Coronavirus will impact parts of your life you never even imagined – including the luxury of switching off

I hope we don't get to the stage that Italy or Wuhan have, but if we do, we will have to be prepared to live in this new empty city and crowded house reality, writes Ahmed Aboudouh

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That's it. The bomb has been dropped on us. Last week seemed to be the last week of normality. Now that we are on unofficial lockdown, the signs we should have paid attention to are glaring.

At the beginning of the week, Boris Johnson confirmed that London is weeks ahead of the rest of the UK in terms of how rapidly coronavirus has spread. By that point, London was already ahead of the government and didn't wait long to establish its own playbook on how to "flatten the curve".

Since then, the capital has rushed to put itself under lockdown. Apart from what this reveals about the public's trust in the government's "herd immunity" plan, by Monday morning, the streets looked prepped for a drag race. The "herd" had realised that its shepherd seemed to be giving it mixed messages and decided to take the lead.