Senga - How much slower do you expect it to be @chocciechocface though?
I can't answer that. And this is a fundamental problem. People (and I'm not necessarily saying you) want absolute answers and are perplexed when certainty isn't forthcoming. Scientists saying 'we don't know', means they're somehow useless. And I don't know if you've noticed, but scientists say 'we don't know' a lot in interviews. Science advice changing as events unfold is an indicator to many that the earlier advice was garbage, not proof that science is learning from increasing data.
The situation is fluid. I honestly don't think British people are culturally cut out for this, and our horrific death rate supports that view. I come from a country which has been tearing itself to pieces for twenty years, rolling from crisis to crisis. People in my country roll with the punches, because they have no choice and just have to find a way to get on with it because no one is going to rescue them. And I don't feel the same sense of horrific selfishness coming through in chat groups at home that I do among British people here.
This idea that some British people seem to have, that we can return to normal during a pandemic, that we are entitled to 'normal' irrespective of anything else because of 'our rights' etc, strikes me as first world entitlement in a nutshell.
I'm not minimising the shit people have to deal with. Note that both my parents have had to shut their businesses and they're facing COVID in a country with zero healthcare. I may never see them again in my life.
However I am gently warning you (generic you), from experience, that if you don't adjust to the extraordinary harsh terms of this current reality, any feelings you may have now about what 'we deserve' or 'should happen' will pale into insignificance if things flame out of control. The poor mental health of a child, for example, from not seeing their friends is nothing compared to the mental health consequences of having a parent die, especially if you are the child that brought the virus home. Or of seeing others you know die.
To British people, this scenario is inconceivable, because yours is a society that has always been buffered from harsh realities. There's very much a 'it won't happen to us' vibe. It seems alarmist to say what I am saying. But in my experience, shit things do get worse and worse and worse. And it is already happening here. Next to the US, more of us have died than anywhere else. It is a fucking disaster.
Instead of thinking about the virus as a disease, imagine instead it was snipers hiding around us randomly firing bullets into communities all over the country. Some people will be killed, others seriously hurt. Now imagine sending your child to school in that scenario. Would we even be having these conversations?
Now I did grow up in a war zone. And that involved going to school with bunkers, and armed soldiers on our school bus. So life does go on in terrible times, but usually with measures put in place. How do you think my education went after ten years in a war zone? (FWIW I have post-graduate degrees). I will say though that having a face to face confrontation with danger and death all the time gave me night terrors as a child. I was terrified people would die. And I am alert, now, to the fact that my children might also have to deal with that with the ways schools are opening.
The problem here is everyone wants back NOW, with limited measures put in place, zero tolerance for compromise. Boozy nights out. No social distancing in schools. Masks being described as muzzles. Anti-vaxxers talking about vitamins we should take instead. It's fucking pathetic.
In my mind, for the time it takes science to refine treatments or come up with a vaccine, we should all be accepting things need to change. We can try and put a time limit on it, but that is arbitrary and artificial. The virus is still going to be a contagious virus and do what it's going to do irrespective of the deadlines set. This resistance to change or restrictions on 'freedom' and rights is prolonging the agony and just resulting in more and more people dying.