over people starting to not comply now we need to live with this like flu etc

If it could be lived with like the flu, wouldn't we just have been living with it like the flu all along?

I think at the moment it's sort of COVID 19. And by then it'll be Covid-19 if that makes sense.

@BlueBlancmange no I don't think so because we will have better understanding, treatments and vaccine like we do flu. Currently we don't have that much in our armoury but it's getting better.

What will it be like? Loads more ignoring any restrictions, if they exist and mass unemployment.

Next year will be just peachy.

Yes absolutely. We will be in a much better place. I can see it won't be quite as before in that maybe there will be occasionally local outbreaks in places with higher population density/more poverty (or for other reasons) but it won't be this hard then. I firmly believe a vaccine will be ready and many people will have had it by then. It's never going to go away completely and perhaps there will be ways in which we'll have to be careful going into that winter but we'll be through the worst of things by far.

I want to think this will all be normal again but I honestly don’t think life will ever go back to how it was before!

@BlueBlancmange perhaps we would be in a better position if we’d treated it like the flu rather than the extreme measures we’ve taken of stopping all social contact and effectively closing the country down, then reopening everything a few months later hoping it’s all gone away. It hasn’t and it won’t, therefore we need to live with it to some extent.

I imagine that with the commencement of a vaccination programme, by next autumn our most vulnerable will be somewhat protected so we may have raised case numbers (though less than current peaks I expect) but far less hospital transmissions and with that I expect the beginning of the end to test centres and front page dominance.

I think we will be in better shape than now regarding Covid. More data and more treatments. Potentially a vaccine for the most vulnerable. So yes to winter holidays, Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas parties and multigenerational family dinners. Keep those dresses ready to go!

But between now and then we will have to adapt to Brexit and with the best will in the world that that will prove (temporarily or otherwise) complicated and compound issues so my view of 2021 is that it will be a tough year overall.

I'll be bloody happy to be proved right on Covid and totally wrong on Brexit. And feel free to come back to me in a year