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?

Almost 100,000 cases, 360 deaths from Swine flu in 2009 and we didn't shut the whole country down.

You remember swine flu, which in retrospect looks like a big flap over nothing flu?

Yeah I don't remember any of this over swine flu? I knew a child who got it as well, but I don't remember suggestions of shutting down schools etc? Is it because of the media being different these days?

Don’t be silly. Your island only has food for 3days without imports from the EU. You’ll both starve AND die from Coronavirus. It’s already there anyway.

I don’t think the UK will take any drastic measures u TIL they see what France, Germany & Spain do, all of which have more cases and/or deaths than the UK

It will spread, just like Italy. There’s no doubt about it! The writing is on the wall! I tend to think that the government are just letting it happen. People will catch it, some will die, the rest will recover and life goes on.

Thinking if they shut down Schools .What would happen if Nurses whose children are in Education couldnt find alternative childcare? or Doctors for that matter ? This could have an ongoing effect .Same for Emergency Services .Dentists and so on.Has to be thought about carefully .Whether Conspiracy theories are correct or not ,this is getting serious now and we need to take the best course of Action for everyone .

I agree with you completely Op.

No it’s too early. You’ll get people wanting more to be done now but you’ll also get a huge amount reacting to measures they see to be over the top.

No. Why would we? A tiny tiny % of the population has it. An even tinier amount have died.

66 milion and odd people will be affected by shut downs. Plus the economy will be fucked.

And what's going to pay for the NHS if you fuck the economy up a bit more? Italy will have bankrupted itself doing what it has. But they have the EU to bail them out. The EU won't bail the UK out.

Are you going to pay for private health care if you get ill? Not just with CV but anything?

We need the economy. BoJo didn't inherit the magic money tree from Corbyn you know.

I'd close secondary schools - kids that age can look after themselves at home. GCSE and A level students can revise/work from home to limit risk of infection. Best for students of that age to be well enough to do exams.

If you shut primary schools parents have to be off work, and kids will be out and about rather than contained in school. There is no way all children would be kept indoors if schools shut so they are more of a risk if out of school.

No idea what should be done - I'm not an expert! - but I think this is the (translated) Italian Twitter thread: twitter.com/silviast9/status/1236933821414719488

The school holidays are coming up. I could see the Government implementing measures to tie in with those as people will have already factored in childcare/time off.

I also think we need to keep in mind that not only do we only have a fraction of the information that will be available to the CMO and his team but we are not world leading experts in the field and accordingly their ability to interpret the information available will be far better than ours.

There is a reason we keep these people around, let's let them do their jobs and then listen to what they say.

I love people say they want the UK in lockdown but won't lock themselves down just now.

So you may lose your job - but you want millions more to when things are locked down.

You may get a fine from school but you want millions more to lose their job as they have to stop going to work to look after their kids.

I'm alright Jack to hell with everyone else.

And it's the ones who want to follow the expert UK advice who are selfish.

What they need to do is make school optional for those who want to keep their kids off or those who like mine have medical conditions (already off) and authorise those absences already you’ll have less movement of potential ‘superspreaders’ yet keeping childcare and schools for those who need it
Cancel gatherings etc
Force the work from home issue if you can, you have to

I think those people who are saying lock down now, and never mind if it means doing so are longer are really missing the point. WE probably will need to lock down to some degree at some point, but the issue is really all about timing, and keeping it as short as possible is incredibly important, not just to stop us being "bored" or protect big business as people are suggesting. It will be the poor who suffer most - if we stop going to restaurants, bars etc, those on zero hours contracts will get no money,and many others on precarious contracts will be let go. This is happening anyway. Small businesses such as nurseries will be unable to pay their staff even with the best will in the world, and may fold anyway. How are these people going to live? Add in that the lockdown means that there are less people in a less efficient working environment able to develop emergency systems for DSS etc. I would hope (but do not have much confidence) that we could spend the next weeks looking at emergency support mechanisms for a later lock down scenario as well as putting support in place for those who will be put under extra pressure by a lock down e.g. health and other essential service workers.

Even in a 'lockdown' people go out- to work, people gather, social distancing doesn't mean stay in completely for months.

The idea is to break some of the obvious places of transmission up and decrease the likelihood of getting it- so one option would be to allow schoolchildren to be taken out without penalty, or school hours cut for most but all essential staff or those without childcare (as teacher numbers will drop either through corona or through preventive measures). It doesn't have to be- close everything and be damned!

I think people are confusing a locked down country (where essential travel and activities still occur) with self-isolation which is more severe and the idea there is you try not to have contact with anyone until it's clear if you are infected. The whole of Italy is not in self-isolation! Also self-isolation depends on others not being isolated- so pharmacists, supermarket deliveries, friends or neighbours walking the dog.

Dramatic lockdown talk isn't what's needed, and nor are blunt solutions, there a lot of fairly cheap and not societally catastrophic ways we could slow this thing down (e.g. massive shift to home working for those for whom it is possible, closing schools a week early for Easter/bring holidays forward, clarifying and making more generous sick pay so people actually take it).

I agree that there are less drastic measures that could be taken (including encouragement to home work) but in the Italian scenario pubs, restaurants etc, are closed after 6pm so this is clearly on the table.

This is the Twitter thread I read: twitter.com/jasonvanschoor/status/1237142891077697538

The account is absolutely shocking, but I can't help but think, with only 5 deaths that we know of, locking down the UK at this stage will just not happen. Imagine the economic impact. There's no way this Government would want to be responsible for that.

Well, we'll just see in three weeks time then. It's not like MN is a think tank, it makes no difference what we think or hope and saying it out loud won't swing the balance. I would be over the moon to be wrong.

That article from the Bergamo doctor has been doing the rounds since the weekend if it's the one referenced on about 80% of the Covid threads on here. If you Google him in Italian, the only hit you get is that a couple of years ago he played in a charity football match. Yes he's a doctor, yes, he's probably envisaging worst case scenarios. No, he's not a doctor the govt are listening to.

For reliable Italian sources look for anything released by:
Protezione Civile
Live press conferences from the govt
Doctors from the Sacco hospital in Milan
Doctors from the Spallenzani in Rome.

You won't find much from the doctors as they are refusing to give interviews and go on telly etc saying they have more important things to do.

Remember also, every time you've rolled your eyes at the notice on news websites saying "anyone there like to contact us with their story"

Jeez, all these people who think they know better than leading health experts/scientists just because they’ve been looking on twitter and obsessing over the worldometer app thingy 🙄 Can’t you just let the professionals make the decisions?

It's not just nurses and doctors. It's plumbers, electrician, delivery drivers, care home workers, the list goes on. At least half the country are essential. If we lock down infected areas, then the rest of the country can service those areas. But we can't lock down the country forever, or the people who die from the lock down will out weigh those dying from the virus.
But we should be slowing down, with restricted flights, no gathering including sporting events. Everything non essential should be stopped.

The WHO and PHE are hardly on the same page at the moment. Both are experts.

The horse has already bolted.. the time to stand up and put serious controls in place has passed. I'm not saying we're doomed, but Boris & Co should have taken better control earlier than now.