Piers Morgan highlighted a change in the wording of Government advice this morning on GMB, and one that MHCLG minister Robert Jenrick was unable to explain. Initially following the Prime Minister’s lockdown address, Number 10 said that only ‘key workers’ may leave the house to go to work. Then advice was quietly changed to ‘work from home if possible’. Perhaps it is because the government is worrying that an economic depression will kill as many as coronavirus?

Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management at Bristol University, says that keeping the economy going in the next year is crucial, otherwise the lockdown measures would “do more harm than good”. His analysis shows there is a clear link between GDP and life expectancy, in part due to richer countries being able to spend more on healthcare and other policies which raise living standards. This means it is possible to calculate roughly the effect of increased, or decreased, wealth on the health of a population. Completely shutting down the economy would be a second disaster reducing life expectancy.