We won't keep up 25% reduction when kids are back to school. As you pointed out we haven't even started to vaccinate the 20s, 30s and 40s the parents of those kids.
Of course, not per week, but I'm thinking from March the 8th we're effectively back to the similar 4-week lockdown we had in November to December. There was still a 40% reduction over that month (with schools open) so about 10% per week, which would be fair to assume is achievable still.
But I would say that 10% is at least, because:
Since November we've already had 3m
more cases which we have detected, and vaccinated about 23m people
So the way I'm reading that is by the 8th we will have near enough 40% immunity (assuming say 23m vaccinated and an extra 7m having had the virus in total, which is probably low ball), it's not enough for herd immunity but it's enough to suppress the R quite drastically (but this may be offset by new variants)
It's not approaching Christmas, where people were shopping more even in supermarkets
It's getting warmer, not colder, people spending more time outside, rather than inside
We will be starting from near 6k cases, rather than 20k cases
We test 600k per day now, rather than 300k in November
A month later that's another 12m vaccinated, which gets us up to 60% immunity
Obviously very quick fag packet numbers there, but the idea seems reasonable. I know the vaccine isn't 100% immunity before anyone pipes up, but to counter that I think we're probably more like 50% over that 7m that I said had already been infected, and I know some of the vaccinated will have already had it. 30m for vaccines and infections seems reasonable for by the 8th.
Based on all that I can still see us reducing 15% week on week with schools open, so a month after the 8th, by April the 8th we may even be down to 3k cases per day.
Even I don't think the Tories can mess this up now, but let's see what Boris says
