First, as a reminder to all of you, do protect yourself using the simple methods recommended by the WHO, not just physical distancing. Learn how to wash your hands thoroughly, and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands, also cover a cough with your elbow not a hand.

COVID-19 is not like flu. It's only transmitted via the larger droplets that fall to the ground in seconds. These methods only reduce your risk of flu but are very effective in stopping COVID-19. These methods work and can save you from a potentially serious disease and may even save your life. They also protect others who might get the disease from you.

This is one of the biggest differences between the UK policy and the WHO recommendations. The UK think that Covid19 is very infectious like flu, and only for a very short time and that if you have it then likely everyone in your house already has it or will get it soon.

But the data from China and now many other places is the opposite. Covid19 is mildly infectious for a long time. It can be infectious through to death if you die and up to two weeks after recovery if you recover.

If you catch it early, often nobody else has got it from the first case. This story is often in the news - couples where one has it and the other doesn’t. Prince Charles got it for instance, and his wife Camilla didn’t get it.

This is a trimmed down version of my last article with just the cites from the Imperial college paper to show that in the UK we are indeed using a simulated flu pandemic to guide UK policy and that it differs in almost every detail from the real disease. I know this is hard to understand or believe. But please check my cites carefully and you will see they do.

Before I go any further, if you are in the UK, be sure to protect yourself. This disease is not airborne (except for certain medical procedures). For details see my

Few of us in the UK even know that the UK government is ignoring WHO's advice. Allyson M Pollock, professor of public health at Newcastle university is the lead author of a recent paper in the British Medical Journal: Covid-19: why is the UK government ignoring WHO’s advice?.

The authors say that

The WHO talk about contact tracing in every press briefing. They constantly stress that contact tracing iis the key to suppressing COVID-19 and then stopping it. They say that contact tracing will not just delay the peak, but suppress it and crush it right down to no new cases a day.

For some reason some countries are not paying any attention to this advice. I wonder if part of it is that not many realize what it involves, and why it is so effective for this disease? It does not mean tracking random people that you walk past in supermarkets or in the street. It is about close or prolonged contacts.

Many governments, the UK included, focus their policy on physical distancing - which is the most obvious eye catching thing that filled the news about Wuhan. Contact tracing often gets far less attention - yet it is the absolute key to stopping this virus. It is also relatively easy to do. It doesn't need health workers. Other countries are using civil servants, community organizations and volunteers.

Contact tracing is the key to winning. Physical distancing is buying time, like defensive tactics in a game of football. Having bought time in this way we can go into the attack, crush this virus and eliminate it from our country.