We are, we may say, in Phase 2 of the Coronavirus infection, moving up to Phase 3. That depends on the number of cases identified and later on with eventual deaths.

From the experience of countries who have passed this way before us, we know how the virus spreads and how the curve begins slowly and then rises vertiginously to a peak. By then, the numbers of the infected would be huge and so too the number of deaths.

Over the past days, public controversy was fierce as alarmed people felt the government was being too lenient to tackle the issue. First we had a cruise liner coming to Malta and it almost took a riot to persuade the government to get it to turn around and skip the Malta visit.

Then we had the cases of the people in preventive quarantine and the sad, though inevitable, ferreting out of personal details and targeting individuals for going abroad and also possibly for flaunting the quarantine rules.

Now we have had a stupid controversy by those who still wanted to celebrate St Patrick's Day at the same time when some people still persisted in flaunting the rules of prudence in these trying circumstances.

We have to look ahead and see what's coming. The trajectory of the curve is clear. So too what can happen.

There is a procedure which we face any time we visit the Emergency Department, called Triage. The patient is seen by a doctor who assesses that patient's urgency and regulates the corresponding treatment. Normally, such a procedure works smoothly.

But if the hospital is facing a huge influx of sick people and the hospital's resources get limited, the triage procedure will lead to horrendous choices: who to save, who to let go. Coping with patients in Intensive Therapy requires the use of specialised machines, of which any hospital has a limited amount. The question thus becomes: who to use them for? The young as opposed to the old? The Maltese as opposed to the foreigner or the migrant? The man with money as opposed to the poor man?

These and similar questions are being faced, as we write, by hospitals in Italy and all agree it is a really difficult situation to find oneself in.

So, if we want to reduce the risk of such a situation, we must flatten the curve (see diagram on top). If the number of cases spike and the spike gets higher and higher, we will not be able to cope, our hospitals will not cope, nor our medical staff.

Our only solution is to try and flatten the curve, ie to reduce as much as possible the number of patients, to contain the virus. But we cannot do that if some of us remain selfish and choose their personal advantage - like flaunting the quarantine rules, not caring about personal cleanliness, disobeying orders and insisting on parties etc. Fortunately, the government has now left its earlier soft approach and is starting to wield the big stick.