You just can't get the economy going with the pandemic raging. The flights aren't running because nobody wants to travel. The economy vs health narrative is false and unhelpful.
As with anything in life, I don’t think it’s that black and white after 6 months of the pandemic in the mainstream here. People travel on aeroplanes for two reasons, business or pleasure.
Business has changed, the days of flying from London to New York or Singapore for a couple of meetings are gone. They were going down anyway, those business flights are full of 50+ year old technophobes. Of course, investment companies will still fly people to Geneva or wherever along with manufacturing companies such as your JLR’s to Czech - when needed.
The thing with business is that using communication technology is fine for current business, but new business is harder and there a constant leaky bucket of current business going and new business needed. Sales guys need to be making relationships and deals, so business travel isn’t dead, but I can’t see it reaching 2019 levels for a decade, if ever.
As for leisure, I don’t agree that nobody wants to travel. From my Instagram, plenty of people either want to go or are travelling. I would go away tomorrow if I could. The reservation is that I don’t want to go to a hotspot and catch it, I don’t want to pay £180 for a test, I don’t want to go somewhere that has its amenities shut and I don’t want to get stuck there. Flights to the Canary Islands have gone up so there is definitely demand!
People will lose patience soon with it all soon, so health will naturally be the trade off. The key KPI in my mind as I’ve posted before is keeping R below 1, the virus won’t die out in Britain - there’s no point in trying that tactic.
