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“Keep calm and carry on”: In the past few years, the words have been everywhere, on kitschy posters, bags, greetings cards and — inevitably — teacups. First coined by the government at the outset of World War II, the motto is supposed to sum up the British response to crisis: a quiet refusal to panic, a light dash of self-deprecating humor.

Of course, getting through a real crisis is never quite that simple.

It’s unfair to say that the UK government’s coronavirus strategy has been to keep calm and carry on. But for the past week, there has been more carrying-on than in most countries. Last Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wouldn’t ban big sporting events. People with a cough or a fever should stay in for seven days, but that was all. Schools would stay open.

Britons, some more qualified than others, immediately began arguing over the strategy. Why weren’t we following China, where a shutdown had stopped the spread, or at least places like Singapore, with its ­aggressive test-and-quarantine program? What about the terrible scenes in Italy, surely a warning of what happens when you don’t impose strict measures? What about the World Health Organization’s advice to “test, test, test”? Britain seemed to be going it alone.

To be fair, British experts disagreed about the best response. And the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, told the BBC that they had to plan ahead. Based on previous epidemics, he said, “if you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures, it bounces back. And it bounces back at the wrong time.”

In the winter, with health services overstretched, the novel coronavirus could do even more damage. The idea was to slow, rather than entirely block, the spread.

The government also placed some hope in “herd immunity”: The weak and vulnerable would be better-protected when many of the population had got the virus and become immune to it.

The arguments and counterarguments shot back and forth, and those of us with no expertise just had to watch. Meanwhile, the British people were already changing their ways. The Premier League announced that soccer matches would stop. Stockpiling began in earnest: If you wanted your supermarket to deliver such hard-to-find delicacies as spaghetti, you might be offered a delivery date in mid-April.

And the streets began to empty. By Monday afternoon in London, florists and café owners were standing outside with crossed arms, getting used to the flight of business.

“They should shut everything,” I heard a barber remark to a woman who was passing by as she took her son home from school.

“Bad for you, though,” she pointed out.

A shrug. “Bad anyway.”

Before long the government had intensified its strategy, seemingly in response to new data suggesting hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk. First to go was the term “herd immunity,” which the health minister quickly disclaimed.

Then came new measures: People were asked to stop “non-essential contact,” to avoid restaurants, pubs, theaters and, if possible, the workplace. If someone in your house showed symptoms, you were to stay inside for 14 days.

And yet this is still less restrictive than other European countries. In France, for example, those leaving the house will need to fill out a form. Here we have been slouching toward lockdown, lagging behind the rest of the Continent.

We may catch up soon: Schools will shut from Monday. But already a new challenge has moved to the top of the agenda: how to protect businesses, employees and those who rent their housing.

The government will offer £330 billion ($382 billion) in loans to businesses and has pledged to stop evictions. But much more will be needed to help Britain’s often-precarious workforce, not to mention our shops, pubs, restaurants and hotels, to weather the storm.

This week, a friend overheard two construction workers joking as they passed each other on the scaffolding. “Cough on me,” one quipped, “then I can go ’ome.”

Pessimists might hear this as a sign that Britain isn’t taking the pandemic seriously enough, that our leaders have failed to convince us of the dire gravity of the situation. Optimists might hear in those words the British genius, most famously found in Shakespeare, for mixing the comic and tragic perspectives.

That sideways sense of humor, so essential to the national spirit, will need to hold out as we watch for the results of the government’s experiment.

Dan Hitchens will be editor of The Catholic Herald starting in April.. Twitter: @DDHitchens