The Chancellors announcement of a £300bn support package for business to address the impact of the Corona Virus epidemic should ring loud alarm bells. When this is presented as a starter for ten then you know we are in trouble. A Tory government, lately of austerity fame, has discovered the money tree, in fact has found a forest of them.

There are two things that make the current situation stand out. Firstly, daily briefings from the PM setting out the state of play with the spread of the virus and the actions the government is taking to address its health, social and economic consequences.

Secondly, the scale of resources being talked about which, outside of war time, are unprecedented.

Given all this it seems strange that the government seems loath to move from an exhortatory strategy of mitigation, please do not go to the pub, to a much more aggressive strategy of suppression by shutting the pubs. At the moment there seems to be a dissonance between on the one hand the rhetoric about the seriousness of the situation and  importance of social distancing actions and on the other hand the advisory nature of the steps to achieve the appropriate social distancing.

In the PM’s press conference yesterday the public were thanked for the way they were following the advice. Perhaps if your only experience is the drive from 10 Downing Street to Parliament you may be impressed by how quiet the Capital is. However, you do not have to go far to see reduced but brisk trade in bars, pubs and restaurants.

Maybe there is some legal impediment to his issuing closure notices to Britains hospitality industry. Maybe that will be corrected next week when the Corona Virus Bill is enacted. This contains a whole range of enabling powers to: allow the health work force to be expanded; the effective management of the disposal of bodies; and the power to regulate the access to premises.

Given the speed of the current virus, if there was ever a case for acting now and legislating later this is it. Or indeed, getting Parliament to sit over the weekend to put the legislation in place if that is what is needed.The legislation could have a 6 month sunset clause to enable Parliament to review, amend and improve in the light of experience. Days matter.

My concern on this is driven partly, but far from wholly, by the article I referenced in my last post on this by Tomas Pueyo entitled: “Coronavirus: why you must act now“. It made a strong argument for urgent action.  Mr Pueyo has written a follow up article, (Coronavirus The hammer and the Dance) on the importance of early adoption of an aggressive suppression strategy as opposed to a mitigation strategy.

Ordinarily CEO’s of $billion businesses are not my favourite source of information. However, the logic of Mr Pueyo’s argument seems reasonable and the numbers he quotes are consistent with information from other public sources. Further, his logic is certainly no weaker than that which says – it is vitally important that you don’t go to pubs, but we are not going to force them to close. The latter message undermines the former.

Whilst Mr Pueyo’s articles are at best sobering the latter one provides some hope about the period of social isolation we might face.

If these articles are wrong in their estimation of what strategy the government needs to be pursuing and when, they at least provide a framework of questions which seem to me to be very relevant. If you are interested in a very accessible introduction to the epidemiological issues around Corona Virus,  then these articles are the best I have seen so far.

But, to be clear, my concern about the current situation is not based on a single article however well illustrated with graphs. In the past we have heard about Ebola, SARS and MERS as things that happen over there, to other people, far away. This is here and now. We can see what it has done to those that have gone before us. Italy is a peacetime war zone with the health system all but overwhelmed. What all the experience to date points to is the urgency of action and the cost of delay.

We are told we are about three weeks behind Italy and that we have a finely graduated response which will minimise the impact on our social end economic lives. I am sure there are some very clever people looking at this with some very sophisticated models. However, if ever there was a time for the adoption of the precautionary principle this is it.

The advisory position at the moment is logically lockdown. Businesses are closing left, right and centre. Serious economic damage has been done. But lock down is not complete. People think if the pub is open why can’t I go?

If lock down would get us on top of this virus why would we not enforce it now. If, they manage to calibrate the perfect flight path we may save some economic and social dislocation and some lives. If they act too early it could cost us more social and economic dislocation. but save more lives. If they are just too late, the consequences are much worse. The economic and social loss will be greater than either of the two other options. But, more critically, we will face an overwhelmed NHS, thousands of deaths and scenes which will live with people for the rest of their lives. 

I think I am in the camp of those who feel the government needs to act now to aggressively suppress the virus with all that goes with that.

Be Safe.