On the subject of there being no calls for the lockdown to begin earlier at the time, I think a look at the first ten pages of the Coronavirus update thread on here will prove interesting. While those early posts make for very embarrassing reading now for some, it also shows that, even on a messageboard for Cardiff City fans, there were some who it seems were more clued in about the virus than the UK Government and even some of the scientists it was taking advice from. I don't include myself among those who have been proved right, because, idiotically, I wanted to avoid making it a political issue because I thought the Government had been given a thankless task.
However, over the coming weeks, it became clear that the UK had drawn a very short straw when it came to the calibre of the people who were in charge as the crass blunders made by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet in the period before he became ill became more evident.
From memory, the line at the time once the dalliance with herd immunity was shelved was that, although a lockdown had to come eventually, there wouldn't be one yet because it would be more effective when infections were at a higher rate. There was also plenty of what I thought was pretty informed speculation that both scientists and politicians were of the view that they couldn't trust the population of the UK to observe a lockdown for more than a fortnight or so - yet again they were proved wrong, the people were seeing and reading what was going on in places like Italy and Spain and the large majority of them were frightened into believing and accepting a long term shutdown was coming (I started my isolation period the week before the lockdown started).
To be honest, the only thing that surprised me about this news yesterday;-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-neil-ferguson
was that the scientist only thought half of the deaths could have been avoided with an earlier lockdown - as someone remarked a few weeks back, lions led by donkeys comes to mind.