THE Government was caught in a dilemma. Coronavirus was spreading like a forest fire fanned by panic, and every country that had been affected had tried different ways to contain it, but found themselves in the same King Canute position.

They simply could not push back the tsunami of this coronavirus pandemic.

The NHS was looking at an unprecedented problem. No treatment options and an impending onslaught of patients.

The other scenario that they faced was there had been no clinical trials to give them hope of some new vaccine. These take time to produce and the strict rules that have to be upheld, this in itself would cause delay, leading to years in the making.

On average each new drug take ten years from the lab to market.

The problem with Covid-19 is that it attacks the body’s immune system, so in a way it does not kill anyone, it provokes the immune system to kill the infected patients itself.

So, how do you test that someone has the virus, when someone could be infected yet show no signs?

It could show itself as if it was a cold with no high temperature, so checking someone with a thermometer has been totally non-effective.

Most flu and cold viruses are more contagious at the earliest stages of the infection and this coronavirus does just that, and that is why it has spread so fast.

The elderly and those with no immunity would be highly at risk.

When the Government medical adviser said people should keep apart by a distance of two metres they should also have said “stay two metres apart or you could end up two metres underground”.

Being 78 years old and having respiratory problems, I collected what was left on the supermarket shelves that would fill my small freezer and headed to my isolation bunker to protect myself, but fell foul of the slight cold I thought I had.

That got worse and gradually deteriorated into a mild form of the coronavirus, so another two weeks of isolation, then I can help others to get by.

Spencer Carvil Egginton Road

Moulsecoomb