Churchillian spirit will defy coronavirus; we’ve endured worse – Bernard Ingham

What else is there to do since, like most geriatrics already, I already self-isolate rather a lot – the silence is relieved only by health-conscious carers and family and friends on the phone.

Exceptionally this past week, taking my cue from Churchill, I ventured out to the osteopath, two lunches with aged friends and a small business meeting.

And I feel fine.

These could, of course, be my famous last words, but what the heck? Even with a chronically dickey chest, I have escaped TB, polio, swine and bird flu and invariably “ordinary” flu through vaccination.

To bolster my resolve, I have been looking at global and UK infections since I was first exposed to the infinite variety of bugs that lie in wait for us.

Polio crippled several of my school friends in an epidemic just after World War One. Last year there were 175 cases worldwide, representing a 99 per cent fall since eradication began in earnest in 1988 when there were some 350,000 cases. It is only a matter of time before a coronavirus vaccine is developed.

TB is still the world’s No 1 killer from infectious diseases and has been with us since Neolithic times. It was one of the most urgent health problems at the beginning of the 20th century when the Registrar General reported in 1890 that nearly half of all deaths among 15-35 year-olds were from consumption. In my native Calder Valley, one churchyard is full of factory children who succumbed.

Cases fell from 117,000 in 1913 to 5,000 in 1987 when there was a resurgence. Now worldwide nearly 500,000 new cases are reported each year.

Ten years ago we experienced a swine flu pandemic – apparently a new strain of the awful Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-20. Globally, it is estimated that anything from 700m to 1.4bn people contracted it – more, in fact, than during the Spanish flu outbreak. But the number of fatalities, estimated at anything from 150,000 to 575,000, was much lower than from Spanish flu (up to 50m).

The good news is that this winter the incidence of common or garden ‘flu – if there is such a thing – has been falling. Nut the authorities estimate that in England alone an average of 17,000 patients have died from it each winter since 2014, with the toll varying widely from year to year.

While recognising that no coronavirus vaccine is yet available, these figures have helped me to get the pandemic in perspective. At the last count there were 169,217 cases worldwide resulting so far in excess of 6,500 deaths, with an escalating 1,543 in the UK, causing 69 deaths (around two per cent) by the end of yesterday.

These figures might suggest that the Government is panicking –like those hoarders raiding supermarkets, especially for lavatory paper. What an hygienic society we live in!

I cannot agree with the critics. It seems to me that Westminster and Whitehall are behaving entirely responsibly in the circumstances. Things will get worse before they get better, but no one can argue there is a shortage of advice on what to do to minimise infection.

While I feel Chancellor Rishi Sunak was irresponsible overall in his first Budget in spraying money all over the place, I do not criticise him for his spending to help treat and curb infections, even if £30bn seems a bit steep. This is manifestly a matter of life and death – and for businesses, too – and the NHS must be given the best chance of coping.

As compared with President Trump, in impetuously cutting off American from Europe in two bites, Boris Johnson and his Government are the souls of measured response.

They can never rule out plain bad luck but they can – and are – genuinely trying to help the public through an anxious time.

I judge them as one who spent half his working life advising ministers how publicly to cope with crises of one sort or another.

It is, of course, true that, as ever, Boris and his ministers will be judged after the event. Did they get it broadly right? Or were they too complacent? So far I give them credit for a rational response on the basis of current evidence.

Everybody knows – or should by now – how to behave. As Churchill, that master of the English language, so basically put it: KBO – sensibly and responsibly.