The UK population today is a little over 68 million. In crude terms the average life expectancy is 81.5 years (males a bit less, females a bit more). What that means is that every day around 2300 people die, and much the same number are born. We have become accustomed to reading about the daily death figures from COVID - reaching 1000 for a couple of days in April 2020 and 1200 for a few days in January 2021. Against a background of a daily average of 2300 those were scary numbers, but they lasted less than a week all told. At the time of writing the daily COVID deaths are under 100, having been down to single figures for much of the late spring and early summer.

At some point, probably fairly soon in the UK where vaccination has reached most of the adult population, COVID deaths are going to be no more remarkable than deaths from the usual three big killers - dementia, heart disease, cancer - whose numbers are not the stuff of headlines. (For what it's worth dementia carries off around 290 people a day, but no eyebrow is raised in consequence.)

Pandora's point is that fairly soon we, the public, are going to have to adjust to accepting that there is a new killer out there to which we will have to become accustomed, just as we are to dementia and all the other nasties awaiting us. Life, in short, will go on - as will death. COVID will probably carry off far fewer people annually than seasonal flu in an average year (some 13,000). And seasonal flu doesn't stop the trains being full. Social distancing will soon disappear, though the wearing of masks by those with a cold will become - as it always has been in Japan - de rigeur.

The railway will need to work hard to persuade the (non-)travelling public that they remain a lot more likely to die at home than they are in a train - maybe the industry needs to get an actuary or two to spread the word.