he's famously reliant on his old nanny
but today Commons leader Jacob Riis MOG
himself adopted the role of nanny to the
nation in the fight against coronavirus
water immersion for the Prime Minister a
different soundtrack two times happy
birthday hot water and as
but whichever you want to sing along to
the government message is clear
hand-washing is the first line of
defense against the virus along with
using hand sanitizer gel covering your
mouth and nose with a tissue or your
sleeve and not your hands when you cough
or sneeze putting used tissues in the
bin immediately refraining from touching
your eyes nose or mouth if your hands
aren't clean and trying to avoid close
contact with people who are unwell and
if in doubt as this viral video shows
just keep your hands to yourself today's
meeting of the Cobra Emergency Committee
a government battle plan will be
published tomorrow the chief medical
officer has warned that if the epidemic
worsens sports events and concerts may
be canceled and schools closed for more
than two months with the country paying
a heavy social cost for efforts to
thwart the virus by joining me now from
the United States is dr. John pan quick
former chair of the Global Health
Council and author of the book the end
of epidemics and with me in the studio
is Justine Roberts founder and CEO of
the online forum Mumsnet
start with you Justin Roberts some
anecdotal evidence that people are
stockpiling how worried are your members
are people preparing stockpiling food
absolutely
I mean people the most common question
on moms don't actually is how worried
should I be and then some other people
are saying am i unreasonable for not
being very worried but lots of people
have been stockpiling and we've had
thousands and thousands of posts of
people recommending what's the best
thing to stockpile you know how
aggressive should there be and long
lists of things I mean obviously baby
wipes and nappies and formula milk and
stuff like that but also alcohol gin
medicines pasta everything you know my
favorite rice cakes so people have been
doing this for many many weeks now and
mom saucers are notorious for being
heavily prepped for any eventuality and
so they're taking this quite seriously
do you think they're panicking or being
philosophical no I think they're being
incredibly practical and that's the big
estate you know as you'd expect from the
nation's mothers well let me put your
top question how worried should we be to
dr. Jonathan quick now how worried
should people be well I think on the one
hand were really concerned in that just
in the last four weeks we've gone from
this virus being in two thousand
countries to over fifty countries we've
gone we leave China aside from a hundred
cases worldwide to seven thousand with
another thousand yesterday we should be
concerned because it's it if we take the
floor one in a thousand died if we take
the coronavirus the current one it's
it's ten to twenty and a thousand but on
the other hand the reality is that in
most countries it's a few dozen people
and if we identify those few dozen
people and and I must say the the health
workers and the public health community
is doing a great job we isolate those
people and we contain the virus country
by country we do have the the potential
of controlling it if this moves beyond
containment though how aggressive do
governments have to be I mean just to be
sort of blunt about it do they have to
focus on preventing lots of deaths at
the expense of the economy well you you
really want to do it in an area by area
approach and we're keep the economy
moving to the extent you can obviously
providing specific government governor
specific recommendations for businesses
work at home that sort of thing the
other thing is to really the government
needs to be investing heavily and
rapidly in in vaccines that's a major
quiver in it are it will be a major
arrow in our quiver and so that's an
important part of the government role
Justin Roberts talk there about
government's giving recommendations do
your members feel that they're hearing
enough from the government
HS and is that advice consistent well I
think they've heard a lot about washing
your hands but it has been noted on mums
that that previous epidemics in other
countries have been controlled by quite
extreme measures and everyone's waiting
for the extreme measures to hit here we
seem to be you know the least extreme in
the spectrum in terms of the world's
countries so I think those cases haven't
spread so much here is in Italy yeah
it's true but obviously it's you know
the numbers are on the rise and if it
works and it prevents death and I think
people are prepared to take quite
extreme measures well let me put those
extreme measures to dr. Jonathan Quick
then at what point do you think
governments should decide to shut
schools and sports events basically stop
people going out well it it's the point
at which you you have a spread that is
accelerating tehy by day and is
happening in multiple places there's no
particular magic number what we look at
is the trend and so what we're seeing in
at least one of the countries outside of
China that's that's taken off in
Singapore we're seeing that they have
managed with initially some very tough
measures to begin to bring it back so
what the government's going to do is
it's going to look at the number of new
cases each day and if that's
accelerating then then the measures will
be more extreme we know from the the
most similar thing or a similar thing
the Spanish flu hundred years ago that
those cities that move quicker to put in
place multiple controls school closures
and all and to keep them in place had a
much lower fatality rate so those
measures are critical and it's also
important to keep in mind that at this
point with a few few dozen cases it
should be business as usual for most
things okay the the other important
point is to look at who who is killed
who dies it's it's the older people it's
10 percent fatality rate there so also
thinking about vaccinations for
pneumonia and those sort of prevention
measures jump in quick justine roberts
thank you very much