COVID19

[Banquo]

Agreed. Sweden has at least 6 times more deaths per capita than Norway or Finland, so it would be difficult to single it out for praise.

You'd be amazed how many people are holding it up as a good example.

Playing devils advocate.....it might be in the long term. Assuming their current fatality rates will act as others, the Swedish economy will come out of this a lot stronger than most of Europe - more to spend on health, education etc etc. This isn’t just about how many people die in the first few months....

Depends on whether a reliable treatment, cure or vaccine arrives. They appear to be hoping it will burn out- they haven't adopted testing either.

I know, I am a CV19 expert

[Son of Mathonwy]

For businesses such as pubs & restaurants (and even more so, nightclubs), help is needed. They may not be commercially viable without government help. So if the government enforces policies which restrict profits, they need to subsidise the industry. That is going to cost, but if the alternative is that (say) most pubs go out of business, then it has to be done.

If in future they're bad business models then no we don't need to subsidise them, they're businesses not charities. Again you're just assuming there's a central pot to dip into, there isn't, rather we're already deep in the shit and we're going to take a long time about climbing out of it. I don't bemoan the action taken to smooth this first run at a lockdown, but the money being splurged now isn't something that can be done ad infinitum

1) Hopefully a vaccine or effective treatment will become available within 2 years. Then something much more like real business as usual could return. Would you be happy to temporarily prop up businesses that are only currently non-viable?

2) If no vaccine or effective treatment is possible and the virus mutates too quickly for herd immunity to really work, we will need to keep new measures (whatever they may be) in place indefinitely. The question then is, what value do we place on British culture? Are you really happy to see the last pub close knowing that a subsidy could keep it open? We appear happy to subsidise other cultural things, such as sport, the monarchy, the arts.

3) The level of the subsidy is an important matter. Below a certain amount, the subsidy would be less than the tax revenue taken in from the business (corporation tax, income tax & NIs, alcohol duty, VAT). Wouldn't it be economically rational to subsidise a struggling industry at least to this level?

[morepork]

The z-score is (actual deaths - mean deaths)/(standard deviation of deaths)

Dividing by the standard deviation effectively removes population size from the number, making the figures more comparable.
However, what you get is difference between the current deaths and the average, measured in standard deviations (eg England apparently being 49 SDs from the mean). But the SD used is, of course, that of the country in question, so what you are doing is comparing current deaths with a measure of their volatility in that country. This makes z-score good for comparing the country with itself in previous years, a little less good at comparing with other countries which have a different history (eg if a country has a rubbish healthcare system and normally has highly volatile mortality, its SD will be high, which will make its z-score relatively low for a given mortality level).

A calculation of excess per capita deaths, ie (actual deaths - mean deaths)/(population of country) will be better for comparisons with other countries, but obviously tells you nothing about performance compared with previous years. Anyway, they're different measures, they both have their place.

On top of this, we don't know (or at least I haven't found details of) how they calculate their means and standard deviations. I assume thay use data for the same week going back a certain number of years. But how many?

Maths aside, for those who don't know:
mean is the arithmetic average: the sum of a set of items / the number of items
Standard deviation is: square root of [for all items, the sum of (item - mean)^2]

The Z-score is a measure of the variance of individual data points from the population mean in a normally distributed data set. It is used in place of the t-test when unknown parameters , such as social distancing, give different scales in different populations. The Z-score standardized these different parameters for comparison of the different data sets. It will tell you what percentage of the normal distribution is occupied by individual values greater or lower than the mean. It is part of analyzing statistical power that tells you how many samples are needed to see a true biological difference in population means.

I would suggest though, that "black swan" events such as we are seeing now show that mortality figures are not normally distributed. As in economics, events which would be vanishingly unlikely in a normal distribution happen too often.

That’s kind of the point of normalizing to a Z score. Biological data sets are rarely completely normally distributed.

[Mellsblue]

You'd be amazed how many people are holding it up as a good example.

Playing devils advocate.....it might be in the long term. Assuming their current fatality rates will act as others, the Swedish economy will come out of this a lot stronger than most of Europe - more to spend on health, education etc etc. This isn’t just about how many people die in the first few months....

Depends on whether a reliable treatment, cure or vaccine arrives. They appear to be hoping it will burn out- they haven't adopted testing either.

I know, I am a CV19 expert

Oh yeah. I’m in no way saying I agree with their methods and, even if in 10 years some study says they had the least deaths from COVID and it’s tanking of the economy etc etc, I’m not saying you could pick up their model and move it to a different country with their different challenges.

As we know, the only true expert is Dom Cummings.

[Banquo]

Just FYI, a lot of 'elective' services are beginning to gear up again, and trusts are producing recovery plans, and I think this will be varying on a regional basis (which imo is how the NHS should have switched over in the first place). All the start up F2F consultations are 'urgent' (which will differ by service) and involve more or less full PPE, dependent on patient.

[Son of Mathonwy]

See Belgium. and indeed Ireland, who are roughly the same per capita as Sweden.

But you wouldn't hold either of them up as countries that are doing well. Ireland is doing a bit better than us, but is still 7th worst. And Belgium top of the list (ignoring San Marino et al).

correct, that was my point!! None are good examples- though there was an article in the Guardian written by a doc in Ireland a couple of weeks ago shaming the UK system- and then it kicked off over there, so its sometimes daft to claim victory.

Fair enough. I wasn't quite sure what you were saying

I think the only reason to use Ireland is that it's literally next door and if say Northern Ireland is doing noticeably worse than Ireland, then that says something. For some people comparisons with the Far East don't work: it's too different, can't identify with them etc. whereas we know damn well that we're much like the Irish (and I suspect quite a few, probably older, English people would be appalled to think they're less competent than the Irish).

[Son of Mathonwy]

I wasn't replying to you .
Its a lot more than common sense tbh.

It's going to take change, and some of it is not superficial. The government needs to get that into its head.

For health and education, some of these changes will make it less effective. And they will cost money.

For businesses such as pubs & restaurants (and even more so, nightclubs), help is needed. They may not be commercially viable without government help. So if the government enforces policies which restrict profits, they need to subsidise the industry. That is going to cost, but if the alternative is that (say) most pubs go out of business, then it has to be done.

For Pro Sports, clearly it will vary to some extent from sport to sport. For less commercially successful sports the government will need to subsidise them (more). For the big, prize-based sports such as tennis and golf, quite simply, the prizes must be reduced substantially (in a progressive way). For football and rugby etc players are largely paid by salary, so salaries need to be reduced. I suggest this would be done systematically, possibly led by government (internationally if possible), and in a formula-based and progressive way, so that those paid the most lose the greatest % of their contracted amounts. Obviously this is a complex legal area, but if each club is left to attempt to do this with each individual player it's going to be carnage.

Overall, this is going to cost. But the alternative is economic devastation.

They both sound like economic devastation to me! And deep change which will take a long time. Which bullets to bite is the big question.

The cost is big, but we're talking Great Depression times if these industries are allowed to fail or are outright banned.

Not mentioned earlier, but the retail sector needs serious help. Either a big change in tax and rates vs what the online businesses do, or subsidies. The alternative is that Amazon takes over everything and all our highstreets shut down for good. Also, this is a cultural issue - what kind of country do we want to live in?

[Banquo]

But you wouldn't hold either of them up as countries that are doing well. Ireland is doing a bit better than us, but is still 7th worst. And Belgium top of the list (ignoring San Marino et al).

correct, that was my point!! None are good examples- though there was an article in the Guardian written by a doc in Ireland a couple of weeks ago shaming the UK system- and then it kicked off over there, so its sometimes daft to claim victory.

Fair enough. I wasn't quite sure what you were saying

I think the only reason to use Ireland is that it's literally next door and if say Northern Ireland is doing noticeably worse than Ireland, then that says something. For some people comparisons with the Far East don't work: it's too different, can't identify with them etc. whereas we know damn well that we're much like the Irish (and I suspect quite a few, probably older, English people would be appalled to think they're less competent than the Irish).

I was commenting specifically on the Guardian article, which at the point of time written was proclaiming how much lower their mortality rate was- 3x at the time. Might have gone a bit early.

[Banquo]

It's going to take change, and some of it is not superficial. The government needs to get that into its head.

For health and education, some of these changes will make it less effective. And they will cost money.

For businesses such as pubs & restaurants (and even more so, nightclubs), help is needed. They may not be commercially viable without government help. So if the government enforces policies which restrict profits, they need to subsidise the industry. That is going to cost, but if the alternative is that (say) most pubs go out of business, then it has to be done.

For Pro Sports, clearly it will vary to some extent from sport to sport. For less commercially successful sports the government will need to subsidise them (more). For the big, prize-based sports such as tennis and golf, quite simply, the prizes must be reduced substantially (in a progressive way). For football and rugby etc players are largely paid by salary, so salaries need to be reduced. I suggest this would be done systematically, possibly led by government (internationally if possible), and in a formula-based and progressive way, so that those paid the most lose the greatest % of their contracted amounts. Obviously this is a complex legal area, but if each club is left to attempt to do this with each individual player it's going to be carnage.

Overall, this is going to cost. But the alternative is economic devastation.

They both sound like economic devastation to me! And deep change which will take a long time. Which bullets to bite is the big question.

The cost is big, but we're talking Great Depression times if these industries are allowed to fail or are outright banned.

Not mentioned earlier, but the retail sector needs serious help. Either a big change in tax and rates vs what the online businesses do, or subsidies. The alternative is that Amazon takes over everything and all our highstreets shut down for good. Also, this is a cultural issue - what kind of country do we want to live in?

I was kind of hoping there would be a third way tbh.....but no idea what that is.
On the high streets- they aren't the longest standing fixture in our culture, and would face a slow death anyway.....to play devil's advocate. Definitely agree on business rates in the normal world.

[Son of Mathonwy]

correct, that was my point!! None are good examples- though there was an article in the Guardian written by a doc in Ireland a couple of weeks ago shaming the UK system- and then it kicked off over there, so its sometimes daft to claim victory.

Fair enough. I wasn't quite sure what you were saying

I think the only reason to use Ireland is that it's literally next door and if say Northern Ireland is doing noticeably worse than Ireland, then that says something. For some people comparisons with the Far East don't work: it's too different, can't identify with them etc. whereas we know damn well that we're much like the Irish (and I suspect quite a few, probably older, English people would be appalled to think they're less competent than the Irish).

I was commenting specifically on the Guardian article, which at the point of time written was proclaiming how much lower their mortality rate was- 3x at the time. Might have gone a bit early.

Yeah, that's why I prefer to bang on about South Korea - they're not likely to catch us up. Ireland are doing better than us but they're in the same ballpark and could end up in a worse place.

[Son of Mathonwy]

The Z-score is a measure of the variance of individual data points from the population mean in a normally distributed data set. It is used in place of the t-test when unknown parameters , such as social distancing, give different scales in different populations. The Z-score standardized these different parameters for comparison of the different data sets. It will tell you what percentage of the normal distribution is occupied by individual values greater or lower than the mean. It is part of analyzing statistical power that tells you how many samples are needed to see a true biological difference in population means.

I would suggest though, that "black swan" events such as we are seeing now show that mortality figures are not normally distributed. As in economics, events which would be vanishingly unlikely in a normal distribution happen too often.

That’s kind of the point of normalizing to a Z score. Biological data sets are rarely completely normally distributed.

Makes sense.

[Digby]

For businesses such as pubs & restaurants (and even more so, nightclubs), help is needed. They may not be commercially viable without government help. So if the government enforces policies which restrict profits, they need to subsidise the industry. That is going to cost, but if the alternative is that (say) most pubs go out of business, then it has to be done.

If in future they're bad business models then no we don't need to subsidise them, they're businesses not charities. Again you're just assuming there's a central pot to dip into, there isn't, rather we're already deep in the shit and we're going to take a long time about climbing out of it. I don't bemoan the action taken to smooth this first run at a lockdown, but the money being splurged now isn't something that can be done ad infinitum

1) Hopefully a vaccine or effective treatment will become available within 2 years. Then something much more like real business as usual could return. Would you be happy to temporarily prop up businesses that are only currently non-viable?

2) If no vaccine or effective treatment is possible and the virus mutates too quickly for herd immunity to really work, we will need to keep new measures (whatever they may be) in place indefinitely. The question then is, what value do we place on British culture? Are you really happy to see the last pub close knowing that a subsidy could keep it open? We appear happy to subsidise other cultural things, such as sport, the monarchy, the arts.

3) The level of the subsidy is an important matter. Below a certain amount, the subsidy would be less than the tax revenue taken in from the business (corporation tax, income tax & NIs, alcohol duty, VAT). Wouldn't it be economically rational to subsidise a struggling industry at least to this level?

1, is interesting, if we don't prop up a lot of businesses we'll end up needing to prop up the banks. So we'll need to start working through what business models are viable, what support is needed and how it's funded. We don't have anything in place right now, only a first stab in the dark of several hundred billion, and that's not a lot.

2, what's your standard for culture? is it a nice traditional British pub on the village green serving actual beer, or is it a Wetherspoon or worse. Also I don't know why you're assuming it's a given we'd be subsidising other things like sport, the monarchy or the arts, we don't know what's going to be possible. I am willing to say I'd be willing to subsidise the last pub you note, I'd be willing to subsidise more than that, three maybe even four, but not the whole lot if they're not going to be economically viable, they'll need to find their own model that will work in whatever the future is

3, sounds like we need to change the tax system rather than administer to claim tax and then administer to hand out subsidy. raising NI is interesting, I'm pretty sure we'll be coming out of this either with a lot less people getting away with claiming their self employed, or with self-employed paying in effect the same rate of NI as PAYE, or at least a lot close

Whatever the future is we will need to look forwards and adapt to it, not think like Trump and try to protect what once was

[Son of Mathonwy]

The government has started reporting deaths with positive tests from outside the NHS. So a big increase to 26,097 cumulative deaths.

It's good that they've moved the reporting in the right direction, but it's still short of what you get using the ONS death certificates to 17th April (28k), let alone extrapolations from the death certificates (31k) and excess deaths numbers (44k). So still a big underestimate.

The danger is that this will muddy the waters making accurate estimates more difficult, but I guess as long as the ONS keep putting out their figures, we should be able to keep track of it. It'll be a bit difficult to reconcile the numbers till the ONS put out figures for this week.

[Son of Mathonwy]

If in future they're bad business models then no we don't need to subsidise them, they're businesses not charities. Again you're just assuming there's a central pot to dip into, there isn't, rather we're already deep in the shit and we're going to take a long time about climbing out of it. I don't bemoan the action taken to smooth this first run at a lockdown, but the money being splurged now isn't something that can be done ad infinitum

1) Hopefully a vaccine or effective treatment will become available within 2 years. Then something much more like real business as usual could return. Would you be happy to temporarily prop up businesses that are only currently non-viable?

2) If no vaccine or effective treatment is possible and the virus mutates too quickly for herd immunity to really work, we will need to keep new measures (whatever they may be) in place indefinitely. The question then is, what value do we place on British culture? Are you really happy to see the last pub close knowing that a subsidy could keep it open? We appear happy to subsidise other cultural things, such as sport, the monarchy, the arts.

3) The level of the subsidy is an important matter. Below a certain amount, the subsidy would be less than the tax revenue taken in from the business (corporation tax, income tax & NIs, alcohol duty, VAT). Wouldn't it be economically rational to subsidise a struggling industry at least to this level?

1, is interesting, if we don't prop up a lot of businesses we'll end up needing to prop up the banks. So we'll need to start working through what business models are viable, what support is needed and how it's funded. We don't have anything in place right now, only a first stab in the dark of several hundred billion, and that's not a lot.

2, what's your standard for culture? is it a nice traditional British pub on the village green serving actual beer, or is it a Wetherspoon or worse. Also I don't know why you're assuming it's a given we'd be subsidising other things like sport, the monarchy or the arts, we don't know what's going to be possible. I am willing to say I'd be willing to subsidise the last pub you note, I'd be willing to subsidise more than that, three maybe even four, but not the whole lot if they're not going to be economically viable, they'll need to find their own model that will work in whatever the future is

3, sounds like we need to change the tax system rather than administer to claim tax and then administer to hand out subsidy. raising NI is interesting, I'm pretty sure we'll be coming out of this either with a lot less people getting away with claiming their self employed, or with self-employed paying in effect the same rate of NI as PAYE, or at least a lot close

Whatever the future is we will need to look forwards and adapt to it, not think like Trump and try to protect what once was

2. I've no doubt we'll continue subsidising the monarchy . The others I'm less sure of.
For me, if it was purely for cultural reasons and they were thoroughly unprofitable, I can see a case for each town licensing 1 or 2 subsidised pubs (as long as Wetherspoons don't get the license).

They need to look ahead and decide what we really want to keep, how much can be achieved through reorganisation, how much it will cost. Before things disappear.

Having said all that, if they don't get the testing up and actually hire and train an army of contact tracers, no amount of reorganisation is going to allow us to leave lockdown (for any length of time).

[Son of Mathonwy]

The government has started reporting deaths with positive tests from outside the NHS. So a big increase to 26,097 cumulative deaths.

It's good that they've moved the reporting in the right direction, but it's still short of what you get using the ONS death certificates to 17th April (28k), let alone extrapolations from the death certificates (31k) and excess deaths numbers (44k). So still a big underestimate.

The danger is that this will muddy the waters making accurate estimates more difficult, but I guess as long as the ONS keep putting out their figures, we should be able to keep track of it. It'll be a bit difficult to reconcile the numbers till the ONS put out figures for this week.

Actually, the gov.uk site gives the updated numbers historically, so I can update my estimates straight away. All of them are higher:

Up to 17 Apr, we have:
Gov UK Covid-19 deaths: 16,879
All UK Covid-19 deaths: 20,909
So the total UK number is 23.9% higher than the Gov number.

Assuming this ratio holds to date, we have as of 29 Apr:
Gov UK Covid-19 deaths: 26,097
All UK Covid-19 deaths (extrapolated): 32,328

(If you don't like the idea of extrapolation, we can take the ONS number to 17 Apr and add to it the government numbers since then.
This gives us a very conservative, but fully confirmed total UK Covid-19 deaths to 29 Apr of: 30,127)


Ultimately a more important number is the excess deaths for any cause, if we assume Covid-19 is the main driver of the excess. Taking the ONS numbers for England and Wales (they don't have UK-wide numbers, so I have to assume the % excess in Eng&Wal is roughly that of the whole UK) to 17 Apr we have:
Covid-19 deaths: 19,054
Excess deaths compared with 5 year average: 26,829
We see that total excess deaths are 40.8% higher than ONS reported Covid-19 deaths.

Assuming this ratio holds to date, we have as of 29 Apr:
All UK excess deaths (presumably due to Covid-19): 45,519
which is 74% greater than the reported Government number.

[Digby]

2. I've no doubt we'll continue subsidising the monarchy . The others I'm less sure of.
For me, if it was purely for cultural reasons and they were thoroughly unprofitable, I can see a case for each town licensing 1 or 2 subsidised pubs (as long as Wetherspoons don't get the license).

They need to look ahead and decide what we really want to keep, how much can be achieved through reorganisation, how much it will cost. Before things disappear.

Having said all that, if they don't get the testing up and actually hire and train an army of contact tracers, no amount of reorganisation is going to allow us to leave lockdown (for any length of time).

I've no idea if we even subsidise the monarchy as things stand, it's a tricky judgement when it comes to tourism and lord knows what other factors. If the future is more problematic and tourism/travel isn't a thing then that's a big reason for them gone in terms of domestic revenue and foreign soft power. However if we'd be binning the royal family, and I certainly wouldn't have them if starting from scratch, then you'd be looking at a lot of parliamentary time to make technical changes to how UK law works, and one might think parliament has better things to do with its time, I would.

[Son of Mathonwy]

2. I've no doubt we'll continue subsidising the monarchy . The others I'm less sure of.
For me, if it was purely for cultural reasons and they were thoroughly unprofitable, I can see a case for each town licensing 1 or 2 subsidised pubs (as long as Wetherspoons don't get the license).

They need to look ahead and decide what we really want to keep, how much can be achieved through reorganisation, how much it will cost. Before things disappear.

Having said all that, if they don't get the testing up and actually hire and train an army of contact tracers, no amount of reorganisation is going to allow us to leave lockdown (for any length of time).

I've no idea if we even subsidise the monarchy as things stand, it's a tricky judgement when it comes to tourism and lord knows what other factors. If the future is more problematic and tourism/travel isn't a thing then that's a big reason for them gone in terms of domestic revenue and foreign soft power. However if we'd be binning the royal family, and I certainly wouldn't have them if starting from scratch, then you'd be looking at a lot of parliamentary time to make technical changes to how UK law works, and one might think parliament has better things to do with its time, I would.

True, it's hard to know the net cash impact of the monarchy. Personally I'd bin them for reasons of egalitarianism rather than cash, anyway. But that's a whole other topic!

[Eugene Wrayburn]

We don't subsidise the monarchy. We appropriate income from land the monarch owns and give her a stipend. When it originally started the civil list probably was a subsidy but I don't think it has been for several decades.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

[Digby]

We don't subsidise the monarchy. We appropriate income from land the monarch owns and give her a stipend. When it originally started the civil list probably was a subsidy but I don't think it has been for several decades.

We also don't follow up when we know they bullshit about their tax liabilities, not even with the chap who expects to be king in the name of honour but can't be asked to pay his fair dues alongside those he'd be king of which one assumes he thinks he does with honour. That that does rankle with some, the establishment is absurdly forgiving of errors in persons like Vince Cable, it positively fawns over the likes of Charles.

[canta_brian]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

This year s a little more positive than some of the takes in the WHO info last weekend.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... s-immunity

[Banquo]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

This, I'm afraid.

[Donny osmond]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

This makes sense to me, but it begs the question how long do we wait? An effective way of being immune might not be available for years, the virus might (prob will, already has??) mutate, etc so how long do we wait before simply accepting a higher mortality as a new baseline and trying to get society moving again?

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[Sandydragon]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

Damn right. Any pro sport needs to look after itself. I know there are people who have jobs in this sector who aren't earning megabucks, but there re more deserving targets for the government funding available. If pro sport cannot survive then so be it.

[Sandydragon]

If we get to the stage where it becomes clear that no vaccine or hard immunity is going to happen due to rapid mutation then there are hard conversations to happen. It seems to me that we will need to go back to more or less normal and just accept that more people will die. Yes there will need to be measures to limit that a bit but it won't be social distancing because it simply isn't sensibly possible. The best we can hope for is better handwashing and a culture of mask wearing. Anything else just isn't viable. The government would not be able to borrow enough to subsidise every business which would be affected (which is every business that has people). That is not to say that there shouldn't be some government assistance but the idea that they'd be subsidising rugby is fanciful.

This makes sense to me, but it begs the question how long do we wait? An effective way of being immune might not be available for years, the virus might (prob will, already has??) mutate, etc so how long do we wait before simply accepting a higher mortality as a new baseline and trying to get society moving again?

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There are some signs that patience is already running out. I don't think the government can keep the lockdown in place for more than another month (2 max)or so before it becomes very hard to enforce. At that point many businesses will be going under and I suspect the daily death rates will be very low and there will be a lotto pressure to get some kind of normality back.

Reading some of the comments in the media over a 70+ continued lockdown (plus those who are vulnerable) and its clear that nothing will be popular and enforcement will be very hard indeed. I also don't see how a return to normal can happen until children are back in school or nursery. Otherwise much of the workforce is going to be looking after kids. There is no easy solution to this and ai guarantee someone will lose out and be pissed off as a result.