Caveat my limited understanding, but the UK government's advice contains a lot of reasons or reasoning why radical distancing measures may not be as effective. Take for instance school closures, they say the kids will socialize anyway. Yes maybe but only cliques and friends and not daily. The people who don't socialize outside of school won't and that has, according to studies of the 1917/8 pandemic in the US, much value. I understand the majority opinion is that clamping down aggressively and early is of extreme value. It's the only mitigation measure that makes the exponential growth controllable and the peak significantly lower. Each day earlier can supposedly save hundreds of lives. It's a one-time opportunity. Later on these measures are not as useful.

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now - Tomas Pueyo - Medium

I really hope the confidence of the UK government in the advice that the measures are only 5%-15% effective each and so on is justified. BTW the studies also found that a combination of measures are even most successful, e.g. closing schools AND venues.

And I hope that somehow the peak will appear in three months time as calculated and things will be manageable till then. I think "public fatigue" and flare ups after the initial clampdown are more manageable problems than what's currently happening in Italy. We will have to look at what will happen in China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Korea as to how well post-peak management works. So when the advisors of the UK gov say they are four weeks behind Italy, are they seeing themselves following the same path? Surely not, or...?!

If things turn out as bad as in Italy it would be a cruel irony for Trump's travel exemption for the UK.

Unless a vaccine is found early enough, a majority of people (60-70%) will eventually get it and then herd immunity kicks in. The difference is whether it happens in a few months which would be apocalyptic or if it happens over a stretch of two or more years which would be manageable. The current 'bad' news from a leading modeling group is that the summer months will not bring as much relief as hoped for and the epidemic will be ongoing througout this year and into the next year. This scenario could of course change. But it seems that our social lives will be seriously impacted till at least the end of the year. Which makes me worry about how I can protect my older relatives during that stretch.

_{Schengen is toast!}