Here is my perfect policy.
People of Britain, we are in a situation we have never seen before. What is at stake is hundreds of thousands of lives. We are going to ask a lot from you.
You have heard that we need to slow this down. We do. Our NHS will collapse under the pressure of this. Even if we do everything, the pressure on them is going to enormous. The best way we can do this is to have a short period of time when everyone apart from essential workers are isolated. This isolation will not be perfect, or easy. People will still catch the disease. We will slow this, we may not stop it. Our NHS staff will manage, but only when we limit the flow into the hospitals as much as possible.
As they treat people, this limited flow will have the best possible outcome. The vast majority of them will make a good recovery. These people will act to slow the spread of the virus. Once we are sure that the virus is under control, that new infections are steady, or even decreasing, we will allow another group of key workers back into the workforce.
Some of these new workers will become ill, but we will treat them with the very best the NHS service can manage. And they, in turn, will recover, and they will act to make it even harder for the virus to spread. And this will allow us to let more people to return to work.
The release of people back to work will be gradual. Some of you may have to isolate for a long period of time. We are sorry to ask this of you, but it will save hundreds of thousands of lives.
We know that many of you are concerned about how you will survive financially. We are putting into place a raft of measures designed to protect small businesses. We are liaising with banks, and mortgage providers, with private landlords. We will ensure that everyone has a basic income and ensure no-one is without food, or made homeless, because of this horrible virus.
Together, we will get through this.