In the absence of vaccines, Covid-19 would force us to make the difficult choice between trying to live with the virus or trying to eliminate it. For an uncomfortably large number of people, living with it would mean dying with it. We could try to shield the vulnerable while a measure of herd immunity was built up, but shielding is harder than it sounds and there are a lot of vulnerable people out there. Non-pharmaceutical interventions, up to and including lockdowns, could be used to spread the epidemic over a longer period of time to avoid overwhelming the health service, but the policy would still involve around one in 150 people dying.
[See also: Gabriel Scally on why it’s not too late for the UK to pursue a zero-Covid strategy]
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