Nah, that was the thinking before the pandemic, when "action" was either close the borders and crash the economy, or not and hope that nothing happens. Now, I

Nah, that was the thinking before the pandemic, when "action" was either close the borders and crash the economy, or not and hope that nothing happens. Now, I think the following consequences need to be taken into account: (1) politicians have very little skin in the game (given they have priority access to hospitals, security, flights, ...) (2) the only skin in the game is next election, which in the UK won't happen for another 5 years, so literally who cares (a.k.a. this won't affect Johnson's decision-making) (3) capacity - NHS in the case of the UK - of which we (the public) have very little information, and the government (Johnson) has a lot - he might think that if there's even less capacity than in Italy, it makes no sense to even try their strategy (4) what other countries do - a disaster isn't really a disaster if it's no worse than other countries... and Italy is pretty bad already, so it makes some sense to do something else (can hardly be worse than Italy)... this is also why I think Trump won't fare that bad, as long as the US outcome is better than EU (which is might still be, it's a bigger country with literally more space for people to self-isolate, and banned flights with China a while ago - not sure if that'll have an effect at all but it might) he should be fine