Stepping back to assess the damage of the first year of the coronavirus pandemic is sobering. As of March 2021, there have been 123 million confirmed cases and a staggering 2.7 million deaths worldwide. That’s equivalent to the entire population of Chicago city or Manchester being wiped out in the space of a year. If there was any doubt about the ferocity of Covid-19 as a disease, these figures, which are undoubtedly an underestimation and in any case only a snapshot in a rapidly escalating total, speak to its real, unabating threat.