Coronavirus: Why did the UK lockdown so late? - BBC Newsnight

On 23 March 2020, the UK went into a coronavirus lockdown in an attempt to stem the spread of the virus. But why didn't the country lockdown sooner? Subscribe to our channel here: https://goo.gl/31Q53F

Britain’s death rate is among the worst in the world and one of the questions that is often asked is could lives have been spared if we entered lockdown sooner?

In March, as the virus spread across Europe, governments began to shut down their societies and questions grew quickly as to why the British government wasn’t doing the same.

One of the reasons was a belief that if those measures were brought in too soon the British public would get "lockdown fatigue" — the idea that people would fail to comply after four to five weeks when the epidemic was at its peak. But where did this idea come from? And what was the evidence for it at the time?

Newsnight explores the choices made in March as the UK entered lockdown and examines the science and the politics that informed government policy.

Policy Editor Lewis Goodall reports.

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