Northern Italy’s coronavirus lockdown will serve as a blueprint for surviving with no movement of goods or people

Finally, we will learn about people’s behaviour under conditions they have never had the misfortune to experience before, writes Hamish McRae

Italy is carrying out a huge economic experiment: what happens if you stop people moving around? (Alberto Pizzioli/AFP/Getty)

The lockdown of Northern Italy due to the coronavirus changes everything. Up to now, the response of the west has been one of establishing good public health practice. Individual cases are identified and treated, patients’ movements tracked, groups of contacts quarantined, and we are all pushed to wash our hands.

At present, however, no developed nation has attempted to take the radical action of cutting off movement into and within a huge area of the country. Now Italy is attempting to do what China did with the province around Wuhan. It is doing it to a quarter of the country’s population, to its richest region, and to its financial capital, Milan. We all have to hope that its efforts meet with success, but we also have to accept the possibility that this will be just the first of several similar lockdowns across the developed world.