Each evening on the BBC’s News At Ten”, it announces the latest daily death toll but, for a long time now, it has failed to mention the total number of deaths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That figure for the UK, as of today, is 132,485. That’s almost twice the number of non-combatants killed in this country in the Second World War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, we were told that 20,000 deaths would be a “good result”. We need to remember that and to acknowledge that, even with a high rate of vaccination, the pandemic is still far from over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similarly the news in the UK from time to time mentions spikes in deaths in other countries but gives no consistent overall coverage of what is happening around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Total deaths are now over 4.5 million. That is something like twice the total number of deaths occasioned by the Vietnam War between 1954-1975. The three countries with the highest death tolls are the United States (637,000), Brazil (579,000) and India (438,000). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In truth, the figures for Brazil and India and for the world as a whole are probably underestimates and, of course, the pandemic is still running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stay safe. Stay well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Each evening on the BBC’s News At Ten”, it announces the latest daily death toll but, for a long time now, it has failed to mention the total number of deaths. That figure for the UK, as of today, is 132,485. That’s almost twice the number of non-combatants killed in this country in the Second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27256"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27260,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27256\/revisions\/27260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}