Yes but no one knows how it will all play out in the end.
There are 3 ways out of this:
Immunity from infection
Immunity from vaccination or an effective medicine
Test like mad and hope it gets a country through their winter, and the 2nd wave. The 2nd wave is important as no country will be able to lockdown again. They will collapse as happened in the financial collapse with runs on the banks etc.
The UK has gone for option 1, and that's not because they are callous or stupid but because the experts think that the most important aspect is to avoid a 2nd peak. I think they may pragmatically switch to testing depending on current immunity levels, vaccine progress and the results of testing.
Most countries are coming through the 1st wave now. Deaths will fall significantly in the Northern Hemisphere. We don't know if it will fall close to zero, or tick over in the background but without any immunity some countries will be very prone to another wave in the late Autumn. The conservative strategy has some logic behind it and it's not callous. I suspect that there will be a vaccine, and that Germany, China, South Korea will all be able to hold it at bay but we that is really an act of faith. South Korea and China stopped it by mass testing but they have different environmental conditions. We don't know if it hits again in the Winter that we'd be able to do that. I am pretty confident that the UK will cope this Autumn because so many people have had it now. But what happens to those temperate states with very low immunity in the Autumn? No one knows. Everyone would like to think testing will hold it off but that's an act of faith.
It's an unbelievably difficult problem. it's not helped by suppressing the scientific opinion that's fed to government from SAGE. I have changed my opinion on the subject and still wobble around about it now as there's so much to understand and we don't have access to information or have a good understanding of the underlying science.
