I have now been able to review the Warwick model that projects continuing Covid restrictions until late next year (1/7) https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/university-of-warwick-covid-19-vaccine-impact-forecast-13-january-2021

As I suspected, a key problem is a failure to re-calibrate the outcomes to reflect the impact of vaccination. This is the key assumption: "We sub-divide into the effects of protection against symptoms (disease efficacy) and reduction in transmission" (2/7)

However, if we believe the trial evidence, and emerging real-world experience, Covid-19 will look very different in a post-vaccine world. The model aggregates all infections to generate a 'disease burden'. (3/7)

It should distinguish between 'infections requiring hospitalization' and 'infections tolerable in the community'. The latter will be an increasing share of the total and the challenge to the health system will diminish accordingly. (4/7)

Vaccination protects the vaccinated person against most of the risk of severe illness and death so transmission is largely irrelevant. The actual risk is of a mundane respiratory illness, which humans have accepted for millennia. (5/7)

This means that most of the control apparatus is irrelevant. We need good surveillance and vaccine science to fine tune vaccines to match variants, as we do for influenza. Everything else is consuming resources that could be used more productively. (6/7)

It would be a poor solution to the coming employment crisis to prop up Test and Trace as a job creation scheme or quarantines as a subsidy to the hospitality industry. Let's use those resources to create real jobs in a functioning economy. (7/7)