Re: reasons not to close schools...
My feeling is lock everyone down, now. That will do wonders to halt further spread and allow the NHS to focus care on the remaining, much smaller number of people, who will get seriously ill.
The opposite will happen. People will go along with this for a few weeks but after 3 weeks or so they'll decide that it was all overblown and they'll start going out again, at which point there will be another surge. Looking at the data from China, a lock down starting now will mean the end of that 3-week period arriving just as we go through the peak, and the NHS will be overwhelmed.
Getting people to just act sensibly over a long period is much easier than a lockdown, and although the overall number of people who catch it will be about the same the peak will be spread out, to levels where the NHS can cope.
Remember, it's a virus. You can't "cure" it. Sooner or later we all need to catch it, or be vaccinated against it, those are the only ways to stop the spread. It takes 6-9 months minimum to develop a vaccine, so it needs to be managed at a low level until then. Lockdown won't work, as France and Italy will discover.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
