I think it's such a tragedy that we missed the opportunity to contain this. It wouldn't have been that hard. I blame the lax government and the "it's only flu" brigade. If we had banned travel over half term and Easter, encouraged wfh from the start and been a bit more on the ball with travellers returning, we could have kept the number below a hundred until the summer. By luck we are behind other European countries, but that just means we get to see what will happen to us.
We don't live in an authoritarian country. Can you imagine if the Government had said no travel, airports, train stations, roads are closed, everyone has to stay at home until further notice. How do you police that? Put armed guards on every corner? What's the effect on the economy? How many businesses just close as they go bankrupt. Unemployment would rocket. Look at the impact of FlyBe going under - 2,000 employees plus supply chains and impact on local economies. Listen to the scientists.... and look at the number of cases in other European countries - we have fewer ...so far.
www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200305-sitrep-45-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=ed2ba78b_2
Inevitably this will increase, especially as the number of people tested increases. When you test temperature of travellers as they arrive, you will get loads of false positives - that would overwhelm the healthcare services as many people think they have it, but haven't.
We are all intelligent enough to take action ourselves. When I flew from China in January I wiped the tray table, arms rests and touch screen with wipes. Nobody told me to, but it was a sensible precaution given the superficial cleaning that happens on aircraft.
We can advise our children to wash hands etc. We are all capable of independent thought and action.
Agree with this!