It isn’t going to be quite like that. Firstly, the current restrictions are likely to be in place for some time to come, and they may well get worse before they are lifted. This will require a great deal more policing, so that should put most of the idiots back in their boxes.
Secondly (and I’m sorry to be Mrs Gloom and Doom about this) some sort of modified lifestyle is going to be necessary for a very long time. We are long, long past the point where this virus can be contained. We have not done enough testing, tracing or containing. It’s here, it’s rife and we have to live with it until one of two things happen. Either most people have had it (which will dramatically slow spread, and it will become like flu - a pain, kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, puts enormous seasonal pressure on the health services and worries precisely nobody) aka ‘herd immunity’. The trouble with this is that no one knows what percentage of the population needs to have had it to reach herd immunity (it varies with different diseases) or when we might reach that (because we have done naff all testing anyway). It’s a plausible theory, but it will crush our health service and hundreds of thousands of people will die, many of something completely unrelated which would otherwise have been totally treatable if the service wasn’t crippled). The second is when we get an effective vaccine programme rolled out, in around 18 months time. If we are very, very lucky the wretched virus will not have mutated in that time and a vaccine programme will be the end of it and we can all go back to destroying the planet at will. If we are not, we could be living with outbreaks of CV for all eternity, as we do with flu. We will simply have to manage outbreaks, be less idiotic with travel, gatherings and hygiene and bolster our health and funeral services.
The most likely scenario is a series of cycles of shelter-in-place (of varying severities according how much ‘downward pressure’ we need on the curve at the time, and how well we monitor infection rates. Hint we are not currently monitoring infection rates in any meaningful way) and more freedoms, and then shelter in place again as cases rise. This could be managed very effectively on a regional basis, as it hardly matters in London if the Glasgow ICU beds are full, and vice versa. This would allow neighbouring services to help each other out and relieve pressure on services regionally giving vital breathing spaces for staff. It would need be heavily policed, though. Even if restrictions are lifted, they will be much more gradual. We may even see a scenario where individuals who are confirmed to have had it, and thus are immune, are allowed free movement, and those who have not, are not. I don’t say that it’s nice, but it’s logical. You can’t spread nearly so effectively it if you can’t catch it.
It’s also theoretically possible that we may develop some effective form of treatment. I personally doubt this very much. We have virtually nothing that is effective against acute viruses in any meaningful way, and certainly nothing that is effective on a such a swift killer. It takes something like seven years to get a new drug though trials, so I won’t be pinning my hopes on one. Unless it mutates.
My money’s on a vaccine. A new flu vaccine (which is just an update of a tried and tested vaccine with a new strain) takes six months. We know a lot about flu, it’s just nobody cares very much. A completely new vaccine takes 1 - 3 years. Obviously, scientists around the world are pulling out all the stops to get one out there, but it must be adequately tested. There is no point having a vaccine that’s ineffective, or that is unsafe. Expect disruption of varying levels for 18 months and hope to your deity of choice that it doesn’t mutate (which is a very, very good reason to keep infection levels right down and against the herd immunity strategy that Boris thought was a good idea. I’m fairly sure he’s now changed his mind, but there you are) The less virus out there, the less chance of mutation. The world is going to become a very, very different place if it mutates. There are novels less dramatic. It may also change other diseases. There has been a huge rise in the ‘antivaxx’ movement which has actually prevented the eradication of measles (we were very close) and has put other horrible diseases back in the game. It may be that the state has to intervene to protect society at large from these individuals (It was only a matter of time, but this will hasten things) and that may mean it is possible for vaccinations to become compulsory. I am not a fan of enforced medical treatment, but in the case of vaccinations against horrible diseases, well, there is no case (I’m not talking vulnerable individuals who cannot be vaccinations but parents who CHOOSE not to have their children vaccinated because of poor scientific understanding, even poorer research skills, still poorer critical appraisal skills and lousy media reporting). We really are going to have to accept that individual freedoms are going to be limited, possibly in a quite unfair way and for the foreseeable future, to protect society as a whole. They better keep the money going round, or there’ll be a revolt as well.
I’ll be delighted to be wrong. I really will. But I simply can’t see any other way out of it.
