Forget the virus.  Stress is one of the biggest killers of our times.  Nobody knows how many it knocks off each years, but almost certainly tens of thousands (I’m thinking in terms of the UK).  And the concept of stress can be subjective: we all think we are going through it.

One thing can be cleared up: stress is not pressure.  Pressure comes, for example,  from taking a “big” decision, a decision with consequences.  In its most malign form stress is not far removed from frustration: it is the inability to alter circumstances that eats away at you, body and soul.

Hang on: this is supposed to be a blog about politics, not matters medicinal. It is: because the damage that Johnson and his team of incompetents are doing is not confined to their mismanagement of the virus, and the economy.  By pressing ahead with policies (take your choice: Brexit, dismembering the Dept. for International Development… ) vigorously opposed by at least half the country, they are working up  to the biggest incidence of stress related disease that this country has endured for many a long year.