The death toll from coronavirus was over 900 people in 24 hours. So what do the media focus on? The fact Boris Johnson apparently sat up in bed. Hey, that's good... but what about all those deaths?! Why were we shouting about Italy for so long, but not now about ourselves?

How did the goalposts move so quickly that 938 people dying in a day of a novel disease is portrayed as a situation that's evolving according to government projections?

It shouldn't be anywhere like enough to go "yep, that's what we had pencilled in on our charts" and move on.

More people died yesterday than died over the first 26 days that the UK experienced coronavirus deaths.

That's a staggering statistic.

Why isn't the government being held to account properly? In what world is what they're doing (and not doing) considered "success"?

But you don't have to look far to see what happened.

Sir Patrick Vallance set the new tone on 17 March: "If we can get [deaths] down to numbers 20,000 and below, that is a good outcome in terms of where we would hope to get to with this outbreak." https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/17/coronavirus-uk-death-toll-20000-social-distancing-measures-12411836/

Suddenly, instead of focusing on deaths > 0, the media focused on deaths < 20,000.

And something that should be a national outrage to beat all outrages was transformed into something if not routine, then at least "understandable". ("938 is still low compared to 20,000. Ho hum.")

We are being placated 4 ways:
- notional "expected death toll"
- constant repetition of "underlying health issues" ("ah, that's all right, then...")
- comparison to other countries with higher numbers (because ahead of us on the curve)
- near-hourly updates on the PM's condition

And of course the biggest bait-and-switch of all: the study that projected half a million deaths unless we changed course.

Because that accomplished 2 things while seeming to accomplish 1:
- we changed course (overt)
- the 500,000 figure bedded down in the imagination (covert)

I fear when the crisis is finally behind us, the story that will be spun by the complicit 80% of the press that's right-wing will be of a desperate tragedy that took 20,000 (or 30,000 or 50,000 or whatever number) people, but where a much bigger catastrophe was averted.

The story *should* be "why did so many people die compared to countries that acted significantly more quickly and more decisively?"

But you can put money on that not happening.