official lockdown.

Though for many of us residents of the city

it's been a lot longer that we've

been confined to our homes for.

For me and my family, we've now been here for about six weeks.

For the next few weeks and months

I will be bringing you a weekly blog trying

to answer some of the policy questions

that we're all asking right now related

to the coronavirus crisis.

How deadly is this disease?

When will the lockdowns end?

What will life look like afterwards?

Right now, I'm thinking a lot about disinfectant.

I'm speaking just hours after several major household goods

companies were forced to issue warnings to their customers

telling them not to drink or inject disinfectant.

And that's because US President Donald Trump wondered aloud

from his press conference podium last night whether doing so

might actually constitute an effective treatment

for coronavirus.

By now, many of us will have seen

the video doing the rounds of his medical adviser Dr Deborah

Birx, apparently trying to hide her reaction to the president

as he was speaking.

But actually, there's a more serious underlying issue here.

I suspect that one of the reasons that the president was

talking in this way was that it reflects a growing

pessimism among many people about the potential treatments

for coronavirus.

Earlier this week the FT revealed

that rendesivir, the drug being developed by the company

Gilead, has not proven effective in its first round

of clinical trials, and in fact caused

serious side effects for some of the patients being treated.

Then this morning the US Food and Drugs Administration

has warned doctors about prescribing hydroxychloroquine.

That's the drug that the president has also

talked glowingly about, particularly in conjunction

with azithromycin, an antibiotic.

The FDA said this morning that those drugs,

when taken together, or in fact, just

hydroxychloroquine on its own, could cause heart problems

for some patients.

All this tells us that we're still

very much at the early stages of dealing

with this new coronavirus.

We remain, I suspect, many months away from a treatment,

and certainly more than a year away from a vaccine.

What that tells me then is that when the lockdowns do start

to end, as we're seeing in some parts of Europe, for example,

and of course some parts of China,

is that they will have to be ended very, very

gradually indeed to make sure that the health

systems worldwide don't get very quickly overwhelmed.