with health conditions will be asked to stay at home. the protection of the vulnerable and elderly by asking them to stay away, to stay at home, that is in our action plan, but we do not want formally to say yet that people should do that. british companies are urged to join a "national effort" to produce more ventilators and other medical equipment "at speed". supermarkets urge shoppers not to buy more than they need, amid growing evidence of panic buying. president trump and boris johnson discuss the foreign office advises against all but essential travel to spain, after a state of emergency was declared there last night. in france, the government orders the closure of most public places, including all cafes, restaurants, cinemas and non—essential shops. now dateline london — foreign correspondents currently

posted to london look at events in the uk through outsiders‘ eyes. hello, and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week, the new coronavirus is now a pandemic, and its epicentre has moved from china to europe. people are dying in large numbers — in italy of course, but as infections soar, now in spain and france too. beyond europe, other countries are also in big trouble — iran still, but also the united states. africa and south america are now seeing a scattering of cases. and with many governments moving to close borders and ban mass gatherings, the global economy is at risk. my guests today: iain martin

of the times, author thomas kielinger, political analyst eunice goes, and political commentator and broadcaster jonathan sacerdoti. welcome to you all. let's start with the question of europe. i'm going to leave this open to all four of you, who wants to be first in answering? do we think that europe missed a trick in not taking the draconian measures that we have seen, notjust in china, but also the quite fast measures we have seen in taiwan, singapore, japan, hong kong? possibly. i think possibly, asia and hong kong particularly, it was very quick, the authorities were closing down schools. testing a lot of people. perhaps that has prevented the spread of the disease, but europe, that was not as quick, but there are other characteristics. europe is a much more open continent in the sense that the movement across nations, the movements from all different

parts of the world, so europe is, to a large extent, more exposed than those asian countries. populations are also less obedient to authority, so that perhaps also has had an impact on the response, but everything else is just conjecture. it is very difficult to know. and we will not know until it is all over or we're through the next phase of it because this could be a very long running experience with various peaks and there is not a vaccine yet, which is the key thing, that is the only thing which is ultimately going to end the crisis. which is health, social and economic, which is the appearance of a virus. it is difficult to know because two or three weeks ago, even just two weeks ago when we were discussing this on your show, it still then seemed quite a long way away. in european terms it seemed broadly like a foreign news story, other than that it was starting to take off in italy. and it was difficult to make that calculation.

should the authorities have effectively closed down the european economy three or four weeks ago and gone into lockdown or gone into something closer to the draconian restrictions of the kind of hong kong? it is difficult to know. and we will only know when the numbers are there at the end. i suppose some viewers, whether they are in hong kong, taiwan, singapore, perhaps not so much the singaporeans, but the taiwanese and hong kongers, may say we are fairly open societies in terms of travel, liberal approach to things, we do not regard themselves as authoritarian societies, but we saw sars in 2003 and we were prepared for this. europe has open borders and so forth, which would suggest that because we are in such a location we have to be doubly careful, but as governments even now are saying that we must not act too draconically too early. if we picked up signs of this disease from asia and began to introduce those similar measures

in europe, the populace at large would say you are overreacting. the virus might notjump across the continent so quickly. it is all very well to say after the event we were too slow on the uptake, but i do not think the population would have followed the government's lead in clamping down early. even now we see the british government saying we must be careful not to expend our best efforts too early. we want to wait for the peak and then be fully prepared. so there is a judgment call to be made here, when you react. it also sounds as if thomas is saying, jonathan, that there is a question of taking your public with you and they have to almost, there is a sombre way of putting it, the severity of it has to be seen through deaths in order to make alert and make vigilant everybody. south korea took a slightly different approach to italy and they both seem to have had very

serious outbreaks at about the same time, but south korean cases are now going down whereas italian cases are not. i think there are a few things at play that i have been thinking about over this period and one of them is this comparison of how different countries are behaving, obviously they are dictated by different governments and different cultural norms in those countries, but also there is an enormous temptation within each country, we are doing it here in the uk, and citizens around the world are doing it, to say that we are doing the bestjob. you hear certain countries saying, our leader is taking the best, the toughest steps, or she, and there are those in each country who will be critical of whatever their government does because they do not like that government. when it comes to this virus, it knows no borders, it knows no nationalities, it knows no class, it knows no elites. we are seeing world leaders catching it, doctors catching it, ordinary citizens, young and old catching it. while it affects the older and more vulnerable more, younger people are still suffering from it quite badly in certain places. there's so much that we don't know

about it and i think that also, the other aspect of this is the idea of unintended consequences. when a country introduces extremely tough measures, they know what they are trying to do in terms of the epidemiology, but they don't necessarily know what it is going to do to their economy, to the mental health of their population, to the longer term planning for whether it is the economy, the health of the nation, the attitude of the nation, the culture of the nation, survivability, whether there will be a second wave in their country, their neighbouring country, there's so much that we don't know that i think the most important message i have is that people should, by and large, follow the advice of the experts and their governments, and if they want to supplement that with more action, perhaps people here in the uk choosing to isolate themselves a little more than told to, go ahead. that is "follow the advice of your scientific experts and your governments," but advice differs. talk us through the uk advice. it is different. there is talk of herd immunity. the british are taking a slightly different approach and it is not

the case that the british are completely out there on their own, but it is difficult, in this outbreak of amateur virology, which is off the charts, around the world globally, fuelled by social media, all manner of people are sharing information, some of it correct, some of it from dubious sources, and forming their own judgments and shouting loudly on social media that one theory is correct and the other is wrong. in british terms, they have concluded that it is better to try and flatten out the peak by doing this gradually, and the peak of this will come somewhere between the next month and ten weeks or so and that you don't go draconian too early, and you try and encourage a situation in which large numbers of people, accept that large numbers of people, are going to get this, and will experience the symptoms

in a milder way, and then at correct moments dial up the measures. they are using the phrase "cocooning" about older britons and, at some point, you can expect the advice to change, if the numbers really take off, for people to self—isolate. this is an enormous political gamble, more importantly than that, it is a huge gamble with people's health and the experts are not in agreement. then again, experts are not in agreement anywhere in the world. i think there is one problem that i think people have some difficulty in understanding, this whole idea of herd immunity. in what way is it going to flatten out the number of cases over a short period of time when nothing is being done to prevent people from catching it? the chief medical officer said that we might have, at the moment, around 10,000 people in the united kingdom who are infected with the illness. the nhs is no longer testing people who think that they have the symptoms.

only if they are already quite ill. if this is happening, we are essentially opening the nhs hospitals to receive, all of a sudden, quite a lot of cases, rather than people isolating themselves and protecting themselves from catching the virus. and we haven't got time to talk about the uk in detail any more. i want to spend a few moments talking about the united states, which having taken a fairly laidback approach initially, president trump declared a state of national emergency on friday night. i think the us is a case of the chief executive, the president, not taking it seriously early enough and then suddenly waking up and slamming a hugely dangerous ban on flights to the us, which i consider totally unreasonable. except that many european countries have also closed their borders. yes, but this is a different kind of border as it were, the atlantic.

the traffic from europe to america is essential to business the world over, particularly to americans and to europeans. and for him to not consult beforehand, or at least allow passengers and travellers to bring a medical certificate that they are free from the virus, i think is the peak of unreason. you might have to call in, but i need to be careful, he is at the epicentre of unreason, the president. it is far too draconian. it is a blanket ban and a huge threat to the world economy. in terms of the states, the interesting part was that press conferences, where he had always captains of industry behind him. i think that was quite clear on trump's part. going from a position where many thought he had not done enough, behind—the—scenes he showed he had swung into action and got google, walmart, drug testing companies, to totally overhaul the system so they can act much faster. and that's the american way, the trump way, to say that private

industry is going to help us get out of this and the secondary effect of that is to stimulate the economy, which is also suffering dreadfully at this moment. it had that effect slightly. so i think it is an interesting approach, again, we cannot know if it is right or wrong. when the stock market went down... but it went up again. he even tweeted out the rise in the stock market while he was speaking, which is idiotic. you are in the middle of something which is similar to the wall street crash and i think... so are you echoing thomas on the epicentre of unreason? who knows where politics will be in six months, but i think this is the week that finished donald trump. to move from a position, and unfortunately he is still in office, tojust a couple of weeks ago he was saying it isjust the flu, they say it goes away in april, and you look at the chaos in the administration and read the accounts of how they did the national address and they didn't know what they were going to say,

and bits of it were ad—libbed and freestyled, this is a moment when leaders, the fate of leaders, is decided because human beings — it is a very old—fashioned instinct, look for leadership. they know that not everything can be fixed. but they look to somewhere like the white house and want to see that this person knows what they are doing, and that was not the message this week. we are going to pause the coronavirus discussion for the moment. one of the consequences of such a huge story is that other important news gets neglected. so i want to give each of you a chance to talk very briefly about a story you think is getting neglected this week as a result of the huge global focus on cora navirus. jonathan, takes us off, you have 90 seconds to two minutes. i think the death of lance—corporal brodie gillen this week is something we should have seen more of in the news. she was a british soldier serving in iraq who died in those rocket strikes on the allied camps

and normally we do not necessarily hear in britain of the death of every soldier and hear their names and i think that's a shame, especially now as death is sweeping the world in another way, but there are still people fighting for this country, fighting for the west and there are still people fighting against a tyrannical iran, which itself is suffering from coronavirus, and i think it was important to remember her, herfamily, herfriends and perhaps to have our thoughts with them as well at this difficult moment for them. i will not give each of you a chance to come back on that, i want you talking about your preferred stories. thomas, what do you think we are neglecting? i think we're neglecting, hugely, the subject that was dominating everything else not so long ago, brexit, the transition period. we are in the middle of the transition period, and by the end of 2020 britain will finally have left. and hopefully we'll have a deal. nothing very much is happening along that front, except the negotiations are hampered by the problem of gathering too many people and too many groups in various locations,

so that is going to have a negative effect on the progress of the negotiations. if we do not have a sort of prospectus by june, sirjohnson has been saying that there won't be a positive outcome, he may declare game over. that's not possible to be said under the current circumstances, so my suggestion, or my prediction is that we will see a lengthening, a postponement of the transition period, which cannot end in december, when so little has been happening. we might be going into 2021 which leaves a huge credibility gap by the prime minister here, how does he explain to the public? some serious predictions. a delay in brexit from thomas, and ian saying it's the week that ended trump, though that will take some time to see. what story do you feel we are neglecting? the refugee crisis that reopened when president erdogan decided to open the greek and turkish

border, and we sawjthe how greek border, and we saw the how greek police reacted to the arrival of those thousands of refugees. they were welcomed with tear gas. and the inaction of europe. europe so far has congratulated greece, and said we are protecting our borders. they are having very strong talks with erdogan, but where is the solidarity? we are talking about thousands of — over 150,000 children in greek refugee camps and in turkey who are extremely vulnerable, vulnerable also to coronavirus. we also letting the weakest economies of europe, we're talking about greece and italy, those who are at the epicentre of the refugee crisis in europe, and where is the european solidarity to tackle this crisis? just a very quick word on afghanistan and what's happening with the taliban, which i think would be a big story globally if we weren't all diverted.

it's only a few weeks since a deal was signed which was supposed to essentially bring the conflict to an end, and america was at the start of a complete drawdown of its 40,000 troops. and we learned this week through evidence in congress that the deal is already being flouted by the taliban, and that attacks are continuing. so this is a conflict which the americans and other countries in the west have spent more than $2 trillion on fighting for the last 19 years, and it turns out that, as the us is leaving afghanistan, the taliban is effectively reasserting itself. can i add a footnote to what eunice said about the refugees? what i worry is about the look we have in the conflict between turkey and europe. nobody talks about russia. the real perpetrator of this crisis is putin, who keeps bombing those areas of syria, creating millions of refugees, making it almost impossible for erdogan to react

in anyother way than letting go of them because he can't cope with them. so we should concentrate on russia more. and at that point we're going to back to our coronavirus discussion. we were talking about leadership. the last time we saw a global financial crisis, we saw the world's leaders trying to come together to sort it out in a coordinated way. iain, you were talking about the economic impacts, and you too, jonathan. jonathan, why don't you pick up on this. we've had a tumultuous week on the markets, with the worst day since 1987 with many stock exhanges on thursday, a little bit of a recovery on friday, some of them. but global impact, if you look at business, some of them are really in an existential crisis as a result of this. that's absolutely right. i think that has been part of the equation that governments are struggling with — what to prioritise. so you prioritise the economy and people say you're heartless and you don't care about human life. but if you prioritise extreme measures designed, at least, to look as if you are protecting human life in the here and now, a,

they may have a knock—on effect later on if there is a second wave and people die anyway and b, human life may suffer, literally, if the economy does diastrously now. so i think that in terms of that, there is the psychological, epidemiological, economical, all of these considerations. and that is, i think, as we said, strong and good leadership is necessary. even if we do not think that our leaders are necessarily doing exactly the right thing, as long as we believe that they have an informed, scientific, considered strategy, i think that as a society we need to pull together a bit and support their choices, rather than try to undermine them, cast out and cause chaos because then we will never know if their strategy would have worked. and iain, you talked about leadership, but have we got enough coordinated leadership of leaders coming together? jonathan, you were talking the individual societies. globally, i suppose economically, to rescue the global economy, we need global planning. we do a bit — there's good news

and bad news on the economy. the good news is that, after an event like this, it should be the case that the bounce back economically will be very rapid, because human beings are social animals, want to get back out there. people want to feed their families, people want to get markets moving again. the bad news is that, unlike a conventional financial crisis, where you know that all you need to do is assemble sufficient firepower to say to the markets, we've got this, and you restore confidence, and back it comes. unfortunately, in this case, we don't know how it is going to last. we don't know whether it's a three or four month experience or a year—long experience, until a vaccine is found. what's happening on the markets is, i think... i covered the financial crisis. i think this is much worse, actually. because it is longer lasting. i have seen extraordinary

things this weekend. if you think the price of oil since january, which is effectively down 50%, which is good in terms of petrol at the pumps, but points to a massive fall in global economic activity. what is happening to the us bond market, it is not just about stock prices. underneath the surface, the wiring of the economy, the banking system, is struggling to cope. the good news is that the us fed, us authorities, and also the bank of england do seem to understand the scale of it. not quite so sure that the ecb do. look out for the eurozone, where i think there are serious problems coming done the line. but essentially, it is an old story, once you get into something like this, businesses get stressed, the people who work for them get stressed and we are experiencing enormous changes in global patterns of trade, behaviour, and consumption, and it's going to be tough for people.

the priority for governments is going to be helping people through this because a lot of people live on the margins and do not have a huge amount of savings and you're going to have to see governments in the next few weeks start to illustrate to people how they can support them through this difficult period. i think in europe, this is going to be... the need for a coordinated action is absolutely urgent. and so far, that coordinated action has been found wanting. if we think about the intervention of the president of the ecb this week, christine lagarde, it was pretty disastrous in terms of not reassuring markets about would the ecb be there to help the italian economy, which is suffering tremendously? we heard yesterday the german government announcing a big bazooka to help german businesses, so any help that they might want. the french government has made similar announcements in terms of opening the coffers to help all the businesses that will be affected by the coronavirus.

but what about the smaller economies of the euro zone? they are bound by the euro zone governance rules. they need to keep an eye on their deficits and public debts. if we have christine lagarde saying that italy, it's not ourjob to keep them in the euro, it's not ourjob to keep portugal or any other vulnerable euro zone country in the euro, that is very, very serious. and i really hope there's going to be far more coordinated action, because the impact of this on european economies is going to be absolutely catastrophic. and can we just, in the last couple of minutes that we have, can we talk about some of the psychological and social costs? because they're less visible than the immediate economic ones, but they are the inevitable knock—on, if people don't havejobs, incomes, the money to pay their rent, or keep their business going. thomas, what about that, the social cost of all of this? well, before we get to the social cost, you have the financial cost

to begin with, and before you have to coordinate in europe, individual countries will have to look at problems at home. so if you look at germany and the huge opening of the coffers, that is a positive sign, because germany has been accused of sitting on their balance budgets policy, and suddenly it has all the time. the crisis has led to great generosity. and in england also, after years of austerity, the spending of public money. also to address the social aspects, loneliness of elderly people, fear, what happens. you have to strengthen your efforts on that front to make available healthcare workers who would be ready to come and deal with those who suffer most from the lack of attention. so that is part of the... a huge challenge for each individual country. i think in terms of the social cost, as well, it's absolutely the case that we are thinking a lot more

at the moment about isolated people, like the elderly and the vulnerable. that's one of the reasons that the british prime minister chose not to suggest they isolate themselves yet. he said he does want to protect them during the high—risk peak moment. people are wondering how they can check on their neighbours, bring food around, to older or isolate people. maybe we should do more of this all the time, not just when there's an international health crisis. we can do things like the silver line helpline who call elderly people once a week for a chat. we can do things like that in our society and i think if we can look for silver linings, it's very hard right now, it might be that we start to think more about each other than just about ourselves, not just in terms of herd immunity, but in terms of social behaviour as a society, collectively, even in big cities, even in this day and age. so i suppose that is the long term, but we need to be doing that right now to protect people from isolation. so i just want to close,

we've only got a few moments left, by asking each of you what is your personal preoccupation at this moment in this crisis? jonathan, let's start with you. i kind of wanted to ask you about the mental health impacts of the anxiety, and so on. because obviously for people who have ocd and wash their hands a lot anyway, this particular moment, when every moment of every day that message is being driven home to them, it potentially tips them into a more difficult space. well, i'm certainly waking up much more anxious these days than i usually do. there are a couple of mornings when i woke up feeling fine and reached over to my iphone, looked at the news, and within about ten seconds i see a disastrous covid—19 story. we are all going around perhaps with a knot in our stomach. a lot of us are germ—phobic at the best of times, and go about washing our hands anyway, maybe we know immunosuppressed family or friends who have been undergoing chemotherapy and the like. so now it is spreading everywhere. it may have an effect on people are already quite anxious. i certainly know for me it is having a slight effect for me on anxiety. eunice, what about you in terms of preoccu pations? give me ten seconds.

i am also waking up far more anxious and i really worry about the length of this crisis — for how long are we going to be in this crisis environment, how long is it sustainable for us to keep our sanities? i worry about friends and family, as well as the economic impact. but also, really, focusing on understanding that we've lived quite through a decadent area. a lot of things we've taken for granted — leisure, travel — and acutally what really matters is those people, those friends, family, those connections. we have a community organisation in parts of london when i live, and that is something very helpful to me. i wake up and find a little letter, a piece of paper thrown into my letterbox saying, call this and that person in your neighbourhood, make yourself available if you have time to help someone who has difficulties, cannot access food and so forth. can you help and so forth? and that's wonderfully positive. indeed, and to end on a positive note, we could all show leadership in our own community. that's it for dateline

london for this week. we're back next week, same place, same time. thank you to all of you, and thank you to all of you for watching. goodbye. hello there. expect rain for some or sunshine and showers for others for the remainder of this sunday. because we are under an influence of low pressure at the moment, the rain is pushing its way steadily south—east. showers are piling in from the north. so, yes, expect some wetter weather in east anglia and the london area by the middle of the afternoon. behind it, though, decent sunny spells for some. showers most frequent into the far north of scotland, accompanied by gale force winds from a northerly direction here. so a cold afternoon to come. just a maximum high of 11—5 degrees.

elsewhere, we should see temperatures ranging from 9—11 celsius. through the night, the rain and showers will ease away. winds fall light and skies clear, so temperatures are likely to fall quite sharply. the blue tones denote where they will fall below freezing, so do expect a frost first thing on monday morning. a bit of a shock to the system but monday will be predominantly dry, settled and sunny, and a little bit milder from tuesday onwards.

this is bbc news, i'm ben brown. the headlines at 12:00... the health secretary warns that measures to combat coronavirus will disrupt the lives of everybody and older people and those with health conditions will be asked to stay at home. the protection of the vulnerable and elderly by asking them to stay away, to stay at home, that is in our action plan, but we do not want formally to say yet that people should do that. british companies are urged tojoin a national effort to produce more ventilators and other medical equipment at speed. supermarkets urge shoppers not to buy more than they need, saying there is enough for everyone if people are considerate. the foreign office advises against "all but essential travel"