A nation’s sorrow after 100,000th virus death – The Yorkshire Post says

It also does not matter that the Office for National Statistics and the Government record the number of deaths in differing ways – statistical semantics are irrelevant in this instance.

Either way, the number of people to have succumbed to this devastating disease, just a year after it claimed its first life, now stands in excess of 100,000 – the equivalent to the population of the borough of Scarborough. This is why our collective thoughts, as another tragic milestone is reached, are with all those families mourning loved ones taken before their time – the heartbreak and heartache they are suffering is palpable an felt widely.

This grief is made even more traumatic by the restrictions which continue to govern funerals and the number of people permitted to attend services of remembrance. Given this, it is important to reach out to all those in our midst who have lost friends and family to Covid or any other illness – it is the duty of all to ensure that they do not become forgotten victims of this catastrophe.

It’s the same when politicians from all parties trade statistics to score cheap points over the pandemic from Covid death rates to the number people out of work. Such a partisan approach does a disservice to all those enduring a living nightmare and who had hoped that the political response to this human, economic and social disaster would be far more conciliatory and consensual.

Instead Boris Johnson and his Ministers treat any criticism, however constructive, with disdain while Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer relies too much on hindsight rather than foresight. Britain deserves better – even more so on days as sad, sorrowful and sobering as this – if lessons are to be learned and to help save lives in the future.

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