And there is too much distraction about discussing ‘the science’ and that the policy is led by the science. It is clear that with a new epidemic that there is little light that science can directly shed and therefore policies of containment of infectious diseases should reflexly be implemented as these are well known tried and tested principles. Some of these anomalies exist to this day:
If you have a respiratory virus it is axiomatic that you should take adequate precautions to contain the spread through aerosol and droplet transmission. This is the most important route of transmission. Of course droplets can also land on various surfaces and cause infection if someone touches an infected surface, but that is secondary. But it looks as if the emphasis has been on hand washing and less on avoiding droplet transmission by widespread use of face masks. This si absurd. And the reason to me appears to be that the government has neglected to plan for a supply of face masks to the general public. Other countries supply those free to citizens. In Spain they are distributed to the public and in France they are sent to home addresses. You can’t even buy masks here.
Testing, isolation, contact tracing, is also a longstanding public health principle for dealing with epidemic respiratory disease, but non of this is taking place. In fact I think that ‘science’ has been used to divert from basic public health principles. Science in the shape of modelling and calculating the death rate is irrelevant in the first stages but sadly has been used in the wrong way by some governments.