Ministers will soon have a huge decision to make. Throughout the pandemic the overriding aim of government policy has been to stop the NHS being overwhelmed. At some point in the spring, thanks to the vaccines, that risk will likely be averted. 1/10

In the coming weeks, hospitalisations & deaths should start to fall quite significantly as more vulnerable people are vaccinated. But vaccination will have less impact on cases (for now), because cases are disproportionately among younger groups. 2/10

When the aim of avoiding the NHS being overwhelmed has been achieved, the strategy that has driven policy for almost a year will be redundant. What will replace it? What becomes the aim then? That’s the big decision ministers are grappling with. 3/10

Do they lift almost all restrictions once that risk is averted? Much harder to justify them if the risk of people dying is so much lower. But lifting restrictions will likely lead to a spike in cases and still carries risks: long COVID, absenteeism etc. 4/10

Difference is, the risks will become more to individuals and less to society. So the decision will partly be an ideological one: how much is it the role of the government to protect an individual’s health, once the risk to state institutions and the collective is much lower? 5/10

Boris Johnson is instinctively libertarian. Will he decide the state still needs to forcibly protect younger people’s health, including with draconian restrictions? Will be big pressure from many Tory backbenchers to lift measures. 6/10

Plus we will reach a point when health costs of restrictions will outweigh the health benefits. Chris Whitty has been clear for months that ministers will at some point have to decide how many Covid deaths they are willing to accept, given the huge costs of restrictions. 7/10

BUT it’s not just about individual risk. Just because the demands on the NHS will be less, they will still be there. Less pressure on ICU yes, but millions of younger ppl getting Covid still places demands on hospitals, GPs, paramedics, long Covid centres etc. 8/10

Plus the higher the number of cases, the greater the chance of mutations, and the greater the risk to vulnerable people who haven’t been vaccinated or who vaccine wasn’t effective for. So letting virus spread among younger people has big risks of its own. 9/10

It’s likely that for these reasons some measures will stay in place for some/much of summer, or until most adults are vaccinated, and there will be swift action to tackle local spikes. But from spring, things should look a lot more normal than they have in a long time. 10/10