timelets

Is time irreversible? Would that it were! On the contrary, it is reversible-so reversible that it is possible not to have made any progress since the time of the Romans. Now if things stagnate, we can hardly make a distinction between 1871 and 1875, except on the calendar, which does not amount to very much.

--- Bruno Latour. TPoF, 1993.

And seeking to prejudice his son against Greek culture, he indulges in an utterance all too rash for his years, declaring, in the tone of a prophet or a seer, that Rome would lose her empire when she had become infected with Greek letters. But time has certainly shown the emptiness of this ill-boding speech of his, for while the city was at the zenith of its empire, she made every form of Greek learning and culture her own.

It was not only Greek philosophers that he hated, but he was also suspicious of Greeks who practised medicine at Rome. He had heard, it would seem, of Hippocrates' reply when the Great King of Persia consulted him, with the promise of a fee of many talents, namely, that he would never put his skill at the service of Barbarians who were enemies of Greece. He said all Greek physicians had taken a similar oath, and urged his son to beware of them all.


--- Plutarch, the Lives, Cato the Elder: 23.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Cato_Major*.html

The fundamentals of the virus have not changed either - one person infected will, without a lockdown, pass it onto three others on average.

Cutting those infections by 60-70% is what it takes to keep cases down. At the moment that means cutting our human contact by that amount.
....

The idea of immunity passports or certificates is constantly doing the rounds - if you've had the disease you have a test and if you have antibodies that can kill the virus then you can go about your daily life.

However, there are a number of scientific challenges.

We don't have an accurate antibody test. We don't know how long immunity might last. And we don't know that even if antibodies stop you from becoming ill whether they are enough to stop you harbouring the virus and spreading it to others.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52183295