I am sure that we will have made some mistakes. And it is undeniably true that the strategy has shifted as we have gone along. But I would have been surprised if it hadn't. What is the use of monitoring and modelling if you don't adjust your actions to take account of what it tells you?
I am lucky in that my partner works with some of the key people, or has done in the past, and thus has a bit more insight than most. She says that a tremendous amount of scientific effort is going in, and the people at the top of the scientific chain are authoritative and impressive in what they do. I think the rest of us have to put our faith in them and try to follow their advice as closely as we can.
They (the scientists) are not the problem, really. The real issue is the number of people who will act contrary to the advice out of selfishness, cussedness or simply because they are too thick to grasp the consequences of what they are doing. And making excuses for them doesn't help.
I don't envy the politicians. We live in the most renowned of liberal democracies and having to take the kind of command and control action that has been taken to date flies in the face of our history and our culture. If they have hesitated to do so, I for one understand why and find it hard to condemn them if they have tried to preserve a modicum of normality for as long as they can. Equally, the fact that they have been prepared to take the steps that have been taken so far is something they deserve credit for. I don't think that the financial/economic response has been in any way lacking in imagination, for instance.
It is probably too early to be thinking about what the long term impact of all this will be. But I hope that it gives us all pause for thought, and we need to consider carefully how we might do things differently in the future. Specifically :
* how we approach emergency and contingency planning generally, and how we develop and resource the full range of skills necessary to implement whatever approach we decide upon
* naturally following on from the above, how we build our national capability in areas like public health management, medical science and logistical management
* how we give people stronger incentives to seek careers in the emergency services and give them special consideration when they do
* we need a grown up conversation about what kind of tax and revenue base a modern economy actually needs - and one that leads to change. For too long we have promised ourselves the earth, without being willing to pay the real cost of it
All of which will be conducted against a political backdrop that will see us pulling up the drawbridge with Europe ; a fact that will be seized by people at either end of the political spectrum as being a good or a bad thing, depending upon perspectives.
More widely, I think this is going to make the world a more dangerous place long after we have got to grips with the virus itself. The way that China, the USA and Iran in particular have been behaving has been shameful really, and I see no prospect of change unless there are big changes in leadership in all of them. One out of three would be a start, but we can't even count on that.
Cheltenham Festival 
