Same site .

At the end of the day it is for the government to make the call and it should be based on the advice it is given. However, if things go badly wrong (e.g. more than 100,000 deaths) they need to be held accountable. As a non-expert my view is a number of things should have been done differently in the last 10 days. So a few examples: schools should now be closed, theme parks closed, large gatherings banned, restrictions put on the hospitality business etc.  

If Johnson and co had done more a month or more ago to put the necessary measures in place to try to limit the impact of coronavirus on the UK as much as was humanly possible, we may have been looking at a less grim situation now.

The retarded reactions of the Johnson Government will cost people their lives.  Many thousands very probably.  This is a gigantic experiment and Johnson is using The British people as the "control".  When the death toll soars here compared to nations who acted quickly he should be made to pay the price.  For Johnson and his acolytes  its money that has been calibrated as being more important than the safety of the people.

Gatherings of 500+ people in Scotland are being banned as of this weekend, it wss announced by Nicola Sturgeon yesterday and has already been mentioned in here.

Speaking as another non-expert, my own view is that as things stand now, it is probably too late to halt the rate of infection. However, as I said above, if our government and others elsewhere had fully realised the seriousness of what started to develop in the far east a couple of months ago and had taken the necessary steps at that time, then I reckon that we may well have been better able to have at least limited the impact of the virus on the UK and other countries, even if keeping it out completely was never going to be realistically possible.

I made the comment to Maunder yesterday that we would have had to close our borders with many countries back in mid-January if we were intent on trying to stop it reaching us. That, by the way, would have meant quarantining all returning British residents for at least two weeks. This is because the virus was going around from early January, spreading out as people moved from Wuhan and elsewhere in China.

Do you really think that was ever remotely foreseeable? I don't.

Once a virus is in circulation that is contagious before symptoms appear, that can result in symptoms indistinguishable from flu and other Coronavirus variants or leave people asymptomatic, there really is no mechanism of any sort that can stop it spreading.

But, let's say that draconian measures were put in place two months ago. What state would the country be in after nine weeks?

Well said, WI.

Did you watch the BBC News clip I linked to? The Oxford Professor?

What we know:

• No country will now escape herd levels of infection over time


• There will be no vaccine available for widespread use this year, and probably not until the middle of next year for many countries


• Herd levels of infection will be reached before a vaccine is widely available


• Given the above, we have to protect the vulnerable in society so as not to overload our health services


• The process of not overloading our health services means that we try to manage the number of infected WITHOUT stopping the infection completely to attain our herd levels over time


• Stopping the infection through overuse of lockdown measures will create a potential spike after those measures are removed that will overwhelm our health services and result in more deaths, so we need to avoid that scenario


• If all goes according to plan then we will have far fewer deaths by avoiding these spikes in cases

I don't see any 'experiment'; I see government policy being dictated by the best scientists and medical experts available.

I also see a lot of people making comments with zero understanding of epidemiology and virology.

100% agree

From what we know, this virus can be readily transmitted even before any symptoms appear.

The scientific advisers are advocating that management longer term is a better approach than attempting to prevent the spread through "lock down, 

I have a feeling this approach may prove correct given what we know. 

We as a country are setting sail over very choppy waters, but it is absolutely vital that we all buy into what we need to do as citizens. All this questioning of policy in the face of scientific evidence worries me far more than anything else. If we don't all abide by the advice we are given then we risk the health of neighbours, friends and family members.

This isn't a Tory scheme or a Boris policy. This is common sense driven by science, but it requires us all to be on board and rowing together.

True Peter with regret hence Bens comments 

Guardian reporting that HMG will ban mass gatherings from next week in a significant change of policy

The Shadow Health Secretary was on Newsnight tonight and he made it clear that he supports not closing schools at this stage. The reasons are well known, but to reiterate, closing schools could make the total national response worse than otherwise.

They are banned from Monday up here. Thankfully I managed to squeeze in a concert tonight. The explanation for the ban is to free up emergency services and not because if any increased risk of transmission.

When it comes to border controls, we are in a different scenario from other issues. I maintain that stricter border controls sooner, could have slowed things down and flattened the curve - I don't suppose for one minute that it would have kept the virus out altogether and forever.

But that is history - we have to deal with the situation as it currently is.

I agree that putting measures in place in mid-January in this country was probably unrealistic. However, my own view is that the UK government should have "upped the ante" at least a week or two before they eventually did, and certainly once it became obvious that the coronavirus was causing chaos in Italy which IIRC was long before the end of February.

Wrt what you say in your opening paragraph, this is why in previous posts I have been so critical of the initial Chinese response to the virus when it first became apparent what was happening in that country. If the authorities there had listened properly to the doctor who tragically lost his life to the disease when he himself was trying to raise awareness of it instead of trying to shut him up and making threats against him, then the effect of the virus both in China and subsequently elsewhere may have been less severe than it has been.

It was the denial or, at the very least, non-recognition (until it was too late) of what was happening in China at the time this all began which IMO has ultimately led to the horrendous situation that so many countries are now in. Now the rest of the world is having to pick up the pieces, and in many cases to a huge human cost.

Having said all that, we are where we are, and it sure as heck is not a good place to be. God knows where we all go from here.

There seems to be a plan to roll out a layered approach, step by step.

As others have said, if people are already undertaking social distancing and organisations are cancelling events then a government announcement that effectively endorses that might be more generally accepted.

There are still people around who think this is just much ado about nothing; maybe even a significant number. It is those who need to respond positively mensures. As one of the BBC reporters said, the success of the government's approach depends on all of us doing the right things.

Exactly!

Turkey: all flights from Turkey to Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands are halted until 17 April

- this is big  news because of the massive Turkish diaspora in Germany.

Again, you'd have needed border controls at least two months ago when the virus was already spreading with people coming from Wuhan and then more widely.

But as you say, keeping it out altogether and forever was always impossible so we'd have been in exactly the same place eventually.

you seemed have missed the point MM

Once a virus is in circulation that is contagious before symptoms appear

Germs don’t respect borders, and you can’t wall off every place in the world

No, but if the vector of the virus stays in one place, the virus is contained in that place too.

I wouldn't say this about Italy, their drastic measures are probably their best bet to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths

I would be more open minded as the truth is we don't know what will happen; this time in April we'll have a better idea. Already there seems to be a quick change in HMG's approach and messaging: yesterday it was supposed to be all about herd immunity and then in just 24 hours we had elections & sport events postponed or cancelled and now gatherings of more than 500 people to be banned.

The govt is already failing on its public messaging and they risk losing the confidence of the public. I agree with Justin that if we start getting an increasing number of deaths, then the govt could panic, which would only undermine public confidence further.

I already have less confidence in our approach.

I genuinely think this country would descend into mass disobedience if we were put on lockdown for longer than 2 months, particularly if there is no financial compensation for the 30-35% of our population that lives on the brink of poverty every year. How on earth do people expect them to survive on the pittance that is SSP? How do they pay rent? Utilities? 

Unless you are willing to put armed soldiers on the street then I just don’t think it’s remotely feasible. People will get fed up eventually.