[egr]

The lockdown as implemented by Italy and France aims at slowing down the spreading of the virus. It is not meant as a strategy to overcome the virus. It is meant to flatten the curve of the exponential growth of infection to minimize overloading the health system and to provide more time for preparation and for the acquisition of best practices regarding the situation. There is no disillusion that this might somehow stop the virus. The expected total infected percentage of population, with lockdowns is still in the range of 50-60%. Italy went into lockdown on March 9th when # of new cases reached 1791 and total deaths was 463. This does not seem to qualify as a very drastic early lockdown, as stated by parent.

Given everything we know regarding exponential spread, the high percentage of cases requiring icu treatment, and the mortality rate, I fail to see how the absence of any measures to mitigate the spreading of the virus makes sense.

The assumption that there are only two viable strategies, lockdown & no measures, is a plain wrong oversimplification. There is a wide range of intermediary steps that can be taken in between to attempt to slow down the virus.

Attempting to minimize the degree of overload on the health system by applying such measures in a coordinated fashion is meant to reduce casualties caused by system overload.

[simonh]

Those are good points. Because Italy was hit hardest first they had very little time to prepare. The UK has had about an extra month, which puts us in a different strategic position, so we might be able to afford an approach not viable for Italy.

[golem14]

How does the UK have an extra month, exactly ?

It did not take Italy 1 month to to go from 1,143 (today's UK number) positives to 21,157 (today's Italy number, per https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...), did it ?

[andy_ppp]

Testing in Italy was far less, the totals for there need to be inferred from the deaths and cases and the amount of testing!

[tigershark]

Italy had 21 deaths on the 28th feb, so 2 weeks ago.

[andy_ppp]

But the response will be less pronounced here with knowledge, self isolation and a lack of kissing when greeting. A month is probably a better guess than 2 weeks, but not a single person knows is rather the point...

[qbaqbaqba]

It takes a long time to acquire respirators and to train anesthesiologists.