By the same token, many seem to think that the UK is about four weeks behind Italy, where the health service has been utterly overwhelmed and 1,000 have died. The relative sparseness could end next week, and undiagnosed cases are probably about 30 times diagnosed cases, judging from the Chinese experience...so the equivalent of a small town now likely has it. And the majority of those people are coming into contact with 100s of other people every day, maybe not even dimly aware that they're infectious.
I get the point about not taking stringent measures too early, if it were only symptomatic cases that spread this virus. But as that's not what happens, the government approach is ignoring a potential earthquake. By the time stringent measures are taken, it may be too late. Even more than this, it's not *only* about very stringent measures, but also about social distancing to avoid widespread contagion - as far as I'm aware, next to nothing has been proposed on this.
Oh and:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds The UK has even less hospital beds per capita than Italy, and a fraction of those in Germany and France, let alone Japnan and South Korea.
It's not only about Coronavirus and the complications from that, but about all the other people who won't be able to/will struggle to access healthcare while the virus is ongoing. And if they get to hospital, how are they not going to get infected?
Some story now from Basingstoke about a Covid-19 infected person being put in the ward with loads of critically ill people, without any precautions - more infections have followed