But today Commons leader Jacob Reese Marc himself adopted the role of nanny to the nation in the fight against Corona virus for the prime minister.

A different sound track Two times Happy birthday.

Hot water on DSO.

But whichever you want to sing along to the government message is clear.

Hand washing is the first line of defense against the virus, along with using hand sanitizer gel covering your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleep and not your hands When you cough or sneeze.

Putting used tissues in the bin immediately refraining from touching your eyes, nose or mouth.

If your hands on clean, I'm trying to avoid close contact with people who are unwell.

And if in doubt is this viral video shows, just keep your hands to yourself.

After today's meeting of the Cobra Emergency Committee, a government battle plan will be published tomorrow.

The chief medical officer has warned that if the epidemic worsens, sports events and concerts may be cancelled and schools closed for more than two months, with the country paying a heavy social cost for efforts to thwart the virus.

Joining me now from the United States is Dr Jonathan Quick, former chair of the Global Health Council and author of the book The End of Epidemics.

On with Me in the studio is Justine Roberts, founder and CEO of the online forum Mom's Net.

Let's start with You, Justin Roberts.

Some anecdotal evidence that people are stockpiling.

How worried are your members?

Are people preparing stockpiling food?

Absolutely.

I mean people, the most common question or monster and actually is how worried should I be?

And then some other people are saying, Am I unreasonable for not being very worried?

But lots of people have been stockpiling them.

We've had thousands and thousands of posts of people recommending What's the best thing to stockpile?

How aggressive should they be?

And long lists of things.

I mean, obviously baby wipes and nappies and formula, milk and stuff like that.

But also alcohol.

Jin medicines, pastor, everything.

You know, my favorite rice cakes.

Eso people have been doing this for many, many weeks now on months.

This is a new tourists for being heavily prepped for any eventuality.

And so they're taking this quite seriously.

Do you think they're panicking or being philosophical?

No, I think they're being incredibly practical.

And that's the biggest state you know.

As you'd expect from the nation's mother's.

Well, let me put your top question.

How worried should we be to Dr Jonathan Quick Now, how worried should people be?

Well, I think on the one hand were really concerned in that just in the last four weeks we've gone from this virus being in two dozen countries, toe over 50 countries we've going.

We leave China's side from 100 cases worldwide Tau 7000 with another 1000 yesterday.

We should be concerned because it's if we take the flu one in 1000 die.

If we take the Corona virus, the current one, it's it's 10 to 20 in 2000.

But on the other hand, the reality is that in most countries it's a few dozen people.

And if we identify those few dozen people and and I must say that the health workers and the public health community is doing a great job, we isolate those people, and we contain the virus, country by country.

We do have the the potential of controlling it.

If this moves beyond containment, though, how aggressive do governments have to be.

I mean, just to be sort of blunt about it.

Do they have to focus on preventing lots of deaths at the expense of the economy?

Well, you really want to do it in an area by area approach and, um, where keep the economy moving to the extent you can, obviously providing specific government government specific recommendations for businesses work at home, that sort of thing.

The other thing is to really the government needs to be investing heavily and rapidly in vaccines.

That's a major quiver, and it will be a major, uh ah, arrow in our quiver.

And so that's an important part of the government role.

Justin Barber's Talk There about governments giving recommendations to your members feel they're hearing enough from the government, the N hs, And is that advice consistent?

Well, I think that they have heard a lot about washing your hands.

But it has been noted on mom's that that previous epidemics in other countries have been controlled by quite extreme measures on everyone's waiting for the extreme measures to hit here.

We seem to be, you know, the least extreme in the spectrum in terms of the world's countries so things cases haven't spread so much.

Here is in Italy.

It's true.

But obviously it's, you know, the numbers are on the rise, and if it works and it prevents death, and I think people are prepared to take quite extreme measures, well, let me put those extreme measures to Dr Jonathan Quick.

Then, at what point do you think governments should decide to shut schools and sports events basically stop people going out Well, it's the point at which you have a spread that is accelerating tohe by day and is happening in multiple places.

There's no particular magic number.

What we look at is the trend.

And so what we're seeing in at least one of the countries outside of China that's that's taken off in Singapore.

We're seeing that they have managed with initially some very tough measures to begin to bring it back.

So what the government's going to do is it's going to look at the number of new cases each day, and if that's accelerating that, then the measures will be more extreme.

We know from the most similar thing up or a similar thing.

The Spanish flu 100 years ago that uh, those cities that move quicker to put in place multiple controls, school closures and all, um, and to keep him in place had a much lower fatality rate.

So those measures are critical.

And it's also important to keep in mind that at this point, with a few few dozen cases, it should be business as usual for for most things.

Okay, the the other important point is to look at who who is killed, who dies.

It's It's the older people.

It's a 10% fatality rate.

They're so also thinking about vaccination for pneumonia and those sort of prevention measures.

Jonathan Quick, Justine Roberts, Thank you very much.