A PUBLIC inquiry into the 125,000 Covid deaths, the need to buy British and lockdown’s lockdown on flirting were the topics raised by columnists in the newspapers.

The Guardian

Rafael Behr said too many people had died who might have lived if decisions had been taken differently - or earlier.

“There is population density and the capital city’s status as a global hub.,” he said. “There are demographic trends and patterns of ill health. The emergence of a more transmissible strain of the virus in Kent was a significant stroke of bad fortune.”

He said the Prime Minister’s first instinct was to hope coronavirus would ‘blow over’ and he now reportedly wished he had locked the country down earlier.

The shortage of PPE, hospital discharge of infected care home patients and all the U-turns were enough to keep an inquiry busy, he said, before it came to the impact of lockdown.

“The urgency in setting up an inquiry is not to accelerate the settling of partisan scores, but to secure for posterity the foundations of fact on which the history of the pandemic will be written.”

The Daily Express

Tim Newark said a recent report revealed domestic orders are now outstripping export orders for the first time in the UK since 2019.

“Optimism is surging among Britain’s manufacturers as EU border bureaucracy is making it cheaper and faster to make components at home rather than abroad,” he said. “It might surprise many to know that Britain is the ninth largest manufacturing nation in the world. With billions of investment, there’s no reason why we should not improve on this. “

Forty per cent of companies are looking to increase their workforce over the next year, he said.

“Business optimism is rising thanks to the Government’s vaccination triumph and that is creating a new enthusiasm for our manufacturing talents. The message is clear that buying British can both protect us and make us rich.”

The Daily Mail

Sarah Vine said humans were losing the ability to flirt with one another, according to a recent survey.

“ If communicating the language of love was hard before, it’s nigh on impossible when half your face is hidden behind a mask (on the upside, though, you don’t have to worry about bad breath),” she said. “As for Zoom, no one wants to gaze up their beloved’s nostrils as they search for the mute button, especially not when they’re frozen in all their hirsute glory.

“The truth is, the longer we remain physically locked up, the more people are becoming emotionally locked in, and forgetting how to flirt is just a part of it. Humans are social animals who thrive on contact with others. Deprived of that contact, we don’t quite know how to function.”