@Backofbeyond50
So who are these experts and fo they have a say?
Hardly worth worrying about right now.
Chris Whitty is on record as saying we will have another difficult winter.
England’s chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty has said Covid-19 “has not thrown its last surprise at us and there will be several more over the next period”.
Speaking at the NHS Confed Conference, he said he is anticipating that case rates will continue to go up in the next few weeks due to the Delta variant being “significantly more transmissible” than the Alpha variant.
“In terms of the medium term, my expectation is that we will get a further winter surge, late autumn/winter surge, and that is because we know that winter and autumn favour respiratory viruses, and therefore it’d be very surprising if this particular highly transmissible respiratory virus was not also favoured,” he said.
Prof Whitty said most people think there will be “further problems over the winter”, adding:
“How big they’ll be I think is uncertain, and that partly depends on do we get new variants which can evade vaccines better, and partly depends on how the current wave passes through the UK.
“Then in terms of the medium to longer term, if I look five years out, I would expect us to have polyvalent vaccines which will hold the line to a very large degree against even new variants as they come in and an ability to respond with vaccination to new variants.
“But the period over the next two or three years, I think, new variants may well lead to us having to revaccinate or consider boosting vaccination as they come through.
“So, I think we have to just be aware that Covid has not thrown its last surprise at us and there will be several more over the next period.”
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/coronavirus-live-updates-officials-consider-20836317 Post at 15:15
This is pretty much the impression I was under any way. I don't think this is a major revelation.
It would be more of a surprise if next winter wasn't problematic
However for political and economic reasons the government will want to keep things open during December at the very least.
So either we will get a tightening of restrictions again in early / mid October if things are looking dicey (like we should have had at the end of last year) - not necessarily a lock down in my opinion. Or they will hold off completely until the New Year - at which point we could have a pretty miserable January / Feburary again.
Tbh, given that I'm expecting this, I think it will be relatively easy to deal with emotionally for me. Where the problem lies is with people who think that, thats it all done. The reality is the NHS has a fair chance of running into bed shortages again of a scale higher than pre-covid which is problematic. In other words there should be some government expectation management going on now, because this is coming from such a significant source.
What it means is that I'm going to enjoy the summer (and tbf this may be why the government aren't doing the expectation management just yet because the prospect of another difficult winter may alter behaviour and lead to people going nuts over the next few weeks before they get their vaccinations in. My guess is that the expectation management may kick in late August/early September).
But yeah, enjoy things now as best you can within reason. Don't go nuts and prepare yourself for the possibility that things may not be all rainbows and flowers going into the winter. If this proves not to be the case, great; we all get to go completely nuts this Christmas and New Year. I personally wouldn't be booking this into my diary as yet - thats one for planning mid Autumn I think when we have a better view of where we are actually at.
This might sound pessimistic but I'm actually pretty upbeat about it, because the pandemic is progressing as expected and the data is about where we realistically should be and does look encouraging. The real issue here is that from the off there were far to many people who believed and wanted to believe this was going to be a quick thing whereas 12 - 18 months for starting to get back to normal was ALWAYS the time frame mentioned. And that things wouldn't be the same after this either.
Honestly I am expecting some levels of covid regulation / restriction / protection / detection for some years yet and thinking this won't be the case is extremely naive wishful thinking.
Make the best of things and appreciate what you have and what you can do, not laminate it not being pre-covid at this stage.