That blog looks like an excellent and unbiased assessment. The only thing I would quibble with is the idea that wearing a mask might raise ungrounded fears. I see a much bigger problem with people forgetting to be careful. Thus, yesterday evening I arrived at Heathrow and had to queue for nearly half an hour at passport control. My wife noticed that the people in front of us were wearing masks. That made us look at their hand bags and see that they were coming from Beijing. In baggage reclaim we established that about 500 people from Beijing were in the passport queue with us. (If you read Prof Kekule's blog you will see that one of these probably had coronavirus.) Having seen the masks we made sure we kept at a two metre distance from these people and did not touch any railing they had touched.
So it seems to me that wearing masks might be good for everyone.
Yes, and from looking at flights websites yesterday - lots of flights are coming into the UK from China
every day, via Russia or Malaysia or Sri Lanka or even direct! and anyone coming from China has a much higher potential to be carrying Coronavirus since it is the start of the epidemic. I have no idea why this doesn’t seem to have occurred to our ministers and even all other countries to stop flights to and from this country temporarily. I think it’s appalling that people’s health in this country is being put at risk in this way.
People who are healthy and walking around - like this recent case in London, she did not self isolate (despite the fact if they come from affected areas they have to self isolate for 14 days), instead she attended a huge conference in Central London, then just “self reported” and walked into a busy London A&E and took a London taxi! What about people like me? Who already have a tendency to pneumonia and am very ill and awaiting an operation - what happens if I catch it because of people’s selfishness?
The latest case in London has me terrified. I came home from London only this week, after this lady seems to have gone to that conference; and got food delivered from central London and stayed in a hotel room where there were I presume at least a few Chinese nationals staying on holiday/business. I took a taxi to and from London. My boyfriend travels in busy rush hour to and from Central London every day and is not as careful as me when it comes to hand sanitizers, not touching his face etc. I see him a few times a week and in close contact.
I don’t know why this seems to be totally ok with people making decisions in the UK. I’m always the first person to advocate for freedom of movement but saving peoples lives comes before any freedom of movement. I’m also not sure why every single country didn’t immediately close their flights to and from China, as soon as cases became known. Isn’t isolation so important?
Official advise is that people shouldn’t travel unless it’s “essential”. Surely a bus conference wasn’t “essential?”. People cannot be relied upon to self isolate, or to only come in “essential” cases, as this case shows. I believe in London and in the UK it is going to become very serious, sick people who cannot fight it off will be in serious danger and no one seems to be taking the risk seriously. I’m so terrified and don’t understand why the actual ministers and those who can make decisions aren’t doing so? Sorry if I’m not making sense but I woke up today and am terrified
