Exactly. Touching face is something most people do without thinking multiple times every day, and I honestly doubt it would make the slightest bit of difference anyway. 

Quicker in some cases

We are only dealing with facts here!

Again, I need to remind you that this is about getting the timing of measures right.

Let me illustrate the consequences of disproportionate over-reaction and panic.  There is a news item on BBC tonight of the impact on the tourism sector in north Yorkshire and the Lake District.  Self-catering bookings are being cancelled, hotel bookings are being cancelled, numbers are down at tourist sites.  This is lost income and lost jobs at a time when there are fewer than 400 cases across a country of 60 million people.

I'll say it again: you and Maunder and others have been proposing draconian, excessive and unnecessary measures that are out of all proportion to the current risk.  You seem incapable of recognising the absolute need to get the measures right for the risks at any point in time.

I am not being complacent.  I wish you were not over-reacting: you have been for two months.

We're certainly getting a case study in psychology  and the herd instinct.

Or could it be most of those are younger, fitter peòple whereas other areas with higher death rates have more vulnerable people infected?

Also just been reported on the BBC news.

Has she been to No.10 recently?

Yep

Nadine Dorries, a health minister, has become first MP to be diagnosed with coronavirus

She has been in Westminster for past week, met hundreds of people, and attended a No 10 reception hosted by Boris Johnson on Thursday

https://t.co/3seuE2NGYE

I've read some scientists/experts think the true numbers actually infected could be 10-20 times number of those actually being tested..

Could it be down to how individual countries are testing? Perhaps Germany has implicated a more thorough testing regime then that of say Italy or Iran. The latter two by and large testing those more symptomatic and the much milder cases are being missed. This would screw with the fatality % a lot. 

Exactly.

A piece on the situation in northern Italy said that, as we know, the virus was circulating undetected for several weeks and that a lot of cases were transmission within families.  That means that a lot of elderly people caught the virus and they're the ones being hospitalised and suffering the severest symptoms.

We know from the global stats that the mortality rate amongst the younger age groups and those not carrying pre-existing conditions is well below 1%.

f*ck

I think that there's something in this. It might also explain why a high proportion of parliamentarians have been affected. In addition to Dories, several French MP's have been diagnosed and a politician in Germany. The odds on so many MP's being affected in different countries would staggeringly remote if the official figures were correct.

i had a similar feeling after doing 18 months of weekly air travel. Body was just done. Not healthy.

where is saint with the usual inappropriate comment?

Yes but MPs are more likely than most to get it. They have constituency surgeries where they will see hundreds if not thousands of people every month. They travel to and from the capital city through crowded routes. A minister will also interact with more people as part of their line of work too.

Yes please?

Yes, fair point, though much of their contact with people would be fairly fleeting. 

Good to hear that HMG will increase significantly the number of tests done (from 1.5k to 10k daily), that together with meticulous contact tracing are probably very important. I still think though they probably need to take more measures now that don't have big economic impacts such us encouraging everyone who can work from home to start doing it, ban big gatherings of spectators etc.

We should try to lower the risk of anything like Lombardy happening here and not wait for a big increase in positive cases.

Isn’t Quantum’s sufficient on this occasion?

But where did she pick it up?