Behind closed doors, British scientific advisors dismissed urgent talk of Chinese-style lockdowns. It was important not to go too early. There would be fatigue and noncompliance. This was, as it turned out, precisely the wrong conclusion to draw from the Chinese experience. The lesson should have been that the sooner and more comprehensively you acted, the shorter the period of shutdown would have to be and the easier it would be to recover. Being willing to sacrifice normality was actually the best way to preserve normality. That profoundly counterintuitive leap was not easy to make.
