Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Edwardian]

[Regularity]

That's why he ended up in the USA...

[Edwardian]

RIP Charlie Watts .....

 

 

[CKPR]

Best dressed man in rock'n'roll  - I guess the title now passes to Robert Fripp, as long as his wife stops messing with his hair and tie. Ironically, the also recently departed Dusty Hill (RIP) definitely wasn't the best dressed man in rock'n'roll.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Charlie's death keeps reminding me of how old I'm getting. Sad to see him gone.

[Edwardian]

So, this Covid thing....

 

In the news, the NZ government is under pressure concerning further lockdown and the eradication policy.

 

It might be of particular interest to Antipodeans to consider how things have gone here in the UK since the lifting of lockdowns. Lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK on 17 May and, IIRC, lifted entirely on 26 July.

 

 

 

As you can see, the Covid infection rate is still high and still climbing, and, of course, this trend will almost certainly be exacerbated by the resumption of school in September. Most school age children will not have been, and may never be, vaccinated. 

 

One of the things this shows is that high vaccination rates do not prevent high transmission rates.

 

However, below is the daily deaths trend (the hospitalisation trend broadly maps this):

 

 

There is a rise in deaths apparent, but nowhere near in proportion to the rise in cases.  We are told that what the high vaccination rate is doing is preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death from Covid, even though it is not preventing its spread. 

 

This is what living with Covid looks like.

 

What does this tell us?

 

Well, I happened to think that locking down the borders, like Australia and New Zealand did, was demonstrably right. HMG signally failed to do so here, thus lockdowns became our first and only line of defence, instead of a back-up for whenever Covid is breached national defences.

 

However, once you have Covid in your country, it will spread. Once you open your border, you will have it.  Once you lift lockdowns, it will be everywhere.  And this will be true in a vaccinated population.

 

It seems to me that the function of closed borders and lockdowns is to control the spread well enough and for long enough to get everyone vaccinated, because, if you have a vaccinated population, when Covid starts to spread, which I believe it inevitably will, far fewer people become seriously ill or die and you eventually get to annual deaths comparable to 'flu. 

 

According to the interweb, the UK has 62.8% of the population fully vaccinated.

The figure for NZ appears to be 21.4% 

 

My fear is that closed borders and lockdowns, while completely necessary for the meanwhile, will not provide a long term solution because Covid will not be eradicated and at some point it will spread through a population.  Vaccination means that when that happens, the ability of Covid to do the population serious harm is greatly reduced. Now none of this seems to be a particularly good answer to the clinically vulnerable and I suspect that many of us will remain circumspect for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately I just don't see it working any other way in the long term.

 

I think that the aspiration to protect 100% of the population by remaining a Covid-free country is understandable. It's just that I think the NZ stance - New Zealand not willing to risk UK-style ‘live with Covid’ policy, says Jacinda Ardern - will ultimately prove untenable. Covid will likely wait around until whenever your society opens up, then it will suddenly be everywhere.

 

Get vaccinated, because, sooner or later, it's coming, is, I'm afraid, my grim conclusion. and 'living with Covid' is probably not a matter of choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Annie]

277 confirmed infections in the community at last count James.  Barely two weeks and infections are rapidly increasing despite our best efforts to control them.  All it took was one of our citizens returning from Australia and bringing the infection in.  Our Health Dept says they've vaccinated 1 million people, but I don't know if that is completed double jabs, single jabs, or all mixed in together. 

Our one seriously big mistake was having the free lunch travel corridor with Australia when some states in Oz were still struggling to contain outbreaks.  Travellers were told to stay out of the infected states, but of course they didn't and coming back in they lied about it.  Seriously despite the deeply honest and sincere attempt by our government to keep COVID out I think we've finally come unstuck.  Certainly fighting a rearguard action is better than just giving up since it will buy some time to get more people vaccinated, but basically it's only going to be a matter of time before we have our own little firestorm raging away here.

[monkeysarefun]

And in turn it all began here after months of zero cases with a limousine driver who was contracted to ferry international flight crew to their quarantine hotel. Turns out he wasn't a believer in vaccines. Or masks. Or getting tested.

 

He ferried a freight crew from the US, one of whom  had  the Delta strain and it all turned to poo.

 

Turns out 'regulations' for limousine drivers regarding masks, vaccines and testing   were 'guidelines' rather than 'rules' so he doesn't even get prosecuted for starting the outbreak that has shutdown NSW for 9 weeks, the ACT and Victoria and now NZ.

 

Even then we might still have kept it in check but the NSW government has long  been dismissive of other states who locked down at the first sign of a community spread,  relying instead  on our 'worlds best practice' track and trace set up. This had got us out of tricky situations with earlier versions of Covid, but

 the Delta strain is next level contagious.

 

By the time they'd got contacts and places of concern  and so on collated and published , the virus had spread from the eastern suburbs to the west.

 

Today there were 1029 new infections, numbers are climbing but not outrageously thanks to the lockdown. The strategy is to hold it at bay until we reach some kind of level of vaccination, but even then there will not  be a UK style 'freedom day', masks and social distancing and other restrictions will still apply. 

 

The other issue we have is that we are one country but with  several states. While there were no Covid cases anywhere, all were united behind the elimination strategy. Now that it looks like NSW and maybe Victoria will no longer be able to eliminate the  virus those two states  will rely on containment via vaccines and are in the middle of a huge vaccination programme.

 

The other states are not happy with this change of plan  and still want to have a target of zero community spread before they will open up to us, so I can't see interstate travel happening for months, let alone international travel.

 

I got my first shot yesterday, though I was interested in trying that horse worming stuff that is all the rage in the US at the moment amongst many of those who won't have  the vaccine in case its dangerous...

.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/fda-horse-message-ivermectin-covid-coronavirus

 

[Annie]

Our Health Dept contact tracers have been almost overwhelmed by the fast spread of the Delta variant.  Last I checked they were doing their best to track down 15,000 contacts and the contact list just keeps on growing.

[Caley Jim]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/fda-horse-message-ivermectin-covid-coronavirus

These folk would be much better off taking this tid (three times a day)!

 

 

 

(and so would the rest of us if they all did!)

 

Jim

[Hroth]

I hope Australia and New Zealand can get a better grip on the Delta variant than the UK has. According to the gov.uk "dashboard", as reported by the BBC the figures for the UK today are:

• New confirmed cases.                      38,281
• New deaths.                                            140
• Percentage pop 1st dose vaccine.        77.7%
• Percentage pop 2nd dose vaccine       88.1%

Current covid hotspots are Northern Ireland, the West of Scotland, Southwest England.

 

Covid just seems to be trundling on, cases and deaths are increasing and there doesn't appear to be any interest either from the population in general or the Government.  The main concern has been summer holidays, going to the pub and to music festivals.  Masks and keeping your distance? Thats for wimps! And now it is being reported that immunity of those given the vaccine first is starting to decline.

 

Winter is going to be fun. Not.

 

[Nearholmer]

34 minutes ago, Hroth said:

there doesn't appear to be any interest either from the population in general or the Government. 

That’s the point, I think: HMG is no longer “following the science”, whatever that means at the moment, given that even the best brains seem to be in “Hmmm; let’s wait and see” mode; it is following public opinion.  And, the opinion of most of the public seems to be that current rates of illness and fatalities are acceptable in exchange for being able to conduct life in a pretty much normal fashion.

 

It will be interesting to see when or whether public opinion shifts significantly in favour of more precautions - I don’t think it will, unless things get dire.

[Andy Hayter]

7 hours ago, Edwardian said:

So, this Covid thing....

 

In the news, the NZ government is under pressure concerning further lockdown and the eradication policy.

 

It might be of particular interest to Antipodeans to consider how things have gone here in the UK since the lifting of lockdowns. Lockdown restrictions were eased in the UK on 17 May and, IIRC, lifted entirely on 26 July.

 

 

 

As you can see, the Covid infection rate is still high and still climbing, and, of course, this trend will almost certainly be exacerbated by the resumption of school in September. Most school age children will not have been, and may never be, vaccinated. 

 

One of the things this shows is that high vaccination rates do not prevent high transmission rates.

 

However, below is the daily deaths trend (the hospitalisation trend broadly maps this):

 

 

There is a rise in deaths apparent, but nowhere near in proportion to the rise in cases.  We are told that what the high vaccination rate is doing is preventing serious illness, hospitalisation and death from Covid, even though it is not preventing its spread. 

 

This is what living with Covid looks like.

 

What does this tell us?

 

Well, I happened to think that locking down the borders, like Australia and New Zealand did, was demonstrably right. HMG signally failed to do so here, thus lockdowns became our first and only line of defence, instead of a back-up for whenever Covid is breached national defences.

 

However, once you have Covid in your country, it will spread. Once you open your border, you will have it.  Once you lift lockdowns, it will be everywhere.  And this will be true in a vaccinated population.

 

It seems to me that the function of closed borders and lockdowns is to control the spread well enough and for long enough to get everyone vaccinated, because, if you have a vaccinated population, when Covid starts to spread, which I believe it inevitably will, far fewer people become seriously ill or die and you eventually get to annual deaths comparable to 'flu. 

 

According to the interweb, the UK has 62.8% of the population fully vaccinated.

The figure for NZ appears to be 21.4% 

 

My fear is that closed borders and lockdowns, while completely necessary for the meanwhile, will not provide a long term solution because Covid will not be eradicated and at some point it will spread through a population.  Vaccination means that when that happens, the ability of Covid to do the population serious harm is greatly reduced. Now none of this seems to be a particularly good answer to the clinically vulnerable and I suspect that many of us will remain circumspect for the foreseeable future.  Unfortunately I just don't see it working any other way in the long term.

 

I think that the aspiration to protect 100% of the population by remaining a Covid-free country is understandable. It's just that I think the NZ stance - New Zealand not willing to risk UK-style ‘live with Covid’ policy, says Jacinda Ardern - will ultimately prove untenable. Covid will likely wait around until whenever your society opens up, then it will suddenly be everywhere.

 

Get vaccinated, because, sooner or later, it's coming, is, I'm afraid, my grim conclusion. and 'living with Covid' is probably not a matter of choice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I understand where you are coming from, Shutting the borders in the way that Australia and NZ have done was never really an option.

 

This is not to say that the borders could have been made much more tight that they were, but the geographical  isolation of both antipodean countries has made them virtually self sufficient in essentials and principally foodstuff.  Compare to the UK which is 60% reliant on imported food.   Any form of travel restriction would then have had to allow for the fast and efficient movement of these goods across the Channel/North Sea and across the internal Irish border.    And in that last remember there are something like 200 border crossing points.  

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Covid just seems to be trundling on, cases and deaths are increasing and there doesn't appear to be any interest either from the population in general or the Government.  The main concern has been summer holidays, going to the pub and to music festivals.  Masks and keeping your distance? Thats for wimps! And now it is being reported that immunity of those given the vaccine first is starting to decline.

 

I reckon that one big difference between here (and NZ)  and the UK among  many  other places is that at least from the perspective  given by the news coverage  we get, the UK government seems to treat this as having some kind of decisive victory point  that can be achieved -  like its World War 1 and COVID is the nasty huns who will throw up their arms in surrender and there'll be victory parades and tickertape and stuff thrown from windows.

 

In contrast here and in NZ  its treated more like a terrorist war, we know the enemy is hidden and stealthy  and wants to just sneak through our defences and pick us off  and wage havoc so we can never let our guard down.

 

This was especially noticeable last UK winter. We'd had no local cases nationally for weeks (until the Melbourne outbreak) but our borders  were still firmly shut, internal and interstate restrictions were easing but slowly and carefully.  Despite us being covid-free no one here  mentioned wanting to re-open the borders or go overseas for a holiday , - though  when you live in Australia  I guess  you dont need to . Everyone was a  bit amazed at the UK and other European countries which in contrast seemed to be saying "job well done!"  despite the virus still being active in the community, and flying around overseas and crowding every public spot like the virus just needed some mopping up but apart from that things were all normal again.

 

I saw reports of "We beat Covid!" parties in I think Poland.

 

Our path out of this, at least for NSW is to follow the UK mass vaccination route, however in contrast there will be no 'freedom day'. Masks and social distancing will be part of our lives for a long time to come  and all outbreaks will continue to be treated seriously and isolation and localised lockdowns will continue to be a part of life here, especially if other states are able to maintain their covid free state and we in NSW aren't to be locked out of them permanently.

 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

44 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

While I understand where you are coming from, Shutting the borders in the way that Australia and NZ have done was never really an option.

 

This is not to say that the borders could have been made much more tight that they were, but the geographical  isolation of both antipodean countries has made them virtually self sufficient in essentials and principally foodstuff.  Compare to the UK which is 60% reliant on imported food.   Any form of travel restriction would then have had to allow for the fast and efficient movement of these goods across the Channel/North Sea and across the internal Irish border.    And in that last remember there are something like 200 border crossing points.  

The borders should have been shut for international travel pretty smartly.  In this internet age what valid genuine reason could anyone have for travelling internationally, other than returning home,  if the resulting risk was introducing the virus into the country?

 

I realise that trade is a different kettle of cheap Chinese knock-offs, but entry points could have been locked down much tighter. In many ways Australia internally is like  Europe if you think of the states as individual countries. They depend on each other for various 'imports', especially fresh produce and the 'import-export' industry between them is vast and entrenched, as is travel between the states. The air route between Sydney and Melbourne is the third busiest in the world, Sydney - Brisbane number 6 or something. 

 

When states shut their borders freight routes were policed and check-pointed, and covid-safe practices were introduced  like drivers isolating when they reached their destination, and were kept remote from local personnel and were routinely tested. Despite tens of thousands of daily truck movements, not a single case of covid breached the borders via transport routes.

 

Why couldnt the UK put similar  systems in place to handle European transport drivers, maybe even have a pool of drivers to take over the internal leg of the journey and keep the international drivers right out? 

Or the drivers could have gone right to the destination but stayed in their truck while the load was unhitched or whatever then driven straight back to Europe? Europe to anywhere in the UK and return is hardly long distance driving, they wouldnt have needed much of  a rest. Many of our blokes do Sydney - Perth  and return every  week, any UK - European trip  is in contrast  the equivalent of popping down to  the shops for the milk.

 

It could have been done pretty easily, thanks to previous scares like SARS  we had plans ready to go  in case a pandemic ever did occur and we're only  Australians.

Edited August 26, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Nearholmer]

We are at a strange juncture in the U.K.: close to the point where everyone who is ever going to roll their sleeve up voluntarily has been vaccinated, and with the question “What now?” hanging in the air.

 

There seems to be genuine doubt about what to do next: get into an intensive programme of booster vaccinations; or, only boost the most vulnerable, and let the rest of us get boosted by catching it in ‘mild’ mode as our vaccinations wear out. It’s pretty clear that young children are going to get vaccinated by catching it over the coming months, and maybe teenagers too.

 

What is certain is that the psychological impact, let alone economic impact, and negative impact on non-Covid medical conditions, of the long winter lockdown was immense, and that nobody wants that again, even if there is a cost for not having it again.

 

The other thing is that with vaccination, the fatality rate seems to be about a fifth what it was without vaccination, and that puts it on a par with seasonal flu, I think. If I’m right about that, it is a lesser risk than things like dementia and heart disease …… it becomes ‘just one more significant risk’, rather than The Dominating Risk.

 

Overall, it seems to me that we are in uncharted territory - there is no experience to draw upon when it comes to accommodating to a new coronavirus that is so widespread.

 

When Aus and NZ get to the same vaccination levels, the same questions will probably arise, but at least you’ll have our experience, good or bad, to learn from.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

While I understand where you are coming from, Shutting the borders in the way that Australia and NZ have done was never really an option.

 

A timely travel ban would, I'm sure, have saved lives

 

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

the fast and efficient movement of these goods across the Channel/North Sea and across the internal Irish border.    

 

Like we had that?!?

 

See BREXIT

 

54 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I reckon that one big difference between here (and NZ)  and the UK among  many  other places is that at least from the perspective  given by the news coverage  we get, the UK government seems to treat this as having some kind of decisive victory point  that can be achieved -  like its World War 1 and COVID is the nasty huns who will throw up their arms in surrender and there'll be victory parades and tickertape and stuff thrown from windows.

 

Nah, that's just Boris and his Churchill fantasy, the the rest of those Cabinet also runs who can't get past the 1940s.  'Freedom Day'? 

 

The reset of us are somewhat more grounded and nicely cynical.

 

Besides, tickertape's for the Yanks. 

 

54 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

In contrast here and in NZ  its treated more like a terrorist war, 

 

 

 

In which case, you could just all give up and leave. I'm sure the microbial Taliban would run your country just fine, I mean it's crossed the species barrier at least once already. 

 

You could all go to somewhere completely safe from the virus like, I don't know, Alabama.

 

Last one to the airport ....

[Edwardian]

3 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

We are at a strange juncture in the U.K.: close to the point where everyone who is ever going to roll their sleeve up voluntarily has been vaccinated, and with the question “What now?” hanging in the air.

 

There seems to be genuine doubt about what to do next: get into an intensive programme of booster vaccinations; or, only boost the most vulnerable, and let the rest of us get boosted by catching it in ‘mild’ mode as our vaccinations wear out. It’s pretty clear that young children are going to get vaccinated by catching it over the coming months, and maybe teenagers too.

 

What is certain is that the psychological impact, let alone economic impact, and negative impact on non-Covid medical conditions, of the long winter lockdown was immense, and that nobody wants that again, even if there is a cost for not having it again.

 

The other thing is that with vaccination, the fatality rate seems to be about a fifth what it was without vaccination, and that puts it on a par with seasonal flu, I think. If I’m right about that, it is a lesser risk than things like dementia and heart disease …… it becomes ‘just one more significant risk’, rather than The Dominating Risk.

 

Overall, it seems to me that we are in uncharted territory - there is no experience to draw upon when it comes to accommodating to a new coronavirus that is so widespread.

 

When Aus and NZ get to the same vaccination levels, the same questions will probably arise, but at least you’ll have our experience, good or bad, to learn from.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big questions.

 

After 6 months, when my vaccine protection has waned, do I think HMG will have organised a booster and/or mitigated my risk?

 

Not a chance in Hell.

 

Having declared victory the politicos will be too deeply into the daily round of incompetence and corruption to notice that we're all in risk of dying again. 

[Nearholmer]

Monkeys

 

Have you ever driven in Europe, especially the U.K.?

 

I have to tell you that the roads here are not long straight things stretching to a vanishing point across undulating bush, with the next vehicle ahead a distant blob in the heat haze.

 

Last week, it took me four and a half hours of effective gridlock to drive 130 miles from my brother’s place, and that mostly on motorway ….. <29mph average.

 

And, a large proportion of our lorry drivers have gone home to Europe and not come back, as a result of the combination of Covid and brexit, so we now have sporadic localised, shortages of random items in supermarkets.

 

You might have man-eating cute animals, but we have our own troubles.

 

Kevin

[Andy Hayter]

I think I said that the borders could have been shut down much more tightly, so I do agree with you on international travel (Ireland is still an issue though).  

 

Segregating foreign drivers would be difficult within the UK.   While a driver crossing an internal state border in Aus is likely to be faced with miles of relatively empty roads going through countryside in the UK the driver is faced with congested roads going through or close by to built up areas on a semi continuous basis.  Having a pee beside the road in Aus is likely to be a more private affair than doing the same in Surbiton High Street.

 

Leaving trailers in the continent for pick up, putting the trailer on a ship, crossing the water, dragging the trailers off the ship and then coupling up to a UK tractor unit sounds like an easy solution that is full of problems.  Problems that will slow down the delivery of time sensitive cargoes.  

 

1.  Eurotunnel is not set up at all to handle tractorless trailers and I cannot see an easy solution

 

2.  Ferries

Compare:

up to 100 trucks each with a driver ready for the off and on command drive onto the ferry - and an hour later drive off.

With:

120 trailers are dropped off (yes the numbers have gone up because without the tractor units you can get more on the boat - and this should already be a red flag since that is a big increase in ferry efficiency that is not generally exploited on the short runs).   A tug comes to collect.   Connect up at the pivot then connect the braking and electrical systems.  Wind up the support legs.  Ready to go drive onto the boat.  Reverse the procedure for connecting up.  Tug then goes back out to collect the next trailer.  This creates another problem since the short sea boats are designed to be one way operated on at the bow and off at the stern (or v.v.) and now you have loaded tugs and empty tugs going in a contraflow.  I would guess that you might at best be able to safely use 6 or maybe 8 tugs to do the job and ship turn around times would go out from just over an hour to probably several hours.

 

Then when you get to Dover, reverse the whole process.  Park up the trailers waiting for their designated tractor unit to arrive and collect them - except that in Dover docks there is nowhere to hold these trailers.

 

From a logistics viewpoint it looks at best very difficult to the point of being impractical for such short hop ferries.

 

Longer hop journeys (UK -> B, NL, DK or D)  do indeed follow such systems for at least a part of their freight cargo but they are not under the same turn around constraints with perhaps one sailing a day - or even less.

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

After 6 months, when my vaccine protection has waned, do I think HMG will have organised a booster and/or mitigated my risk?

The emerging suggestion is that your best bet is to make sure you catch it before your vaccine wanes, thereby boosting your immunity naturally.

 

As parents of school age children, you and I should have no difficulty complying with ‘best practice’, in fact we will probably find it impossible not to.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

. I'm sure the microbial Taliban would run your country just fine, I mean it's crossed the species barrier at least once already. 

 

 

No......, they are just the weapons. For the actual Talibans you need to look to the bats mate! Remember they started all this.

 

We have our own cells. Look at them here, our tiny home-grown terrorists. 

 

They even dress like little Osama Bin Ladens so thats a giveaway.

 

 

Here they've given us viruses that make you want to run out and catch COVID in comparison.

 

And what cunning arses they are - check out the Hendra virus.  Taliban bat (the 'Talibat" as we call them) sits in a tree and does a poo. A horse eats the grass with poo  on it. Innocent person gets exposed to horsey fluid as you do especially if you are doing an autopsy on it or something,  gets crafty Talibat virus and dies.

 

Whats the fatality rate? 70%!  They really hate us.

 

Or the  Australian bat Lhyssa virus.  Insurgent bat  approaches dressed all endearingly in little robes,  you give it a bit of a cuddle or whatever because you cannot resist the cute and before you know it you're lying on a metal shelf with a tag hanging off  your toe  because the mortality rate is 100% for that one.

 

On a brighter note in a sad week for rock and roll what  with us losing half the Everly brothers as well as Charlie Watts I had such  a pleasant surprise this morning when Spotify sent me William Shatners new single. Who'd have thunk he'd be still rocking it at 90 as all the rest drop off the twig around him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[monkeysarefun]

49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Monkeys

 

Have you ever driven in Europe, especially the U.K.?

Yes I do know I have oversimplified it somewhat, but one day.... one day,,,, there'll be something with a 30% mortality rate or worse.

 

Or zombies. You'll need to have some plan ready for that I reckon. Rest assured if it broke out in the  UK first  then Europe would have all your escape points shut down tight  faster than you can say "Hey why is gran biting me?" 

Edited August 26, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[Annie]

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

In which case, you could just all give up and leave. I'm sure the microbial Taliban would run your country just fine, I mean it's crossed the species barrier at least once already. 

 

You could all go to somewhere completely safe from the virus like, I don't know, Alabama.

 

Last one to the airport ....

That's a bit of a low blow James.  

[Regularity]

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Get vaccinated, because, sooner or later, it's coming, is, I'm afraid, my grim conclusion. and 'living with Covid' is probably not a matter of choice.

It never was - long term. It was always going to be like this at some point in time, which is why Boris and his chums wanted to simply let it run rampant through the community to create “herd immunity”, also known as killing off the most vulnerable. 
A more caring and sensible government might have locked things down tight as soon as possible to contain things whilst a vaccine and/or cure was developed, but no one knew how soon that would happen in March 2020: we can’t use hindsight to judge that aspect of things. That said, a sharper lockdown two weeks sooner would have helped reduce some of the initial impact, but as you say James, once it’s out in the community, then it’s out.