The medical opinion is that if we enact the various safety measures such as protecting our doctors and nurses with sufficient PPE, having a proper testing system with a track and trace for those in the society who have come close to an infected person, to have a sensible measure when people are entering the country through our airports, and to keep the spare hospital capacity available for when we have a second spike in people laid low by the virus then we should be ok.
Unfortunately we have little confidence in any of the medical experts paraded each evening on our television screen nor the politicians who sign off on these preconditions. Promises have been made and broken over and over again by the politicians and our trust in the political establishment is at rock bottom.
Therefore when we return to work we know there will be an upturn in death from the virus and it's really a matter of how far these deaths will become acceptable and common place.
We don't analyse the dangers of a car journey or that the plane we due to fly in will crash, we assume that in a long list of medical complications we won't be on that list and in fact throughout life, it's optimism which keeps us going otherwise we would be crushed by a host of 'what ifs'.
The virus, and there are others heading our way, easily transferable through air travel, viruses which spend their lives in the animal kingdom but have learnt how to cross the species barrier and infect humans just as they do animals and are queuing up to inflict what is a purposeless process of cell destruction. If there there ever was such a thing as a creative scheme behind life's evolution then this seems pretty pointless.
Animals are allowed to die or are exterminated to prevent disease spreading and so a far less less draconian method such as permanently isolating the ones at high risk whilst at the same time compulsory testing is carried out when a person enters a high density environment such as a train or a bus, when they enter a shop or office or a sports arena with an immediate response if shown positive. We need a litmus test which shouts at us as soon as it turns blue, we need infra red temperature monitoring at home and in the street to tell us who has it and who hasn't. We need to adjust our sense of freedom or alternatively go to live in a society which is not as strict. We need to rearrange our priorities and if the overseas holiday is one of them, we have to accept quarantine when we get back. Sadly the general groundswell of comment coming back from business is get them back irrespective "I need to make money". The economy and making money in the short term will be the deciding factor. Ensuring safety for the population at large always did come far down the list.
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