One small mistake, and one large one.

Small mistake, our PM, whatever his other shortcomings, has actually been ill with this virus, and it has made a difference to his behaviour and decisions — he probably has some empathy now, and having recently become a father, that will only increase. You can see it in his cautious approach, his encouragement for people to go back to work, but only if they feel safe doing so. That is key, and he’s putting employers under notice that making the workplace safe is down to them. How it all plays out is, as ever, a mystery, but at least there’s no mad rush to work.

Secondly -the large mistake — is the assumption that America has even reached the peak of infections yet, or that you even know how many are sick or dead! For the longest time, our stats were off because nobody was counting deaths in care homes of in the community. In the case of the US, that problem is exacerbated. How many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, are or have been sick, are dying or already dead? You don’t know because a significant proportion of your population is too poor to access medical care. They become ill and either die or recover in crowded slums where the walls are less effective than masks in preventing infection, and where the only healthy adults are rats and cockroaches. They suffer and die undiagnosed and unreported. Then again, these people are poor, and usually of colour, so they don’t count, do they?