i was thinking today how catastrophic a long third wave would be. of course that goes without saying. but if someone told me i have to lockdown for another 3 or 4 months after june say, i honestly don't know if i have enough in the tank to do it. and i consider myself osmeone who has coped reasonably well.
The lockdown decision equations have probably evolved substantially. eg consider these sorts of factors:
We saw how slowly and incompletely they decided to tackle the 2nd wave, especially for its initial months where numbers were increasing in slow motion compared to the visible part of the first wave. Really explosive growth in daily hospitalisations was required before they would blink and u-turn, and even then they delayed as much as they could.
The politics and public perceptions of risk have further evolved since the previous waves. This is a complex subject which can push things in either direction, eg if you expect less public complaince with the basic rules, lower personal perceptions of risk, then stronger application of the brakes in other areas may be required. But they also hesitate to impose restrictions that they think huge numbers of people will ignore, they dont want to open cans of worms where the public call their bluff on compliance to a much greater extent than seen previously.
Large prior waves of infection and mass vaccination have moved the population immunity picture onwards. This moves certain calculations closer to their original pre-mid-March 2020 hopes of pursuing a herd immunity approach than they were before. This will tempt them to push on and to be slower on the brakes, although there are still limits. All the modelling that shows waves has the level of remaining population susceptibility at its heart, and that variable has changed over time, now more than ever via vaccination programmes and how big the first 2 waves were.
They have done some work setting this scene by changing rhetoric, eg downplaying R and overall infection rates, and more talk of learning to live with Covid. And making clear that they expect some level of death to be ongoing.
They will hope that seasonal factors and things like schools being closed for summer holidays will take some of the strain that would have otherwise needed to be handled via more direct application of the brakes.
In conclusion I cannot promise no more lockdowns, timetable delays or u-turns. Because of the complexities of the stuff I just mentioned, but also because of unknowns in terms of mutants with the ability to escape vaccine-induced protection. But I can say that their equations have evolved, they've got more wiggle room, and they've demonstrated in the 2nd wave what they will use that wiggle room to avoid doing for as long as possible. And with theoretical light at the end of the tunnel, the temptation to stretch such inaction even further will be high. What I cannot judge yet is whether that sense of the end game being in sight will cause them to be more cautious and pro-active at any point. They did seem to take account of it when coming up with the fairly slow relaxation timetable. Perhaps in future, for example, fairly short circuit-breakers that they previously resisted may seem more appealing under certain scenarios this time around, if they think there is a bump they can almost manage looming, and just want to take the edge off it so that it falls within manageable limits.
www.theguardian.com
