I'm not the only one to be commenting on this. But it bears restating. Pandemics affect vulnerable populations. The elderly, those with pre-existing illness etc: we all know this now.

But they also affect poor populations, those in poor housing...

...those where civil society and the rule of law is weaker, those where investment in infrastructure, particularly health infrastructure is poor.

So in the developed world (and let's face it China is part of the developed world now) #COVIDー19 has hit the poorest countries ...

...in Europe: Spain, Italy and the UK: elsewhere the US stands out. Government (particularly in Italy) is weak, corruption is common. In the US it is the poor in New York, New Orleans and other places that are suffering most. Don't get me wrong: the wealthy are catching it too..

...but it is those living on top of one another with access to no or poor health care that are bearing the brunt and are likely to be the reservoirs of infection.

So how about the UK? A country that has under-invested in health for a decade. Where our government is so corrupt..

..it lies to its own head of state. Where an investigation into funding of a general election and referendum remains suppressed. When one of the chief politicians dealing with this crisis won't submit to parliamentary scrutiny. Where the Prime Minister himself caught the illness.

... as he did not seem to be following his own rules. Where that same person is under investigation for corrupt dealing in City Hall. Where our politics is of the extreme right or the extreme left. Where housing conditions in our major cities are often abysmal...

...Where we have the smallest floor area homes in Euope so that we are living on top of each other.

Little or none of this applies to Germany. To the Scandinavian countries, to Canada. Countries where, although they have COVID-19, it appears to be under control...

...But it does to the UK. I don't want to over-egg this, but the UK, as detailed above, has many of the symptoms of a failing state, albeit at an early stage. That forms an ideal breeding ground for disease.

When this is all over and we have lost however many ...

...tens of thousands of our countrymen and women, we have to build a country fit for heroes, as Lloyd George said a hundred years ago. And those heroes are the nurses, the care workers, the bin men, the people who keep the phone lines working and the power stations running, ..

...the bus drivers, the doctors, the supermarket staff and many others.

To do that we need to kick out this rotten carcass of a #Tory government who have mismanaged this crisis and have undervalued these people for time immemorial: those who should actually be valued the most.