Daily death counts from the coronavirus have been propped up failing media companies this year, and so they probably won’t be too happy to discover this:

The United Kingdom is considering ending its daily COVID-19 death tracker after experts from Oxford University found that the total was exaggerated. An investigation is likely to be launched into the way Public Health England has been recording and reporting the count.

Oxford University experts found the death tolls included people who had recovered from the coronavirus weeks or months earlier. Anyone who had tested positive for the virus was counted as a coronavirus death, even if they died from a car accident.

You should be very suspicious about how much the seriousness of this pandemic has relied on spurious data. During the Spanish Flu, there was no need to play these sorts of games. That was a genuinely devastating virus. What we’ve learned so far from this far milder bug is that (1) we are not at all prepared medically for something like the Spanish Flu – we still think masks, which failed for it, will save us and (2) we are less equipped morally and spiritually to deal with a truly devastating illness.