The UK Has Stopped Talking About All The People Dying Of Covid

With almost 700 Covid deaths recorded on Wednesday and thousands more throughout the week, this looks set to be the UK’s deadliest seven days since early May.

And yet, as Christmas plans and tiered lockdowns dominate the discourse, the daily death tolls have begun to slip out of the government’s discussion of the situation, leaving many frustrated and uncertain about their future plans.

To investigate how the narrative has changed since May, HuffPost UK has compared coverage from this week to that week in May, highlighting how the way we – and those in charge – talk about Covid deaths has changed.

While the figures have since been adjusted, the following death tolls from May have been stated in this article as they were reported at the time.

Monday

May 4, 288 deaths

US university John Hopkins became a leading source of case numbers and the death toll in the first months of the pandemic, and on May 4 it was widely reported that global cases had surpassed 3.5m, with deaths topping 250,000.

Immunity passports, vaccines and a trial of the NHS app on the Isle of Wight dominated the front pages, with the death toll explicitly referred to in the lead story of both The Times and the FT.

In non-UK news, Trump also said he was “very confident” of a vaccine before the end of 2020, and predicted up to 100,000 Covid deaths in the US. Almost 270,000 Americans have now died with the virus.

Meanwhile, optimistic reports about what society could look like after lockdown began to emerge...

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