The cost of COVID-19 in the UK, in 45,000 lives lost and considerably more if ‘excess’ deaths are included, in long term illness for tens of thousands, and in damage to our prosperity, is changing everything. Robert Peston asks in The Spectator: “Did the shock have to be so great? Could the government have done more to protect us?” There is one question that overarches all the rest, he writes, and it is why ministers and officials allowed the risk to build and build and build, during February and early March.