As of June 2020, the only safety measures available to those considered vulnerable are social distancing coupled with restraint as far as venturing outside the home is concerned.

The big question is when there will be a medical solution available to protect us.

The best available answers do not make for good reading.

There are three avenues being pursued. The first is the re-purposing of existing vaccines, modified to ‘code’ the corona virus. There are trials taking place in, amongst other places, Oxford, England. There are indications that they may have an effective artificial vaccine by the end of the summer 2020.

Antibody infusions may be possible by the end of this year, but that is perhaps optimistic.

A proper vaccine will take most of next year to bring on to the market. In other words, not even in time for inclusion in the flu-jab 2021.

At the moment where I live, around 1 in 400 people are currently infected with the corona virus. If you come in contact with one of those people, and they cough or sneeze anywhere near you, you may pick up the virus. It may take until the end of 2021 – next year – before you can reasonably and effectively protect yourself against infection.

In anyone’s book, that’s a long time to hold your breath!

I am one of those people that likes to visualise how much longer something will last. The lockdown has lasted for 2,5 months so far. In those terms, we are probably not even half way towards the possible introduction of an artificial vaccine, and only a quarter of the way towards the possible introduction of antibody infusions. We will have to wait 9 or 10 times longer than we have already spent in lockdown before a vaccine is available.

The other thing we cannot forget is that although these medical interventions will not be introduced until it has been demonstrated that they work, the one piece of information we will not yet have is for how long vaccinations or antibody treatments provide protection. Such information is only available retrospectively; it cannot be predicted in the case of a virus that was not even known about until the end of last year.

Will we need an annual booster? Or possibly every 6 months? Hopefully at the most once a year – that at least would work with the current annual flu jab.

What I have noticed is that in order to keep up to date with the different developments it is necessary to actively look for the information. The media has already started scaling back its reporting, but fortunately we live in an age where searching the internet is easy.

For those of us who know that will almost certainly suffer complications following a corona infection, keeping abreast of the news, including how people around us are sticking to the rules, is important. The consequences of the measures needed to try and avoid infection will be with us for a period of years, not just months. In some respects, it remains necessary that the casualty figures and analyses constantly figure in the news. It is only when people are reminded that corona has not yet been beaten that the necessity of social distancing can be impressed on society as a whole.