The left is seemingly 100% pro-lockdown, while the right is tainted by lockdown scepticism. But this is a bizarre state of affairs
Last weekend, the vaguely leftwing tweets in my social media echo chamber turned to clucks of disapproval because of the front-page headline on Saturday’s Daily Mail. This is not, I realise, an unusual occurrence and is often justified. Who can forget “Enemies of the People”, the headline it printed in 2016 when three judges said parliament had to be consulted before triggering article 50? Accompanied by photos of the senior judiciary it wished to demonise, this seemed an almost conscious echo of the paper’s former fondness for nazism.
In this case the offending splash was about the coronavirus. “What is the truth about Covid deaths?” it asked in a font that heavily implied the question was rhetorical. What followed was a report saying that some people have had their causes of death registered as Covid despite recently testing negative for it. This is on top of the not-inconsiderable number who have died from other causes but had coronavirus in their bodies when they did so.
