Bob, I think the point is that short of a Fortress Britain policy that would have needed to be applied at least 3 months ago, it is now too late to do anything similar to what you suggest.

Hence, why Trump is being roundly criticised both in the US and abroad for his partial ban on letting in people flying from Europe.

Three months ago, even less was known about the disease and how is spreads than we know now, so measures were fairly standard. 

Also I'm not sure how the country could legally prevent its own citizens from flying back into the country! In fact Countries have been repatriating their citizens from abroad as quickly as possible. I know of cases of UK diplomats who have been bought to the UK from China whilst their family was refused entry because they aren't British.  Said diplomat is now in the UK and cannot return home to their partner and child.

I'm also sure that the number of actual cases is far higher than the official case count and that there are probably a large number of people walking around with mild symptoms and dismissing it as just a cold.

Still, there's no point in mulling over what should have been done, what we need to do now is focus on protecting the vulnerable in sociaety.

So here I am on Saturday (2 days later doing my CPD).

21 Dead in UK so far from Covid19.

1140 confirmed sick in UK.

World cases

155,845 confirmed cases

5,814 confirmed deaths

74,438 recovered

I listened intently to what the World Health Organisation had to say and was left feeling sick that our UK Government was doing it wrong.  The W.H.O. has the 8 Pillars approach to disease control, the UK has and continues to miss the first 4 pillars. 

So we continue to do nothing in the UK, no mass testing to identify covid19, so we can't tell if there are clusters, because of the data protection laws we have - we can't confirm where people come from, because the data is anonymized – it’s totally bonkers to me. On top of that, because we don't know who has it from testing, we can't disinfect the streets around the outbreaks nor the homes of anyone who suspects they may have covid19. The country travel bans don't achieve much, but cause further problems. UK forces could all have been called out to this civil emergency, to assist in the mass testing, isolation and disinfection protocols already well known by all people who have ever been involved with NBC drills (about 2 million ex-forces people by my reckoning).  As an ex-forces person and an IOSH member, I am surprised that IOSH have not made a statement (possibly through the PM’s office) that the UK Government should state that the UK is in a state of civil emergency! 

There was a brief late night report I saw that said China is now expecting a continuation of cases for maybe another year or until a vaccination can be obtained.  So don't assume, that in October it will all be over. 

Edited by user 14 March 2020 22:12:30(UTC)  | Reason: second page added

In a global economy do we shut the doors every time someone sneezes, scratches, has a raised temperature, loss of appetite? The closest I am aware of to this kind of practice was conducted by the city of Venice back in the plague days where any arriving ship would "quarantina" (forty day wait) before berthing.

We travel (some would say unecessarily) further and faster so the concept we could stop any current or future health event would rely upon a system of isolation at every entry port AND for everyone regardless of their "minor" celebrity status - can you imagine Trump in isolation at Breize Norton for weeks before a UK state visit? It is not going to happen - power and money ignore fact.

As we keep saying it is all down to risk assessment: you need to balance the harm that the hazard will cause ie the corvid 19 virus against the time effort and money required to apply the optimal controls. Remember, the virus in 90% of cases only creates a mild illness. The majority of people, will fully recover. We could simply have gone into lock down in December this would have protected us from the virus totally. It would also have screwed up the economy and left thousands of vulnerable people physically isolated and probably caused more deaths than the virus. A graduated response, is in reality, the only way forward. What the government is really concerned about is as the virus takes hold of in the community there will be a massive surge in cases and the health care system will simply not be able to cope. This would lead not only to more corona related deaths but also other death as resources are transferred to dealing with the outbreak eg RTA victims waiting even longer in A&E as there are not enough medical staff (it would be worse than it is now) The plan is therefore to slow down the increase in cases and keep them to a manageable level.

Not everybody is happy with the strategy but given what resources we have available it look like to only viable one.