14 days ago, Italy had fewer coronavirus cases than we do today. They employed similar public health measures to us. Now they have >7000 cases (366 deaths). Unless I'm missing something, this is us in a fortnight. Hopefully we won't wait that long before doing something more.

— Adam Kay (@amateuradam) March 8, 2020

Thanks PL. It's a lovely job, challenging at times but we have lots of fun too  

Take your fundamentalist glasses off even for just a day! The damn EU has nothing to do with this, the European governments can close their borders and stop flights whenever they want.

If that's the case (and I'm not sure it is quite too late for delay tactics to be entirely innefective) then it kinda does prove the point that complacency really was more dangerous than panic. In any case we are probably now going to end up with both.

And stocking up In Jan/Feb before sh1t started to hit the fan meant that my form of stockpiling probably had a positive effect in smoothly going from an increase in demand to an increase in supply. Compare it to the short term shock we are seeing now with everyone panic buying all at the same time.

Originally it was that I was panicing unnecessarily. Now it's that, okay perhaps there was something in it, but the timing was wrong. So people think it would have been better if I had been part of the panic buy that is now happening?

And also people claiming just a week or so ago that Lombardy was perfectly normal by showing webcams of Milan.

And yet now we have a health service that is on the brink of collapse and a quaratine that is starting to resemble Hubei.

If this happens in the UK we will be no better off than Italy. We must prevent it from happening here, like that, at all costs.

Once a vaccine for coronavirus is developed, it should be free.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 8, 2020

The most comprehensive study I can find (Chinese) was that:

81% have mild or no symptoms

13.8% develop serious symptoms 

4.7% become critically ill

www.livescience.com/amp/coronavirus-myths.html

The EU has nothing to do with this, but it sounds like the Brexit virus was both highly contagious and also causing long term brain damage.

lets see what he does after cobra but I think it’s too late anyway 

Believe it or not, people still go out in Milan and the supermarkets are not empty, normal life has not stopped/collapsed completely. It's obviously the overwhelmed healthcare system and the fact that a number of mainly elderly people will die that is the problem, together with the anxiety.

Interesting piece about women and children might handle virus differently to men.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51774777

I know you like drama, but we don't know what will happen. We could easily get the outbreak under control without overwhelming the NHS or having a high number of deaths. 

I don't think there's any right course of action any government could do in this kind of situation, but Labour need to make as much political capital out of this as possible by blaming Tory cuts (I said 'cuts').

It is possible, but for that to happen we cannot f*ck up even once.

If we end up with a sustained transmission cluster like Italy the NHS will collapse.

I'm very worried about France, Germany and Spain too. They are in a worse state than we are.

There have been visitors to Italy from many countries. Your suggestion that somehow 'free movement' through much of the EU is responsible is risible.

If China can get on top of this along with SK, Singapore and Japan (who are all a few weeks ahead of us) then so can we and our European neighbours. 

Why are the usual suspects being so over dramatic?  

The health service will not collapse. It will come under pressure and the quality of care will suffer; difficult choices will have to be made. But we will cope.

You've been worried for over two months, pouring out scare stories and hyperbolic predictions. Singapore is still functioning; China is getting it under control.

This can be managed and nobody is playing down the challenges but I really don't see how comments like those from you and, especially, Maunder, are helpful.

It depends how long he was in the country for. If he had been there for a number of weeks and before the disease began to affect Italy or it was already in the country but unknown to the Italian public at large, that would be a different matter. If he did go ton Italy after it was known that the country (the north at least) was suffering a pandemic, doing so was ill-advised to say the least.

I heard on BBC News yesterday that a member of the Scottish Women's rugby union team tested positive for coronavirus; they had played the Italians in their Six Nations competition in Italy a couple of weeks ago as did the men. I only hope no-one else from either team has been affected by it.

The thing is, most expert opinion at the moment reckons it is going to be a year to 18 months at least before a vaccine againt the disease is ready for public use.

Owing to red tape and the 'need' to do prolonged human trials. It could come to a situation where a risk assessment is taken to deploy the vaccine much earlier than would usually be the case. All depends which is seen as the more risky route. A fairly untested vaccine or rampant virus.

I only wish, as I'm pretty sure many other people do, that the Chinese has got this virus under control many weeks ago.

If they had done so say before the end of last year (when I think it was first discovered in the country) and had the authorities listened properly to the advice of the young doctor who tragically succumbed to the illness early on this year, then maybe, just maybe it might never have gone beyond their borders.

As someone said above, what we have now is a situation akin to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. This really is a horrendous situation.

Those safeguards are there for a very good reason.

Of course.

I'm merely saying the option would be there to deploy the vaccine earlier than would usually be the case. A vaccine is already in existence.

We shall see what happens, CC. It would be great if a vaccine was ready before the end of this year, but I would want, as I'm sure everyone does, to be pretty darn close to 100% sure that it was safe to administer to people before it was given to me.

Does anyone recall how long it took to develop the vaccine against swine flu? I recall that it was making a lot headlines back in the spring/summer of 2009 and I was given the vaccine against it in November of that year, as were the other members of my family.