> 156 people died of covid in the UK yesterday.

This may be highly inflated.

As far as I understand it, and implied by e.g. [1], UK COVID daily death cases are "if you had a positive result in the last 28 days and you die". So it includes, for example, heart attacks, strokes, and being run over by a bus.

[1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths

Even going by the "covid on death certificate" number, it's 109 a day. Adjusted for population it's almost as bad as the science-denying shitshow that is half the US right now. Compare that to countries who actually have it under control like Australia and Taiwan, who had eight and zero deaths yesterday.

Yeah, I'm not trying to diminish the situation; it's appalling.

I'm just pointing out that relying on figures with unknown (or in this case, frankly ridiculous) methodologies to make comparisons to other countries (which will have different methodologies again) muddies the water at best.

Quite right, and that wasn't my goal anyway. I was just making the point that lifting mask restrictions and having large social gatherings does not mean we have the pandemic under control.

Hard to catch Covid when you can't leave your house without a visit from the goon squad.

I heard Ronaldo played a blinder.