Just being curious - what do you think will happen .....

[Kaz]

I'm quite comfortable with cutting back, cooking from scratch, etc - I was a single mum for a few years, and lived quite well on very little - but it's the curtailment of freedom, and meeting up with friends that I am struggling with. I am a sociable person, so this is hard

[TheOstrich]

Short term, I think we will begin to see a lot of small businesses restart trading before too long, lockdown or not. I suspect it may not be so much the Government releasing us from the lockdown, more a case of the Government accepting it's taking place anyway behind their backs and bowing to the inevitable! People need to work to survive and that will be the driving factor. An example locally is that motor repair shops have reopened, initially for key workers, now for all-comers with key workers just getting priority.

I think social distancing may become the new norm, at least for a year or so, which isn't going to be good news for many pubs, clubs, theatres, restaurants, so on. I know of at least two such businesses locally which have now closed for good (one pub, one wine bar). It will be very interesting to see how the pub / café culture reshapes or reinvents itself.

The virus will almost certainly have hastened the final demise of the High Street, the use of hard cash, and the commute to office regime. There will be much more reliance on electronic forms of communication and finance.

We have already seen one great change in transport - railways have effectively been re-nationalized! The franchise system was looking like a dead duck anyway; the Government has had no alternative but to pull the plug on it even before the Williams Review publication. I believe air travel will be drastically cut back and it will be interesting to see if the package holiday and the leisure cruise industry survives all this. I have no problem with the likes of Virgin Atlantic going to the wall.

I hope we will finish up living a more simple lifestyle - of course that's easy for me to envisage being an oldie living in a rural area - but I do wonder what will happen in our towns and cities. Will we see a breakdown of social order?

Still, there's one thing that will always remain an absolute certainty, virus or not. There'll always be repeats of Midsomer Murders and Poirot on the Drama Channel …..

[cromwell]

The economy will have to restart soon; it has to.

Easy to say for those who don't live in big cities, maybe. Looking at the pictures of public transport in London you wonder how the entire population of the city hasn't been stricken. Working from home will become more widespread. Probably eating habits will return to normal pretty quickly, with the proviso as Os says that many restaurants will already have gone bust and more will follow.

I hope the government and the whole apparatus of government will have learned lessons but maybe not. It has been made painfully obvious that huge lumbering quangos have utterly failed in their responsibilities.

The good things that will stand out in my mind are the many kindnesses shown by ordinary people towards each other. Also the better air quality, the empty roads. I don't think I will ever see the like again.

Like Gal though, I don't think we have seen the last of Covid 19. Before January 1st there wasn't one known case in the UK. Look where we are less than four months later. As it is so infectious, it will be back. What we desperately need is a jab in the arm that knocks it for six.

I do think that standards of hygiene will improve from where they were. Social distancing will stay in place for months.

Lessons learned for me will be the importance of family and friends. Man is a social animal; self imposed isolation is not a natural state of affairs for us.

I don't think we will be totally back to normal in a year. People will remember how they had their lives go topsy turvy inside weeks and be wary of it happening again.

Like it or not there is going to be considerable resentment towards China. Things can't be just business as usual with them after their actions have turned the whole world upside down.

When there is some semblance of normality our family - us, son daughter, significant others and sis in law - are going out for a meal and I'm paying.

[meriad]

Well, interesting office call this morning - now confirmed that we definitely will be working from home through to end May and then depending on Government guidelines start a phased return and amend office seating to ensure social distancing can be maintained etc. A few colleagues have however already quite clearly stated that they will not be coming back into the office unless it is business critical and will continue to work from home until they feel it is safe to return - and who knows when that will be. Thankfully we seem to be able to work OK remote, but in a way that potentially may put my job at risk because realistically about 80% of it is actually office based so could be a very interesting (ie worrying) few months ahead. I suspect, if anything, I'll work from home 3 days a week and drive in 2 days for a few hours.... who knows

[Gal2]

Speaking personally, I can't see how my job will get back to normal....we HAVE to be up close and personal, or we can't do the job - especially the Optoms. So there's no way we can work from home, we'd HAVE to be in store, and our stores aren't enormous so the desks would be quite close together.

I'm worried we'll fold. I have no contingency plans if we do

[Kaz]

Oh Ria, Gal, that is worrying

[TheOstrich]

Can your stores operate with just a skeleton staff, Gal, to maintain distancing? Obviously it would mean fewer appointments in number, which might mean it's not financially viable, but it might be a way forward?

[Workingman]

Ria and Gal have just summed up the problem for government, millions of workers, hundreds of thousands of businesses and also the rest of us - how do we get out of this?

If we cancel the lockdown and go for herd immunity we risk hundreds of thousands of deaths, overwhelming the NHS and also doing severe damage to the economy, but, many argue, we also get back to some form of 'normal' a lot quicker.

If we do a staged relaxation of the lockdown we might get some of us back to work, but we also risk a return of the virus, another peak, and another venture into the unknown. There are thoughts that we could do this a number of times before it all clears up.

Or we keep on doing what we are doing and with testing and more testing hope that infections reduce to the point where we can allow those least likely to become infected, those under 40 or so, to go back to work in order to keep the economy limping along until a vaccine is found.

There are obvious dangers with all those strategies from mental and physical health to mission fatigue to social unrest....

As things stand I would go for the second option providing we use the time(s) bought to ramp up testing and tracing (had it and recovered, not had it, antibodies) get PPE (for everybody) sorted out, getting the right treatment kit / drugs into hospitals, and funding research into and production of a vaccine - all of those as absolute priorities and not just words at a podium.

[JoM]

John’s down to working four days now, so that’s knocked 20% off his wages. His boss told him two weeks ago that last week would be his last working week and he’d be furloughed after last Thursday but last Thursday came and his boss had scheduled him in for a video meeting on the following Monday and another for today and said that he’d still be working. John’s the design office manager and the rest of his staff are no longer working, John’s now doing their work too and in four days is easily exceeding 40 hours. Luckily he can shut himself off in the home office and get on with it. There’re only three of them in the UK company who haven’t been furloughed and he spoke to his boss yesterday and he said that he doesn’t plan on getting the rest back to work until the end of June at which time they’ll all return to the office but he doesn’t think they’ll go back to full hours/pay until the end of the year.

We’re still scheduled to go on holiday in four weeks It’s not yet been cancelled and the worry is that we won’t get a refund as a lot of the travel companies are now offering a credit note instead and trying to refuse cash refunds. We’re booked with Virgin and the best we can do at the moment is change the holiday to travel sometime before December 2021 but I’m not sure I’d want to travel unless there’s a treatment or vaccine available and anyway, looking at the same holiday next year - including travelling the same dates - and the prices have been pushed right up, almost doubling in cost.

Gal and Ria, I hope things work out for you both xx

[manxie]

Here in the Isle of Man from tomorrow construction horticulture and some other trades who do not need contact will be starting work again also builders suppliers hardware etc window cleaners and such joe public also can move freely unless having symptoms the 6 foot rule though stays and no social gatherings as yet but many now can work and earn again. pubs cafes, shops other than food also are still shut.

Manxie xx