[tweetiepooh]

Was thinking over the weekend that an issue at the moment is that in the first lockdown the situation was novel, the weather was good and generally people thought that it was a brief intermission in normal life. Many folk got paid (and I know of a case because of the way it works got more money than working as prior years were good).

Now the weather is nasty, we see businesses folding, the days are darker (but lengthening) there is likely greater infection just due to time of year, more deaths maybe due to other respiratory illnesses around and morale is down which also affects how the body responds to disease.

Even the NZ model that they are fortunate that they can implement seems to have potential issues if you get false negatives. If the infected person remains asymptomatic they could spread things nicely before it's recognised.

I think the hope is that once the more vulnerable are vaccinated and that vaccine prevents infection (at best) or reduces symptoms to the "cold/flu" level then it becomes (to us) an endemic condition like cold/flu. Repeated infections even of variants would hopefully get to faster immune responses etc. Vaccinate where needed but generally it may work and hospitalisations are reduced down to "manageable".