david. alexander marconi's bomb david is a professor of risk and disaster reduction at university college london and mark is a medical historian and author of the pandemic century 100 years of panic hysteria and hubris welcome to you both can i start with you david because there's a bit of your biography you didn't really explain you are italian the worst place in europe is italy and you previously had a big job in lombardy which is one of the worst areas affected in italy so 1st perhaps from the people you're speaking to there what is the what is the situation on the ground that you're hearing in italy at present there is a big push to get the situation under control if that is possible the 1st question you might ask is why italy well i suppose 2 possible reasons come to my departure from merely bad luck i've heard of those is that this is a place of encounter where many people come into the country and many go out of it and the other is that it has a very large elderly population who are therefore more risk than those who are not elderly generally speaking. in italy the health system is region

i'm joined now via webcam by professor david alexander.nd disaster reduction at ucl, and also vice—president of the institute of civil protection and emergency management. thank you for being with us. let me ask you firstly what you make of the way things are developing in the uk at the moment. we have this situation where we have decided not to implement, so far at least, measures to restrict mass gatherings. the republic of ireland has closed schools and imposed significant management controlled so presumably they‘ re getting significant management controlled so presumably they're getting the same medical advice so what the different policy approach? one thing you can say about the medical advice, much of it is based on assumptions about the spread of the disease which are based on parametric models. that is a model that is rather simple where you put numbers in and you get numbers out. the kind of numbers you get at the end depend on the numbers you put in at the beginning. that is why, for example, you heard the assumption that they co

well to discuss all of this i'm now joined by risk and disaster expert professor david alexander but that's only donna thank you very much indeed for joining us i mean this outbreak is unprecedented no one could prepare for this but how does the government plan for it . but i would dispute that no one can prepare for this speedy type of scenarios for this that existed for rather a long time in fact more than 10 years and they were pretty detailed scenarios where it is true that there's a great deal of variability in fund makes however it was fairly clear as to what is likely to happen in a pandemic to people to the economy and to the health service and therefore the government is currently learning very well very fast and so on it is frantically improvising the question is a big city with hindsight but nevertheless the question is how much critics are prepared before the event how much more critics are prepared before the event but maybe i should say been predicted for a while so why didn't the government listen. well the health service was based leaned down expenditure was being red

earlier i spoke to professor david alexander — a professor of risk and disaster reduction at ucl, andivil protection and emergency management — and asked him about the current plan from the british government to tackle the virus. one thing you can say about the medical advice is that much of it is based upon assumptions about the spread of the disease, which are in turn based on parametric models. a parametric model is actually a rather simple thing, where you put numbers into it and get numbers out at the end. the kind of numbers at the end depends on the kind of numbers you put in at the beginning. that is for example, you hear of the assumption could be half a million deaths. if there were, by the way, they would probably include me. but i don't think there are going to be half a million. that is the sort of thing a model will give you as a worst case. the trouble is, we don't have the data to put into the models, and therefore, there are large areas of uncertainty in the prediction of how the virus will go. what we are looking at and what we can say on the basis of the very recent

with us over the next few minutes, we have professor david alexander from the institute for risk andi'm alsojoined by paul kellam, who is professor of virus genomics at imperial college london. ifi if i could start with you first, lots of questions coming in about the testing process. most to do with what is happening in the uk but also internationally. i don't know if you caught the government press conference a couple of hours ago saying we would be testing 25,000 people a day well saying le a day well before the end of march, yet we struggled to get to 10,000. why? the testing that i think has been referred to herein as the virus detection test is the one where if you are infected and cinematic. 0verexposed in incubating then you have the ability to detect the presence of the virus. now this is an enormous undertaking to scale up. what you require is a law of traded people, equipment and reagents and the scale to than a sample and move samples around where the plates where testing is. that reallyjust ta kes a where testing is. that reallyjust takes a while to scale. i think we are

well david alexander is a professor of risk and disaster reduction at university college in london joins me now from the british capital via skype good talking with us on the program so we've sort of looked at the way the world has unfolded on sunday to see where the current virus is and how it's actually impacted on various societies and cultures is it fair to say that for example in the e.u. for example the member states that are just looking out for themselves at the moment it's a situation so unique to each country that they're acting and reacting to a situation as it develops within their own borders without thought of the neighbors. well this is a medical problem but it's also a civil protection problem and what that means is that you have to look after people's basic needs and by and large e.u. countries european countries do that in different ways partly because they have different administrative systems and partly because they have different histories of developing this field. it is however rather sad that there isn't more direct leadership and guidance and more exchanges that a

alexander's first year as head coach. >>> finally, to one of the greatest rivalries in its 100th year, duke/north carolina. fifth year grad student justin robinson son of hall of famer davidets his first career start after 142 games at duke and backs legend. 13 points, including that key three-pointer there, inspiring duke to an 89-76 win over their biggest rival. coach k. said his story is better than rudy. >> really? >> they were so proud. listen to this. >> it's hard to rattle him. he's so steady and confident and those are the kind of children you hope you raise, right, that they can take care of themselves in any situation and that's why i watch him and i'm just amazed every day. he's wonderful. >> so great. after the game, justin robinson giving the game ball to 16-year-old make-a-wish teen antonio sellers. he always wanted to see a duke/north carolina game in person. listen to this. there he is, six surgeries, antonio was diagnosed with a brain tumor his freshman year of high school. we always wanted to play for duke but in a way, we're thinking about you, antonio, just as duke was, and we're rooting for you as well. >> coy, thank you. >> welcome. >>> so a cruise s