I have been trying to find / formulate an answer to a question but so far no luck. The question is: what happens next?
If we are all disciplined and remain in our current mode, new cases should begin to drop off, people suffering will recover or inevitably die and theoretically ( I stress theoretically) we could reach a point where the virus has all but gone. ie no live samples left anywhere. It's a stretch but possible. At present with everyone distancing, really the only transmission is going to be from places like hospitals to home but with the strict measures in place in the NHS even this should be pretty unlikely. Isolated cases within households will begin to die back too once everyone iin the familiy has been exposed.
So we are heading toward a point where we're all in our homes except for those recognised exceptions, virtually no one in hospital but, and here's the thing, only around 1 million of the UK's population for around 65million will have had the disease.
What happens then? There's no vaccine, no cure, no effective treatments, no heard immunity, still so how do we manage the next phase? If the virus only made you a bit poorly, then so what. But it doesn't, it can kill. So until all those whom it may kill have been through it, as it were, we have to remain as we are. It's not as though we can have a controlled exposure, is it? Given that some very ordinary folk have died, the percentage left in over 60 million people is going to be pretty high. We've flattened the curve, but if we all behave and don't transmit the virus further, aren't we in danger of actually going too far? Don't we need to maintin a trickle of cases going through the system to gradually get everyone exposed?
I'd appreciate any serious thoughts. Because I am a bit stumped.
Next thing is that people will think that it's all over and done with, come out of their isolation and as we know, nature will find a way and the whole thing will kick off again a bit like boom and bust. I guess the problem is how do we manage transmission rates moving forward so that we don't swamp the NHS but also get people through in a timely fashion so the UK at least can begin to function again.