Yep, red Macron may have saved tens of thousands of British lives
Exponential growth is particularly unforgiving of dithering
(behind Times paywall) 22 days of dither and delay on coronavirus that cost thousands of British lives
http://archive.is/61c1j#selection-1329.54-1341.153
After being initially hostile to the idea, the prime minister put his libertarian instincts to one side and agreed in principle that a lockdown would be necessary.
However, rather than locking down immediately, there was a further nine-day delay as he deliberated over how and when a lockdown should be introduced.
That prevarication proved, for some, to be fatal.
New back-dated modelling assessing the historic spread of the disease
.... estimates the number of people infected in the UK was indeed doubling every three days during late February and early March,
just as some of the initial reports from China in late January had suggested they might.
The work, produced jointly by an Imperial College London team led by Samir Bhatt and Oxford University, suggests that
on March 3 - the day the government committee was warned about the dire consequences of a mitigation approach -
there were about 14,000 infections in the UK.
Such was the speed of the spread of the virus that 200,000 people were estimated to be infected by the time the government began to change its mind about its policy on Saturday, March 14.
The last nine days while Johnson wrestled over the decision on when and how to go for lockdown were particularly brutal.
By the time the lockdown was announced on Monday, March 23, such large numbers were doubling over such a short period that infections are estimated to have soared to 1.5 million.
According to the data, no other large European country allowed infections to sky-rocket to such a high level before finally deciding to go into lockdown.
Those 20 days of government delay are the single most important reason why the UK has the second highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in the world.