"Without good leadership people in this country will start to panic"

Labour's Dr Rosena Allin-Khan asks "where is the testing for medics?"

Boris Johnson: "We are proceeding in accordance with the best scientific advice... that is how you save lives"https://t.co/0v0cGWtvjM pic.twitter.com/zN0xaPzozh

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) March 18, 2020

When Boris Johnson talks about the timeliness of the response saving lives he is referring to his advisers' bizarre theory of "Behavioural fatigue".

The government know these measures work but they don't think we, the British public, are capable of keeping this change of behaviour up for long. So, they are reserving this message of urgency for later in the outbreak when they think it will be more useful.

This is an open letter by 455 behavioural scientists in the UK strongly criticising them for this, saying that there is not enough known about "behavioural fatigue" to support such a conclusion and that the experience in China and South Korea is sufficiently encouraging to suggest that we should at least attempt this. See

I thought I’d do a satirical meme about it:

Just as with brushing your teeth you can learn new habits too. If you are given clear instructions about when and where to do them, they are cued by the situation you are in rather than by your memory, and become habitual, require less use of memory and become easier, not harder to do as you get used to them. See implementation intentions.

Soon you give it no more thought than you do to put one foot before the other when you walk, or to keep a bicycle upright as you cycle.

Anecdotally for the last week or so I have been teaching myself not to touch my face and it has got easier as time goes on to do this. For another example, if you learn a musical instrument then things that were hard to do at the start become easier the longer you play it as you become more proficient. There are many other examples like that.

I will give the link again. I can't stress this enough - if you can follow these simple instructions in the weeks ahead, they will save many lives. Check out the WHO Advice for public for details. I describe them here: