The pandemic has hit Italy hard.. but we can avoid it happening here. We have to keep the country going
Italy’s death rate is staggering – despite shutting its schools weeks ago and cancelling mass gatherings.
However, when that action was taken, coronavirus was already widespread in the community. It meant the action had little or no effect.
The best advice for people in Britain today is for the sick to stay at home and self-isolate.
The rest of us should wash our hands more. Because it’s so infectious and sustained, intimate contact is the major factor in driving cases up.
More cases will be contracted in close interactions between family members and colleagues at work.
That’s far higher than being near someone at a football game or horse race.
If you can work from home, it will help, and schools should be kept open for as long as possible.
Education is really important and we shouldn’t lose sight of that – regardless of what else is happening.
We need to keep the country going. That means putting bread on the shelves and fuel in the petrol station as well as educating our kids.
Kids aren’t immune to coronavirus. They can get infected – but they aren’t as affected. They don’t seem to get as sick as adults.
It means they are “Probably” not spreading it as much as adults. That’s Probably with a big “P” as we don’t know for sure yet.
What we are seeing is that children who have coronavirus usually have mild symptoms.
In other diseases, it is normal for those displaying mild symptoms not to spread it as much.
That’s why shutting down schools is not the way to go, in my opinion.
They aren’t the most important group to target
– that’s adults.
We are going to need them to stay at home and away from the office and the pub.
There is a marked contrast between Boris Johnson’s Government and other countries in their approach to coronavirus.
They are acutely aware of the impact of closing schools. If they do it, they could adversely affect the ability of society to function. It would see people kept from their work for childcare issues. We are talking about doctors and nurses, firefighters, police officers, food suppliers – even the man who services the mobile phone masts. These people need to be at work in the coming weeks.
It is likely there will be a point in the future where we face real difficulties.
If you put the pressure on the system too early, it can trigger bad behaviour.
We’ve all seen examples of people hoarding toilet rolls in recent weeks. Imagine if that gets worse or happens with something else?
The impact could be even more devastating than the impact of the virus.
There is also the issue of fatigue. If we close the schools too early, there could well become a point where we become completely fatigued by it.
How long does it take you to start wishing the kids were back at school over theth summer hholidays? Three wweeks? Four wweeks?
If we shut sschools now, we cocould face a scscenario in a mmonth’s time wwhere the deaths arare stacking up anand the
Government start saying: “The situation is getting really bad now and we need to start doing things.”
And you think, “But we shut the schools four weeks ago.”
It’s all about timing.
I suspect we are two weeks behind Italy. There is no indication things are going to be different here.
Things are already getting sweaty in London.
A key difference is that Italy has a largely private healthcare system, which means they have a different capacity to us.
We have the ability to expand our capacity at the cost of other services. We could move things around in hospitals.
The cause for optimism is that, generally, our health system is more dynamic to challenges such as coronavirus.
But we have limited capacity at the top end in intensive care and that’s where it becomes difficult.
Some hospitals might use operating theatres to help. That could potentially increase capacity by about 25 per cent.
But I’m not sure even that’s going to be enough.