Originally Posted by
Misco60
The reason we've passed a peak - if, indeed, we have - is the lockdown and the vastly reduced transmission rate.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany's foremost public health body, estimates today that if the infection rate rises to as little as 1.2 (i.e. each infected person infects 1.2 others) then Germany's health system will be overwhelmed within 3 months. And Germany has probably the best and most robust health system in Europe, if not the world.
Clearly, the lockdown can't last forever. But social distancing is going to be a part of life for a long time to come, and this will probably affect air travel more than most activities.
Guess it all depends on how long there are active cases, as when there are no coronavirus cases whatsoever, would be very hard to justify social distancing. That's what's happening in GR right now, there are only 10 new cases a day, and are trying to calm the public into delaying reopening as much as possible, but won't be able to sustain it too much longer, would be very hard to convince the public to stay home and socially distance when the virus is untraceable in public.
A UK scientist said that the peak was before the lockdown in the UK, as the highest death count taking into account the delay of deaths from catching the disease of a few weeks or so happened barely 2 weeks into the lockdown, but that the UK was pressured into locking down for political reasons, and that only Sweden held its nerve and never locked down but did social distancing, and Sweden did not have the zombie apocalypse many people predicted. They may be used as a model when all of this blows over and people start studying into what exactly happened here.
Most important tests are serology, how many people have had it? Then we see the real death rate, and how dangerous it really is, or if it was just a new flu that no one had and no one had immunity to, so it spread like wildfire.
If it comes back and lockdown happens again in Autumn, would it be sustainable to BA, or even the economy in general? I doubt it. Even the NHS needs money to survive, which comes from taxpayers who work.