"As could a strategy of delay. Dammed for what you do and dammed for what you don't. You would need to be able to walk the high wire for this particular game."

Yes indeed, not an easy decision. I have a lot of respect for Whitty but my intuition is that the government are not taking enough action here. Personally I think all businesses that have the capacity for their employees to work from home should tell them to. This strikes me as the least economically painful containment strategy. I think the government should have strongly recommended all UK businesses do so.

I would also be looking at ways to re-skill or provide useful activity to businesses, sole traders, shopkeepers, small one-person operations that will be put out of business (either temporarily or permanently) while everyone is at home.

I think I would probably delay closing schools, as the gov have done. But it is a massive gamble. The government are clearly gambling on corona cases not spiralling out of control before the Easter holidays and some kind of breathing space until summer holidays.

This could go disastrously wrong if cases increase exponentially as they have in Italy; it would mean schools would eventually have to close with thousands more people infected (and hence the most vulnerable being much more at risk than they would have been if more drastic action had been taken sooner)