I hope there listening to scientists and not big business or the public. As for restaurants, gyms and pubs I will be very surprised if they give any indication of dates for reopening, though many other countries have.
All decisions have to balance health with the effect on the economy - we do it all the time with NICE, who regard treatments costing <£20k per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) as
cost-effective for the NHS, with the value-for-money tapering off above that depending on various factors.
To take one extreme - would it be practical to close down the entire economy for 30 years to reduce deaths from traffic accidents?
Pubs are going to be the tough one, although I can sort of see a route that involves beer gardens only, table service and/or app ordering rather than going to be bar, and wearing masks to go to the toilet. But missing Easter and bank holidays alone will be a big hit for pubs, let alone the summer events, and being 50% open (with 100% of the costs) is going to be less economic than being closed.
Schools should remain closed.
They are the PERFECT spreading ground for the virus
And what are your qualifications as an epidemiologist?
Because school closures are something that most serious epidemiologists regard as pretty debatable - partly because of the second order consequences, kids don't just go off school and stay isolated in their bedrooms at home, they still go out to play/hang out on street corners/snog their girlfriends etc. And then there's the effect on key workers having to stay off work to look after their kids and so on.
Also although it's still early days, children appear to be not
particularly susceptible/transmissible for this particular virus. One of the British kids who got it in the very early days
failed to transmit it to any of his 72 contacts, including his two siblings. The data is not conclusive, but eg
this study in Science estimated that in general children transmit at a third of the rate of adults. That's not insignificant of course, but is a factor to balance against the other effects of opening schools.
Tbh, I dont know a lot about this but dont the weaker versions die off and the stronger ones survive - i.e. darwinism?
Drunkula beat me to it - but a virus doesn't want to kill its host, or make the host so ill that they stay in bed away from friends and workmates. An ideal virus causes a bit of a cold - lots of sniffles to spread fomites around the environment, but something that people will "power through" in the company of other potential hosts. Killing your host is terrible news for a virus, it can't spread in a coffin.
