[Paul D]

OK, fair enough - I accept the counter-arguments above.

If you read my post, I never said we shouldn't do anything - I did say that sensible precautions made sense - such as avoiding unnecessary personal contact with others, especially those who may be vulnerable. I absolutely agree with that.

But I just don't know if what we're seeing at the moment is a 'balanced' response? No, I'm not an expert, and neither are most of us on here.

But I do seem to remember that many of these same 'experts', over the last decade or so, have advised that the human race was about to be decimated by bird flu, swine flu, Ebola, SARS, etc, but in the final analysis, none of those turned out to be anything like as bad as predicted.

So, my question is - why is the Coronavirus different? Does anyone know? I'm not being facetious here, I'm genuinely not sure why we're treating this outbreak so differently to those mentioned above.

Perhaps it's far more contagious than those mentioned? Does anyone know if that's so?

By the way - I'm not just being selfish here. Far from it in fact, as I work alone, from home, and I can continue to operate whilst staying within current guidelines without too much disruption to my business. However, there are millions of people out there who are already being adversely affected, and I'm really thinking more about those than myself.