A Poor Response (To COVID-19)

Yesterday the Prime Minister made a statement that I thought was bold and truthful: that people will lose loved one to COVID-19.

He said the only thing we could hope for would be to flatten the infection curve to avoid too many needless deaths of those who fail to get treatment due to patient overload of the NHS.

He's to be commended on being so forthright and truthful.

But the actions of the government don't bear out the severity of the challenge facing us. Currently the action is to avoid economic issues, rather than medical issues.

Social distancing measures should be put in place NOW. All public gatherings over 100 people should be stopped with immediate notice. Schools should allow those families able to look after kids outside of school to remove them from the classroom.

I understand that not all families will have the option, so at least limit the spread by removing children from the schools that can be looked after at home by their families. At least it's a sensible compromise.

Cancel all sporting events and public gatherings. Theatres, cinemas and the like need to be shut down.

Weddings are borderline, possibly give advice that only close family and friends you have regular contact with should attend and the wider circle that you hardly ever have contact with should be politely turned away.

Supermarkets should be limiting the numbers of people walking round the stores. Sensible people that can't use delivery services should be shopping at Tesco and Asda 24Hr stores at midnight or the small hours of the morning.

Public transport should be shut down or at least numbers carried should be limited. No crushing people in like sardines on the Tube. Numbers limited so there is space between people. Those that can work from home should be doing it NOW.

Certainly travel should now be limited to essential travel only.

It's all sensible stuff that will buy us some time.

I'm not heartened by the Chief Medical Officer likening this epidemic to the 'flu. This is not flu.

COVID-19 has the ability to re-infect time and time again. The only measure that can slow it down is to stop people coming into contact with others that are in the process of shedding the virus. Once those shedders stop being infectious, then they are safe and so is the rest of the community at large.

Unless the virus has the ability to re-emerge like Herpes. That is something we don't yet know and can't yet predict. But the best defence is to limit the number of infections. Nor can we predict other infection routes, like sexual contact. That's all for further study, but the thing we do know is it's contracted by contact and it's also airborne.

There need s to be a barrier between EVERYBODY as anyone can be carrying the virus. You need to get the infection rating of each infected person down to as close to 0 as possible.

So the advice should be to limit contact with anyone outside your immediate daily contacts. Be on high alert at work and managers should be prepared to send people home that feel in any way unwell. People should be prepared to self-isolate anyway. They should also be allowed to self-isolate, there should be no pressure on them to go into work.

In general people should be limiting physical contact, keeping at least a metre away from strangers and doing all they can to limit cross-contamination. This is in addition to the washing hands advice, which is okay for a virus that only spreads by contact. COVID-19 is airborne, so keeping distance away from people and avoiding breathing in their breath is the only way to stop it. If you can smell Mr Garlic breath, you're too close.