Yesterday's announcement was also a distraction from the fact that the schools system nearly collapsed last week, and this has not been talked about enough. https://twitter.com/libcomorg/status/1241314773406547968

The schools were kept open in order to keep everyone else at work, and for no other reason (except maybe spreading infection faster). They will still be open next week for the children of everyone from nurses to delivery drivers to journalists.

Once first 7 day, then 14 day self isolation was announced for individuals and families with any symptoms, there was mass absenteeism in the school system, students and teachers.

Enough teachers off with coughs and fevers that schools were closing at lunch time or telling entire year groups not to come in for a day. Suspending attendance policies for self isolation but also for just voluntarily staying away to keep numbers down.

Need to remember that schools were not just simply 'not closed' but that headteachers would be under threat of legal action or replacement if they closed unilaterally - the schools were forced to stay open.

The new model, of 'key workers' and their children kept going, while everyone else is at home (paid or not) may end up the model for the broader 'back to work' strategy.

Boris Johnson already floated this earlier in the week talking about antibody tests, like the one being developed in Singapore. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/singapore-claims-first-use-antibody-test-track-coronavirus-infections

Mass testing of current cases and tracing (which the UK is not doing at all) would have helped to slow transmission. The antibody test tells you who's already had it and potentially immune (for an unknown amount of time).

People who test positive for an antibody test, theoretically at least, don't need to social distance. So they can be sent back to work alongside those who have been at work all along.

This leaves people who haven't been infected yet stuck at home and economically inactive until there's a widely available vaccine.

If the full herd immunity strategy resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths was seen as politically unviable and potentially resulting in mass social unrest, then we could be looking at an adaption to an 'immune workforce' once those tests become available.

Here's Bill Gates explixitly talking about a 'fit to work' certificate.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/A-coronavirus-AMA