[iainmerrick]

It’s a finger in the air estimate, based on “a vaccine is 12-18 months away”, expanded to “2 years for widespread deployment”, padded a bit for contingency.

As an intentionally pessimistic estimate, to counteract all the over-optimistic estimates, I think it makes sense.

Would you prefer it as “5 years until a return to normality”?

[nogabebop23]

But the argument "These estimates are way to optimistic; don't pay attention. Here's my equally ridiculous pessimistic estimate. Pay attention!" carries no weight. It's that annoying person who always stakes out the contrarian position just because.

So the headline and thesis have been successful in getting us discussing the situation, but the content is weak with no evidence from a source with zero credibility.

[iainmerrick]

I see what you mean, but I’m not sure how it could be improved.

For me personally, just saying “prepare for a much longer lockdown” wouldn’t be better; without a concrete number it makes much less of an impact.

With a concrete number in there, even if it’s very clearly just a guesstimate with huge error bars, it makes you think about what the effects might be in the real world, which I think is helpful (in fact it’s the very point of the whole post).