One of the things we need to do, Kevin, is to assess the different ways in which countries measure COVID-19 deaths. That is not to say that I want to minimise our rotten record, but comparing like for like is pretty important. I've said before that measuring excess deaths over what would normally be expected on a seasonal basis would be one informative measure, though it would by no means tell the whole story.

An interesting statistic I saw somewhere last week is that approximately half the people in hospital with COVID-19 were actually admitted for something else. I also note that the Beeb, for the last week or more, has been qualifying the "deaths within 28 days of a positive covid test" by saying that some of those may have died of other causes. It took the Beeb at least 18 months to come up with that entirely appropriate caveat.

I had the misfortune to have to spend the day today in A&E in Barnstaple. For several hours I had to watch a silent TV screen that was giving out lots of covid messages. The one that struck me most of all was given by a doctor who was showing us that almost everyone seriously ill in his hospital wards was unvaccinated. That's the kind of message we need to being going large with.