So surely now is the moment for the UK to shut down?

[littleblackdress04]

All the info I have read online indicates that the UK is probably 2 weeks behind Italy in terms of infection. So rather than wait until the horse has proverbially bolted, wouldn’t it make more sense to shut down now and stop a massive spread of coronavirus?

Why wait for hundreds of deaths? And thousands of cases?

Because on a population scale, vanishingly few people have the virus.

The stats from Italy are indicative of the effect on their older population, and outbreaks in nursing homes.

If it's spreading like wildfire in the community in the UK , almost no people are seriously ill, or there'd be a spike in hospital admissions.

The misery and long term suffering caused by the economic effects of a shutdown would far outweigh any imagined benefit.

But 2 weeks ago, Italy was the same- 270 odd cases on 27th feb and now the country is in lockdown because it’s spread so rapidly!

So that is where we are likely to be in 2 weeks - makes zero sense to not act now on the premise that it might stop us getting to an Italy situation

Unshrivan I agree with you at the moment I think the right steps are being taken.
It's going to get harder and putting it in too early would decimate business

Have you read what doctors in Italy are saying? Young people are getting sick. If someone is over 55 or is younger but has co-morbidities they will not get an intensive care bed and no effort will be made to resuscitate them. I admit this was from a report from someone claiming to be a doctor on Twitter but it fits in with every other report from Italy I have read. Italy has more older people because it has a better life expectancy than us. It’s hospitals are ranked as being better than ours. There is nothing special about the U.K. that will stop this happening here.

Please go ahead and dismiss my post as scaremongering. Or alternatively, research what is happening in Italy and find out for yourself.

Exactly @nellodee - I read that post from an Italian doc on twitter too- I don’t think the government are acting responsibly at all

Unfortunately I think that is the problem. People do think that the UK is special so it is not going to happen to them.

I'd like to see large scale gatherings stopped, especially sport.

Flights from seriously infected countries stopped and passengers checked.

Working from home encouraged. Workplaces and public transport are hotbeds of germs. In my small office alone there are three over 55 and one asthmatic out of 7 people. My boss also travels all over the UK, including weekly trips to London.

I'm torn over the schools issue though.

It’s not as simple as to say we’re two weeks behind Italy - the pattern of spread is very different. For example in the UK it took 10 days for case numbers to rise from 20 to 320; in Italy a rise from 19 to 320 took 4 days. There is also the challenge of introducing any shut down measures at a point when it will have maximum effect without the risk of fatiguing people by doing it too soon and them then not following direction properly at a critical timepoint - and also at a point and length of time that will do minimal damage to the economy/wider society.

No we are going to wait two weeks, watch the elderly and the sick die and then do what we should have done now which will devastate business, enjoy two further weeks of trading guys - you're worth it, apparently.

Italy couldn't find their patient zero, so they had no idea who had passed it on and were not able to trace contacts. By the time they realised there was a problem it was spreading uncontrollably in the community. Most people in the UK with the virus have links to people who travelled so there is not as much community spread. From my personal perspective we could be fine with minimal outside contact as long as they closed the schools but I know that we are lucky and to act too early would cause great hardship of a different type.

My son has asthma & is meant to be going on a Uk school trip next week for a weeks he’s 12 and the school at the moment is saying it’s fine but I am not feeling happy . He’s desperate to go though

We don't have a patient zero now, we have a whole collection of coronavirus cases with no link to an imported case to suggest the beginning of community spread, exponential growth is to be expected now.

This complacent idea that the UK is somehow ‘special’ or ‘different’ is disturbing

How it started in Italy does not matter. It has gone beyond that now. How we stay in the U.K. will not matter. We will be beyond that too in a week or so. What matters is that it is the same virus and we are the same species.

I’d be interested in some data which standardised the amount of people we’ve tested x= positive results.

It’s all well and good saying our spread isn’t the same as theirs but how do we know if we are testing wildly different amounts of people.

We still seem woefully behind with our 111 advice. The info on countries is out of date and has been for a while.

It’s a balancing act between crashing the economy and saving lives.

How we start in the U.K.

@littleblackdress04 I think the only way we are different is that we are an island. We can “close the borders” and not have people getting here undetected. I understand we can’t stop it now, but we can slow the spread, surely not allowing new cases into the country would be a start

I understand that one of the reasons that they closed south Italy was because those 'locked down' in the north headed south in great numbers.

The solution to that was close the south too.

People panic and don't follow the rules for a variety of reasons, some justifiied. Locking down might not work long term.

I don’t have access to the full article, but headlines like this are a bit disconcerting, even if I’m inclined to think it’s just scaremongering, www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/coronavirus-britain-will-need-do-avoid-lockdown-fate-italy/

Locking down and/or meticulous hi tech tracing of every single case are what is needed and what has worked elsewhere. We are doing neither.

@Cockola the problem is that we haven’t shut the borders - there have been flights coming in from Italy as normal without any testing so it’s impossible for anyone to know the impact of that.

Shutting everything now might mitigate a lot of this - obviously it’s not helped by the absolute buffoon we have as a PM who is monumentally out of his depth

I just think it is completely over the top. I wonder what the truth really is behind it all.

@PurpleDaisy2114 well I would argue that closing a country down as in Italy means there is a pretty big issue. As a parent of a child with a respiratory condition, I have very little time for conspiracy theories about it to be honest

I understand the concern for more vulnerable people yes. If it was my child or mother then I agree I would take extra care. Still think it is all an overreaction though.