Boris Johnson is taking a gamble with his coronavirus strategy

There is no question more important for all of us than whether Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock are right that there is no alternative to letting coronavirus run its course in the UK, and to control the peak of the epidemic so that it falls in summer when the NHS may have the capacity to cope (see my earlier note for more on their policy).

This may well be a rational approach, supported by the chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser – Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance – underpinned by some sophisticated modelling on how viruses spread through populations. But rational is not the same as optimal, workable, practical or sensible.

Conspicuously it is not the approach being taken by most other governments, which are banning public events, closing schools, and even – in Italy – most shops, bars and restaurants.

It was striking that last night on my show when I asked Margaret Harris of the World Health Organisation to name a country that was adopting an optimal strategy she cited South Korea, which has a mass testing and quarantining programme that is on an utterly different scale from what prevails here.