The lethal ambiguities in the ‘stay at home’ coronavirus advice

There are still potentially lethal ambiguities in the government’s coronavirus advice about who should go to work; such is the judgement of leading employers, to whom I’ve spoken. The fundamental question is whether businesses that are not doing work considered of national importance, but which involve employees working cheek by jowl in sweaty conditions, should cease operating. The head of one of the UK’s largest companies is absolutely clear to me that the government has given a signal that such operations should send staff home and switch off the machines. But a distraught mother of an employee of a Midlands steelworks forwarded me a message from the firm boss saying they were staying open, because they are not in Prime Minister’s list of sectors ordered to shut and ‘we therefore all need to be there’. The ‘all’ in this case include many men in their forties, fifties and sixties, who are thought to be particularly at risk from Covid-19.