When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions. This has been a week in which pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong in the government’s epic battle against Covid-19.

Britain suddenly has the most recorded Covid deaths in Europe and the second-most in the world; fiascos surrounding getting PPE to frontline health workers have got worse with the discovery that a planeload of supplies, dubbed ‘Air Jenrick’ after the Communities Secretary, is largely comprised of duff stuff that cannot be used; the care home epidemic continues to intensify; the number of tests being...