SA – “The main effect would be on control measures and test and trace which would have to be boosted to cope with the accelerated rate of transmission.”
Social restraint needs to increase to reduce R below 1 for the new variant, so that’s about 30% more restraint than in spring. But the more restraint we exercise the faster infections will fall and the less time we’ll have to put up with it.
Test and trace hasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell until we can get infections down into hundreds per day at most, AND we have quarantine facilities, AND guaranteed income. Currently there must be over a quarter of a million infected and therefore potentially infectious; there’s no hope of tracing everyone a quarter million have come into contact with every day, absolutely nowhere to isolate them if we did, and most can’t afford the time off work anyway so they’ll avoid getting tested in the first place.